The Squid's Ear Magazine
Squidco Cost Sale!
   Almost 200 Albums At Our Cost Until July 26!




Corsano / Courviosier / Wooley: Salt Task (Relative Pitch)

First recorded meeting of Chris Corsano (drums), Sylvie Courvoisier (piano), and Nate Wooley (trumpet) in the studio in Brooklyn, 2015, for a completely open, sensitive set of improvisations that are constantly on the edge, at times explosive, and always in a focused dialog.
 

Price: $13.95


Quantity:

Out of Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 3.00 units

Sample The Album:





Product Information:

Personnel:



Chris Corsano-drums

Sylvie Courvoisier-piano

Nate Wooley-trumpet

Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.



UPC: 616892452546

Label: Relative Pitch
Catalog ID: RPR1044
Squidco Product Code: 23049

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2016
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded at Studio LULU, in Brooklyn, New York in September 2015, by Chris Corsano.
Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

Artist Biographies

"First spellbound by freely improvised music in the mid-1990s after witnessing performances by TEST, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, and others, Chris Corsano began a long-standing, high-energy partnership with Paul Flaherty in 1998. A move from western Massachusetts to the UK in 2005 led Corsano to develop an expanded solo music of his own, incorporating sax reeds, violin strings and bows, pot lids, and other everyday household items into his drum kit. In February 2006 he released his first solo recording, The Young Cricketer, and toured extensively throughout Europe, USA, and Japan. He spent 2007 and '08 as the drummer on Björk's Volta world tour, all the while weaving in shows and recordings on his days off with the likes of Evan Parker, Virginia Genta, and C. Spencer Yeh. Moving back to the U.S. in 2009, Corsano returned focus to his own projects, most notably a duo with Michael Flower, Rangda (with Sir Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny) and solo work, now revamped to include synthesizers and contact microphones in addition to his drum set and home-made acoustic instruments.

In addition to the those mentioned above, he's also worked with, among others: John Edwards (released by: Clean Feed/Dancing Wayang), Jim O'Rourke & Akira Sakata (Drag City/Family Vineyard), Paul Dunmall (ESP-Disk), Nels Cline (Strange Attractors), Jessica Rylan (Load Records), Jandek (Corwood), Sunburned Hand Of Man (Manhand), MV&EE (Eclipse/Time-Lag), Vampire Belt (Open Mouth), Joe McPhee (Roaratorio), and Wally Shoup (Leo/Columbia Japan)."

-Chris Corsano Website (http://www.cor-sano.com/bio.html)
7/15/2026

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Sylvie Courvoisier is a pianist, composer and improviser. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Courvoisier moved to New York in 1998 and has lived in Brooklyn since that time.

Courvoisier has led several groups over the years and has recorded over 25 records as a leader or co-leader for different labels, notably ECM , Tzadik and Intakt Records and 30 cds as a sideperson. She has performed and recorded with John Zorn, Mark Feldman, Yusef Lateef, Ikue Mori, Tony Oxley, Tim Berne, Joey Baron, Joëlle Léandre, Herb Robertson, Butch Morris, Evan Parker, Mark Dresser, Ellery Eskelin, Lotte Anker, Fred Frith, Michel Godard, Tomazs Stanko among others. She has been commissioned to write music for concerts, radio, dance and theater. Since 1996, she has been touring widely with her own groups and as a side person in USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe.

Currently, Courvoisier is the leader of her TRIO with Kenny Wollesen and Drew Gress. She performs regularly Solo and since 1997, in Duo with violinist Mark Feldman. She co-leads the Sylvie Courvoisier/Mark Feldman Quartet with Scott Colley and Billy Mintz. Since 2000, she has been a member of Mephista, an improvising collective trio with Ikue Mori and Susie Ibarra. She is currently playing and touring in different projects of John Zorn including Cobra and Masada Marathon. She is also playing in Erik Friedlander's Trio, Herb Robertson's Quintet and Nate Wooley's Quartet. Since 2010, she has been working as a pianist and composer for flamenco dancer Israel Galvan's project "la Curva" with more than 150 performances around the world.

Awards include Switzerland's 1996 Prix des jeunes créateurs; Zonta Club's 2000 Prix de la Création; Switzerland's 2010 Grand Prix de la Fondation Vaudoise de la Culture; 2013's NYFA (NewYork Foundation For the Art) Music/Sound Fellowship."

-Sylvie Courvoisier Website (http://www.sylviecourvoisier.com/bio.htm)
7/15/2026

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. His time in Oregon, a place of relative quiet and slow time reference, instilled in Nate a musical aesthetic that has informed all of his music making for the past 20 years, but in no situation more than his solo trumpet performances.

Nate moved to New York in 2001, and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.

Wooley's solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet. Along with Peter Evans and Greg Kelley, Wooley is considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, as well as demolishing the way trumpet is perceived in a historical context still overshadowed by Louis Armstrong. A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback, and compositional rigor has led one reviewer to call his solo recordings "exquisitely hostile".

In the past three years, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Time Out New York has called him "an iconoclastic trumpeter", and Downbeat's Jazz Musician of the Year, Dave Douglas has said, "Nate Wooley is one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today, and that is without hyperbole". His work has been featured at the SWR JazzNow stage at Donaueschingen, the WRO Media Arts Biennial in Poland, Kongsberg, North Sea, Music Unlimited, and Copenhagen Jazz Festivals, and the New York New Darmstadt Festivals. In 2011 he was an artist in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY and Cafe Oto in London, England. In 2013 he performed at the Walker Art Center as a featured solo artist.

Nate is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (www.dramonline.org) and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American (www.soundamerican.org) both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. He also runs Pleasure of the Text which releases music by composers of experimental music at the beginnings of their careers in rough and ready mediums."

-Nate Wooley Website (http://natewooley.com/about)
7/15/2026

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:
Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Jazz
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Trio Recordings
Nate Wooley
Staff Picks & Recommended Items

Search for other titles on the label:
Relative Pitch.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Nebbia, Camila / Chris Corsano
Six or Seven Ways Towards Becoming Undone
(Relative Pitch)
A fierce, spontaneous duo of Camila Nebbia on tenor saxophone and Chris Corsano on drums, recorded in Berlin in 2025, merging Nebbia's searching lines, breath-driven textures and unstable lyricism with Corsano's explosive, highly detailed percussion language, moving between delicate abrasion, surging intensity, fragmented melody and raw improvised exchange.
Courvoisier, Sylvie Trio (w/ Gress / Wollesen)
Eclats - Live in Europe
(Intakt)
Captured during a European tour, the trio of pianist Sylvie Courvoisier with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen presents a finely honed language shaped through deep trust and evolving interplay, where Courvoisier's compositions unfold with precision and openness, balancing intricate detail, shifting textures, and spontaneous free improv with subtle complexity and vivid expressiveness.
Whisker (Ben Baker Billington / Andrew Scott Young / Chris Corsano / Lia Kohl / Norman Long)
Trips
(Amalgam)
Whisker — the Chicago duo of modular synthesist Ben Baker Billington and bassist Andrew Scott Young — expand their psychedelic, noise-forged language through collaborations with Chris Corsano, Lia Kohl and Norman W. Long, blending polyrhythmic free jazz propulsion, ambient cello-inflected drift and drum-machine-driven electronic abstraction into three high-voltage sessions.
Rempis / Adasiewicz / Corsano
Dial Up
(Aerophonic)
Two fiercely intuitive trio sessions drawn from concerts in Chicago and Milwaukee by Dave Rempis, Jason Adasiewicz, and Chris Corsano, capturing the group's Chicago-forged, ego-free interplay as they shift effortlessly between surging, full-throttle improvisation and finely detailed, pointillistic exploration, always prioritizing collective motion over individual display.
Courvoisier, Sylvie / Wadada Leo Smith
Angel Falls
(Intakt)
Swiss pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and legendary trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith meet in a deeply focused duo session, their through-composed material unfolding with stunning restraint, architectural clarity, and a quiet but potent freedom, as each phrase, gesture, and interval feels acutely calibrated in a shared space of mystery, immediacy, and poetic intent.
Courvoisier, Sylvie
To Be Other-Wise
(Intakt)
Only the second solo album from Swiss-born pianist and composer Sylvie Courvoisier, now based in New York, presenting twelve studio recordings that explore the full range of the piano inside and out, recorded in Germany and showcasing the breadth of her expressive power and spontaneous creativity, shaped by decades of work in innovative transatlantic ensembles.
Courvoiser, Sylvie / Mary Halvorson
Bone Bells
(Pyroclastic Records)
Their third album in collaboration, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and guitarist Mary Halvorson deepen their intuitive musical dialogue in a set of alternately composed pieces — melding percussive piano, swirling guitar effects, and poetic abstraction into a haunting, fluid, and visceral soundworld shaped by mutual experience, instinct, and a sense of sonic adventure.
Courvoisier, Sylvie / Cory Smythe
The Rite of Spring - Spectre d'un songe
(Pyroclastic Records)
Having presented a solo version of Stravinksy's The Rite of Spring at Opera Bastille in Paris with avant-flamenco dancer Israel Galván, Courvoisier developed a new work for two pianos performed with Cory Smythe, merging composition & improvisation as they invoke impressions of The Rite in tandem with Stravinksy-like reharmonizations of previous Courvoisier works.
Rasmussen / Flaherty / Rowden / Corsano
Crying in Space
(Relative Pitch)
A muscular album of free improvisation from the quartet of Mette Rasmussen on alto saxophone, Paul Flaherty on alto & tenor saxophones, Zach Rowden on contrabass and Chris Corsano on drums & percussion, recording live at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, starting like an Albert Ayler hymn and evolving through overlapping lines of controlled and sometimes wonderfully chaotic collective conversation.
Ullen, Lisa / Elsa Bergman / Anna Lund
Space
(Relative Pitch)
The debut of this thoroughly modern piano trio from Sweden of pianist Lisa Ullen, bassist Elsa Bergman and drummer Anna Lund, merging traditional and free jazz forms along with influences from contemporary compositional music, approaching their collective music using a diverse set of strategies and techniques that yield a spectrum of captivating conversations.
Wooley, Nate
The Complete Syllables Music [4 CD Box Set]
(Pleasure of the Text Records)
Composer, improviser, and trumpet player Nate Wooley continues to cement his place as an American iconoclast by releasing the complete recordings of his revolutionary solo [Syllables] compositions as a deluxe 4 CD set consisting of two reissues of out-of-print early works: 8 [Syllables] (2013) and 9 [Syllables] (2014) as well as the premiere recording of his 150 minute epic For Kenneth Gaburo.
Wooley, Nate / Daniele Martini / Joao Lobo
Legacy of Ashes
(Creative Sources)
A free jazz session recorded in Brussells between trumpeter Nate Wooley and half of the Daniele Martini Quartet--saxophonist Martini himself and drummer Joao Lobo--stepping in and out of modal jazz with a contemplative approach, using extended techniques to great effect, Lobo handling the foundation and rhythm in absolutely impressive ways.
JR3 (Olaf Rupp / Rudi Mahall / Jan Roder)
Happy Jazz
(Relative Pitch)
The Berlin trio of Rudi Mahall on clarinet and bass clarinet, Olaf Rupp on electric and acoustic guitar and Jan Roder on double bass in an ironically packaged album of free improvisation of the highest standard, taking the listener on a journey of informed free jazz that references the past in thoroughly modern approaches to creative music.
Rothenberg, Ned / Mark Feldman / Sylvie Courvoisier
In Cahoots
(Clean Feed)
Long time collaborators and friends, part of the original Downtown NY scene, mutli-reedist and shakuhachi player Ned Rothenberg joins violinist Mark Feldman and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier to record a beautifully insightful album of commanding improvisation.
Courvoisier, Sylvie / Mary Halvorson
Crop Circles
(Relative Pitch)
A studio encounter between pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and electric guitarist Mary Halvorson, both using sophisticated techniques giving unique voices to their playing styles, in a set of improvisations that balance playful, subtle, energetic, and emotional playing.
Wooley, Nate Quintet (Wooley / Sinton / Moran / Opsvik / Eisenstadt)
(Dance to) The Early Music
(Clean Feed)
Nate Wooley assembled his outstanding quintet of Josh Sinton on bass clarinet, Matt Moran on vibs, Eivind Opsvik on bass and Harris Eisenstadt on drums to present a non-ironic take on the early music of a trumpeter who inspired Wooley at an early age - Wynton Marsalis.
Rasmussen, Mette / Chris Corsano Duo
All The Ghosts At Once
(Relative Pitch)
The enduring sax and drum duo format is invigorated with US drummer Chris Corsano and Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, who push each other in free improvisation that uses insanely great technique while delivering a passionate and ecstatic dialog.
Wooley, Nate (w/ Ingrid Laubrock, Sylvie Courvoisier & Matt Moran)
Battle Pieces
(Relative Pitch)
"Battle Pieces" was conceived as a background for an improviser, using linguistics, tape processes & aleatoric concepts to fashion an ever-shifting composition that supplies the soloist with information within the context of an ever-changing series of densities, velocities and silences.
Morris / Fernandez / Wooley
From The Discrete To The Particular
(Relative Pitch)
An incredible trio of two New York improvisers - Joe Morris on guitar and trumpeter Nate Wooley - with European free improv legend pianist Augusti Fernandez, for 7 remarkable free improvisations of astounding skill.
Wooley / Corsano / Yeh
The Seven Storey Mountain II
(Important Records)
Turbulent and ecstatic electronic improvisation in the 2nd installment of Seven Storey Mountain with Nate Wooley on amplified trumpet and tape, drummer Chris Corsano , and violinist C. Spencer Yeh.



Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Roberts, Cath / Olie Brice
Setpieces
(Relative Pitch)
Drawing on years of close collaboration, saxophonist Cath Roberts and bassist Olie Brice engage in a deeply attuned duo of free improv where baritone saxophone and double bass shift between raw abstraction, lyrical motion, and playful unpredictability, balancing sharply focused exchanges with richly textural interplay that evokes both intimate conversation and surreal theatrical movement.
Doneda, Michel / Frederic Blondy
Points Of Convergences [2 CDs]
(Relative Pitch)
Recorded in the extraordinary resonance of Paris's Saint-Merry Church, this double album captures soprano and sopranino saxophonist Michel Doneda in duo with pianist Frédéric Blondy, their improvisations unfolding in deep dialogue with the architecture itself, as tones and textures expand into the vast acoustics, creating immersive, luminous soundscapes of remarkable depth and presence.
Gjerstad, Frode / Alexander von Schlippenbach / Dag Magnus Narvesen
Seven Tracks
(Relative Pitch)
A dynamic trio session from Frode Gjerstad on alto sax & clarinet, Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano, and Dag Magnus Narvesen on drums & percussion, their first collaboration unfolds in seven spontaneous improvisations that balance fierce intensity with lyrical openness, revealing a seasoned interplay that blends deep exploration with collective free jazz sensibility.
Banks, Dan / Trevor Taylor / Jose Canha
Sonifications 2: Humanity in Conflict
(FMR)
Transforming 200 years of war data — including defense spending, casualties, nuclear stockpiles, and peace — into a compelling sonic narrative, blending raw data with expressive improvisation as pianist Dan Banks, drummer Trevor Taylor, and bassist Jose Canha perform powerful and evocative improvised explorations while recording at Toucan Tango Studios in Hornchurch, UK.
Dunmall / Noble / Edwards / Sanders
Disappearing Worlds
(FMR)
Recorded live at Bristol Music Rooms in March 2024, this hard-hitting modern jazz session brings together Paul Dunmall (tenor & sopranino saxophones), Liam Noble (piano), John Edwards (bass), and Mark Sanders (drums & percussion) two fiery and exploratory conversations that blend free improvisation with structural cohesiveness, a thrilling and boundary-pushing session.
Hwang, Jason Kao
Soliloquies
(True Sound Recordings)
Honoring the courage of the survivors of atrocities experienced in China during World War II, including that of his own father, New York improvising violinist Jason Kao Hwang presents twelve solo pieces performed on the pizzicato violin, works that embrace the struggle of his antecedents with a narrative sense of presentation and extraordinary technique.




The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC