A WORLD OF PIANO: Sylvie Courvoisier

Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a Brooklyn-based native of Switzerland and winner of the Swiss Grand Prix .

Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a Brooklyn-based native of Switzerland and winner of the Swiss Grand Prix and The American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award in 2025, has earned renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the avant-jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades.

Few artists feel truly at ease in both concert halls and jazz clubs, playing improvised or composed music. But Courvoisier — “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise,” according to The New York Times — is as compelling when performing Stravinsky’s epochal Rite of Spring in league with new-music pianist Cory Smythe as she is when improvising with her own acclaimed jazz trio, featuring bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen or in solo. Then there are her ear-opening collaborations with such luminaries as John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Ned Rothenberg, Fred Frith, Andrew Cyrille, Mark Feldman, Christian Fennesz, Nate Wooley and Mary Halvorson. In music as in life, Courvoisier crosses borders with a creative spirit and a free mind; her music-making is as playful as it is intense, as steeped in tradition as it is questing and intrepid. NPR’s Kevin Whitehead has encapsulated her art in an evocative way: “Some pianists approach the instrument like it’s a cathedral. Sylvie Courvoisier treats it like a playground.”

She currently teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC.