A Versatile Guitarist ‘Sort of Based in Jazz’
By NATE CHINEN
Published: November 4, 2008
Mary Halvorson was the picture of calm at the Greenwich Village club Le Poisson Rouge on a recent evening, slouched intently over her big hollow-body guitar. But the music she was making, with the violist Jessica Pavone, buzzed and bristled. It was a typical night on the bandstand for Ms. Halvorson: intricate song forms met with startling jolts of insight that felt as rooted in experimental rock, folk and chamber music as in any subspecies of jazz.
Ms. Halvorson, 28, has built a name as a guitarist in new-music circles, largely through an association with the celebrated multireedist and composer Anthony Braxton. And she has proved herself a judicious composer, in the duo with Ms. Pavone and in People, a willfully eccentric rock band.
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