The late great improviser/composer Kenny Wheeler once reported to the Guardian that what he liked doing best was “writing sad tunes, and then letting wonderful musicians destroy them”. The New York guitarist and new-music original Mary Halvorson (who, like Wheeler, was once a receptive disciple in the challenging bands of veteran boundary-buster Anthony Braxton) has also made a home in the turbulently dreamlike spaces where composition and the whims of improv meet. Lessons learned as a live improviser and off-stage as an imaginative student of musical form have created the rare artist she’s become.
