Mary Halvorson & Sylvie Courvoisier: Bone Bells and the Art of Surprise
Swiss pianist Courvoisier and American guitarist Halvorson discuss their third album 'Bone Bells,' reflecting on the value of risk-taking and the slow-burning development of a creative partnership that continues to yield fascinating results.
Today, the Spotlight shines On two artists who've taken the piano-guitar duo to bold new places. Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson.
These two players come from different worlds: Sylvie from European classical traditions and Mary from experimental jazz guitar circles. But when they join forces, something magical happens. Their music shifts from delicate to eruptive, structured to spontaneous, with a shared musical language they've built over nearly a decade.
Bone Bells takes its name from a line in Hernan Diaz's Pulitzer-winning novel Trust. It carries that same haunting, enigmatic quality through eight compositions that blend composition and improvisation in ways only these two can pull off.
Our conversation veered from structure to improvisation and led us to interesting places, a fitting companion to the new album.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson's album Bone Bells)
Dig Deeper
• Purchase Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson's Bone Bells from Bandcamp or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice
• Pyroclastic Records
• Sylvie Courvoisier - Chimaera (with Christian Fennesz)
• Trust by Hernan Diaz) — Can a Novel Capture the Power of Money?
• Bill Evans & Jim Hall - Undercurrent
• Defending American arts, culture, and democracy
• Silence is Not an Option: The Call to Action for Artists Under the Trump Administration
(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Lawrence Peryer: I'd like to start by asking you, Sylvie, a foundational question about the relationship. I'm curious how you and Mary first discovered each other and what sparked that initial interest in collaborating.
Sylvie Courvoisier: I met Mary for the first time between 2002 and 2006, I would say. She was still really young. She had just moved to New York, and I heard her in a duo with Jessica Pavone at a bar. Even very young, she already had a unique sound. I remember I went with Mark, and we were both like, "Wow. She's amazing." It's great to see that, often when you have young students, even if they don't have the technique yet, you seldom find one who already has a unique way of approaching an instrument. Wow. She always stayed in my mind, and I knew one day I would play with her. After that, Mary and I met at festivals, and she had a gig at Stone Street Cafe where we played our first duo in 2016. So from the first time I met her until the time we played together, it took us probably 12 years.
It's funny because the same thing happened with Christian Fennesz. I met him and played with him on an improv gig, probably around 2010. His sound always stayed in my mind, and later we did this record, Chimaera, I think last year or two years ago? I don't even remember when.
Sometimes it takes a long time to figure out when is the right timing to make a band with someone. But it stays in your mind, and with Mary, it was always very strong. I always said, "Oh yeah, one day I want to do something with her."
Lawrence: Mary, I'm curious to hear about that timeline. 2016 is when you first started to really play together, and it seems like in the intervening decade or so you've made up for lost time with each other. We're on the third record together and you've obviously played a lot. What keeps bringing you back to this ongoing musical conversation? Because so often in creative music, people don't get the luxury of forming these recurring relationships, and I'm wondering what it is that brings you back.
Mary Halvorson: I think sometimes when you have a collaboration, especially one that feels special, you'll just feel that you're not finished yet. You know that there's more music to write and more things you haven't explored. And I definitely felt that quite strongly with our latest record, where I feel like we were really starting to get the hang of how to write for one another, how to take more risks and explore areas we hadn't quite explored. So I don't feel that that process is done. I think it's a collaboration we both value. We're also friends. We have a lot of fun. We love to play and travel together and hang out. And musically it's great. It's really nice, you know, we both do a lot of band leading, and band leading is great, but it's also very tiring and it can be a lot. And I think there's something nice about how easy it is to have an equal collaboration where I feel we both pull our weight and compose equally and are equally excited about it.
And it's just two of us. It's so easy to coordinate, "Hey, when do you wanna rehearse next week? Great." You know, you don't have to wait for an email back from 10 people who all say they're busy at different times. So there's something nice also about the ease of it. It's just a really fun thing to do, and we're still doing our other projects too, so it's something we can easily fit in. And to me it's something I think about as ongoing and something that keeps getting better.
Sylvie: I feel there is also complementarity. Right now I'm practicing our duo music because we have a tour coming up, and it's challenging. I realize, "Wow, it's hard." And I like that. I go back to the music and think, "Wow." I think, "Well, I'm going to play better than on the record because I realize my tempo was speeding up here" or whatever. And I say, "Yeah, now I can fix that."
Mary: Yeah, I've been working on it today too.
Sylvie: I like to practice. I like our melodies and the mix of Mary's tunes and my tunes. I know her melodies, and it's really fun. So I'm excited to practice and to go around the world with this music.
Lawrence: At the genesis of a project, when the two of you decide, "Okay, it's time to come together, let's make a record," how do you approach the writing and composition? Do you start with fresh material for this duo? Do you bring in something you've already written? Or is there no set rule? How do you think about composing for this particular arrangement?
Mary: There's no set rule. In the past, I have recycled some old ideas that I was going to use for something else that didn't pan out, and I saved things like that, thinking, "Oh, this could work for the duo." Other times it's totally a clean slate, and I just try to think about areas we haven't explored. I also think about the context of the album. So if I know, say, we've written four of the tunes already and we need to write four more, which is how this last one happened, I thought, "What don't we have yet? We don't have a ballad." Or in Sylvie's case, she thought, "Oh, we don't have a waltz." And she wrote a waltz. So we tried to find spaces that we hadn't covered, thinking about the album as a whole and how to make it cohesive and how to have it go to a bunch of different musical places without feeling disjointed. Also, we consider different ways to integrate improvisation into the music.
So, you know, it's not always a melody and then pre-improvisation, and then a melody, and it's not always a melody, and then improvise over a form and back to the melody. We try to find different ways to weave it in so that the improvisation is happening differently. I take that into consideration when I'm writing, thinking about what exists already and what spaces we don't have.
Lawrence: Your comment, especially around form and not sticking to the rote "theme, improv, theme" structure is something that's very striking about the record—certainly if not the entire record or all three records, but there are moments where it feels so free. I don't necessarily have the musical vocabulary to articulate it, but you can feel the lack of a net, the adventurousness in the collaboration.
Mary: Right.
Lawrence: I think that as a listener, that's what I'm drawn to, is just that feeling of, "Wow, it's a guitar, it's a piano. Yes, maybe there's some effects. Yes, maybe there's some processing, but it's two people and they're going for it." It's good. Let's go for this ride with them.
Sylvie, I'm curious, could you tell me a little bit—and I'll give you some context for this question. I talk a lot about process with artists, and so if that's annoying to you, I don't mind if you say so. I love to understand a little bit about creative process. When you bring a piece into the room with Mary, what are you bringing? Are you bringing a fragment? Are you bringing a melody line? Or are you bringing sheets of paper?
Sylvie: I bring sheets of paper. I send the music to Mary before so she can shed it; we both need to shed before we meet.
Mary: Yeah, none of it is sight-readable at all.
Sylvie: Yeah, it is challenging. So basically we both send each other finished tunes, but what we don't decide is how the improvisation will exactly work. And sometimes I harmonize a little bit differently, or she tells me, "Oh yeah, I would prefer that this double stop is different," or "I prefer this part." So we work on that together. But the whole piece—her piece is finished, my piece is finished. What we do is maybe change 20% or 15% of the tune by rearranging our own parts.
Mary: Yeah, and on my tunes, Sylvie will often add a harmony part or thicken out the piano chords. And it's great because I think, you know, neither of us feels an uptight sense of ownership over the pieces. Like, I've never had her harmonize a tune of mine and not liked it.
Sylvie: But I always ask you if it's okay.
Mary: Yeah, you always ask. And if it wasn't, I would have no problem saying it. You know, I think we have good communication, but also it's cool to see, to present the piece to the group and then see that even though it's composed, there are still quite a few changes that might happen in the rehearsal process. They might be Sylvie's ideas on my piece, and they might be my ideas on Sylvie's piece.
Lawrence: So that's the score on paper, if you will. I'm curious, Mary, if you could tell me a little about the sonic palettes that you then draw from. How collaborative is that? When it comes to things like choosing prepared piano versus straight piano, choosing effects-laden guitar, are you collaborating on the palette and what I'll call in air quotes "instrument choices"? Because essentially that's what it comes down to, right? If you were writing for a larger ensemble, you might be writing lines for different instruments, but the different effects approaches essentially are stand-ins for instruments, I would think.
Mary: Yeah, I think it depends on the piece. There are a couple pieces that Sylvie's written where she's specified that she wants me to do a certain effect in a certain place in the music, but other times I just do it. Or if it's extreme, I might say, "Hey, is it cool if I do that there?" But I think, same thing with prepared piano.
On one of the pieces on this record, "Folded Secret," which is a piece of mine, I didn't have any indication of prepared piano. That's just something Sylvie wanted to try. And so we tried it and thought, "Hey, great. It adds something to the piece." So in a way we decide on effects, but sometimes it's in the moment. I might play an effect on a piece one night and not play it the next night. But in many cases, I think my effects and Sylvie's prepared piano will kind of become part of the composition. Like we'll choose moments for it, and often that will be how we play it.
I tell this story a lot, but we did one gig in Geneva where my pedal board broke, just completely stopped working about 10 minutes into the gig. And I had to do the whole gig with no effects, which of course is possible, but we both felt like that was a drag because it really felt like something was missing. And I think that's when I realized...
Sylvie: It's almost like a third person is missing, you know?
Mary: Yeah, it was very weird. It almost felt like I hadn't realized how much the effects had become part of the compositions.
Sylvie: It affects the guitar much more than the piano.
Mary: Right.
Sylvie: You know, some fancy classical venues, they don't want me to touch the piano strings, which is fine. We can do a gig with no preparations, but I think with no pedals it's much more tricky.
Mary: Yeah, like we could do a totally acoustic gig, but it is nice to have these little extras. I think of them like ornamentations or just an extra layer of sound.
Lawrence: Yeah, there are beautiful passages in some of the music as well. I don't recall if it was "Bone Bells" or the title track or not, but there's a beautiful little acoustic interlude that is sort of a flash of what that could be like. It's so delicate and creates such a beautiful sort of tension and contrast with some of the other approaches that you both take.
Sylvie, I wonder, when you and Mary are improvising together, what are you listening for in her playing? What are you rooting for in her playing?
Sylvie: I know her sound, and I love her large intervals and her approach and unique sound. That's what I look for, maybe.
Lawrence: Her playing is very free of cliché, so I'm always curious about that. And for improvisers, do you rely on—these are bad examples, but do you rely on cues or signals, or is it entirely sound that you're looking for?
Sylvie: I let her surprise me. I just love her playing, and I think we surprise each other on tour, and I like that. That's what makes me want to go on tour and create more music. That's what I like about Mary. One gig she will play 16th notes super fast, and the next day she'll play super slow and do something totally different on the same improvised passage.
What I really don't like when I go on tour with musicians is when they say, "Oh yeah, last night in this passage I did these 16th notes super fast, and then I did this triplet that worked really well," and then the next day, this musician would try to copy what they did the day before because they knew it worked. That kills my energy. I like to be stimulated and challenged, and that's why we do this work, I think. Not to make money, but to be challenged intellectually. Touring is not fun; it's hard. You know, we travel every day. We go to a new place. People who don't do it imagine, "Oh, how fun, they go to Italy." Of course it's fun to go to Italy and eat nice pasta, but it's really work. We travel the whole day. We arrive and soundcheck. We do it really for the challenge of being on stage, to take risks live.
There aren't so many people I really want to be on the road with. And the older I become, the less I want to be on the road, so I really choose the people I want to work with. If I make a record, I want to go on tour with people who challenge me on stage. It's different also to be challenged in the studio because you can redo things, but to be live and say, "Okay, yesterday it was great, but today we're going to experiment with the same written material, but how can I take risks?" Not trying to surprise the other person just to surprise them, but to take risks.
Lawrence: I've talked to a lot of artists who have the point of view that the work isn't really complete until it's been performed. That the live performance element is crucial; the record is really just a snapshot in time, and oftentimes it's the snapshot when you're least familiar with the material, because you haven't lived in it yet. How do you view playing live as part of this artistic process beyond just going out and earning a living, which I know nobody's retiring from a duo tour of Europe? It's clearly part of a working artist's life, but how do the compositions transform and how does your relationship with the music change once you start playing it night in, night out?
Mary: Ideally it gets better and better as you get to know it. I often like to record after a tour as opposed to before. It's not always possible. It really depends on the group and the project and the timing of things. I've done records where I've only played one gig with the music and done a record, and it's been a great record, but there is something nice about being able to play music a lot before going into the studio.
I guess I just think of them as totally different processes with different goals. There's the magic of a live show that's great, but then there's something about a studio recording where you can take the time to really perfect something and try to make a perfect little representation of the piece. Often the versions on a recording are more compact. But I love recording too. I really like both, so I guess I just think about them as two separate things that I do. But of course, they feed into each other because I do believe the music gets better and groups get better the more you play.
Our first record is a good example. The first record I did with Sylvie, we did one gig and then we recorded. We probably rehearsed a few times, but we didn't have that much experience playing together at that point. And I do like the record, but to me, it feels like a new project that's not maybe quite as developed. And by the time we've gotten to the third record, we've played together a ton. So I feel like the record reflects that. I think you can hear that on the record a little bit more—the development of the music—and that all happens on the road.
Sylvie and I do rehearse quite a bit, but with some of my larger groups, sometimes it's really hard to get people together. Like in my group Amaryllis, Nick Dunston, the bass player, lives in Berlin and everyone else lives in New York. It's almost impossible to rehearse. So we just work it out on the road, and that to me is, in a sense, not really a rehearsal, but it kind of functions that way because it grows as you do the gigs, and you're kind of forced to just make something happen right away and then watch it grow. So I do enjoy that. And there's something cool about that because you don't really know what's gonna happen, especially if it's sort of under-rehearsed. But Sylvie and I rehearse a lot, and that's great too. So I think each project is just different.
Lawrence: It's something that's really incredible that I'm not sure all audience members fully understand, which is just how little time a lot of musicians in jazz or creative music are able to get together to rehearse. The level of musicianship is so high that you could be at a show and have your mind blown and learn afterwards that it was the third time everybody's been on the same stage together or something. I always get such a charge out of that. It's so impressive.
Mary: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I mean, just the level of musicianship everywhere, but I'm thinking about the community of people we work with in New York—the larger community of people—it's like, the musicianship is ridiculous. I had that experience last week. I had a new band I put together, we did one rehearsal. I wrote all this crazy music. Everyone just nailed it, and we did this gig. It was great. And with one of the musicians, it was the first time we'd ever played together. So I feel lucky to be able to have those types of experiences.
Lawrence: Yeah, that's incredible. Sylvie, tell me a little bit about the guitar-piano duo more generally. When you and Mary were talking about working together and started working together, and even now that you've got a multi-year dialogue, are there other precedents that you point to specifically in that duo format? Or are there other, more broadly musical touchstones that you talk about and that you refer each other to as sort of guideposts along the way for what you're doing together?
Sylvie: I think Mary and I are both big fans of Undercurrent with Bill Evans and Jim Hall. I think it's a marvelous album and the interplay is so great. It's from, what, the '60s or something? We didn't try to copy or get inspired by that, but there are some other duos that we like also, like Julian Lage and Fred Hersch. There aren't so many because I feel like people imagine guitar and piano won't work because they're kind of similar. People prefer to play with two guitars or two pianos.
There's something similar about these instruments, but guitar and piano each have their harmonic approach and their rhythmical approach and percussive approach. But they're very different in that way. With the piano, you have an entire orchestra, but with guitar too. And I like that we have two orchestral instruments, but still with the electric side of the guitar. I think we can create a whole world, and I really like this approach.
Lawrence: Yeah, I perceive that as a listener as well, that there's such a range. It's just a broad palette you both choose from, both because of your approach and style and your instruments, but also because of your fearlessness with processing, effects, and prepared piano. It just gives you so much to draw from.
As I was listening back over the three records, it occurred to me that this duo setting in particular benefits so much from being a duo. I couldn't imagine the addition of a drummer. There's such rhythmic quality in what the two of you do, but sometimes it's more implied than explicit. There's a lightness to the music even when it's complex, and there's a lot of interplay between the two of you that the duo format really works for. As a listener, it's really exciting.
It's been really interesting as I've prepared to speak with you, to go back over the three records. Something Mary said earlier—I'll badly paraphrase you, Mary, so you can send me hate mail—but the evolution of how the two of you play together is very evident, especially in the new record. If you listen to Crop Circles and this back-to-back, you can hear the evolution. What's the intention there, Mary? Clearly you both are accomplished composers, accomplished improvisers. What do you get to explore here? Again, I'll go back to something you said earlier in the conversation that keeps you coming back to it, whether it's the element of surprise or the relationship between the two of you, but what do you get to explore in this particular setting that's different from what you get to do in other places?
Mary: You mentioned the lack of a drummer and the fact that it's a duo, and I think those things are really important for this. We do have a lot of rhythm. We use a lot of rhythm in our music, but there's also an elasticity to it. If we're gonna speed up or slow down, we can do that together. We can just listen to each other and it feels very malleable in terms of how we approach time. And that's just one of the many things I feel like that we're developing the more we play together.
But I don't have any grand plan or goal. I think for me it's just that we don't wanna create the same record over and over again. So we're challenging each other to just make the best record we can make in the moment and be in the moment with it. Just the fact that we know we have more to say as a duo, I think that's what keeps us in it. I definitely don't have any grand plans. It's more like, "Oh, I have some ideas. Let's do this now." Or at least that's how I think about it.
Lawrence: Do either of you go back and revisit the other two records? Or do you, as part of putting together your live presentation?
Sylvie: I haven't listened to Crop Circles or Searching for the Disappeared Hour since we put them out.
Mary: Yeah, I don't think I have either. It's funny, we were just talking about this. You get so sick of a record when you're making it because you have to listen to it 5,000 times to choose the takes and do the edits, and mix it and master it and sequence it. And by the time it comes out, you don't wanna hear it. I hardly ever put on records that I'm on. Sometimes you'll hear an old record, but it'll be more by accident. Like it'll come on or you'll stumble across it somehow. But maybe that would be like 15 years after the fact. Or maybe you need to reference it, like maybe I'm practicing one of the songs and I forget how something went, so I'll try to go reference it. But yeah, I think neither of us have listened to the old records in quite a long time.
Sylvie: It's funny because we still play some of the tunes from the older records, and I'm always surprised at the tempo. It changes so much—it's faster, but not always. I think sometimes we go even slower now.
Mary: Yeah, it changes, gets faster, usually.
Sylvie: Our tunes change. I think everything goes more to the extremes, either faster or even slower.
Mary: Yeah, that's true.
Lawrence: It's interesting. Because of this recurring theme of surprising each other and keeping surprise alive in this collaboration, it sounds like even the tunes can surprise you when you come back to them. They can speed up or slow down or reveal themselves in new ways.
Sylvie: And also, there are some tunes which don't survive, they don't last. You get tired of them. They're done. And I feel some tunes deserve to be still played and some not.
Lawrence: Can you tell me a little bit about the book that inspired the title? On the one hand, as I was reading the material about the record, it references this book, "Bone Bells" or not that but...
Mary: Trust.
Lawrence: I'm sorry. Trust. Yeah.
Mary: Yeah.
Lawrence: And then it seemed like it was also not meant to be a literal interpretation of a text. There's just this interesting notion around the way the novel plays with perspective and point of view, which I love also because I get to speak to both of you at the same time, and there's sort of that meta theme as well—the different perspectives you bring on this relationship and on the work. I would love to hear from both of you what you could tell me about the inspiration, obviously more specifically for this project, that you got from the book, but also more generally, how does other music and other art influence you? Where do you go for inspiration? It could be as a fan, it could be as a scholar—I'm curious what else goes in, what are the inputs that make up Mary and Sylvie?
Mary: Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, it's everything in our life experiences that we might find interesting. I read a lot of fiction, so that book was one that I read that I thought was really cool, which basically tells the same story from four different perspectives, and you see just how insanely different the same story is to these different people. It's a really great novel. I really liked it.
But "Bone Bells"—I like when things have multiple meanings. You could bring that to music and say that everyone hears our music really differently, which is definitely true. But "Bone Bells" was just simply a phrase from the book that I really liked. I thought it sounded cool, and it was literally talking about if bones were bells, what would that sound like? So the femur would sound different from the tibia and things like that. I thought it just had a nice ring to it, and I thought it worked with that piece, and then it just wound up as the album title. So it was almost more accidental. It's not some grand message or anything.
I tend to take inspiration from things like books, literature, art, live music that I go see, albums that I listen to—anything. I watch a ton of basketball. I love the team aspect and how all the players interact and things like that. I study astrology and tarot, and I get some inspiration from that. But for me, a lot of this inspiration is not literal. It's more just that these things are floating around in your head, and somehow they might wind up in the music in a weird way or not. But I'm usually not thinking, "I saw this painting and now I'm gonna make music as a response." For me, it's very rarely that literal.
Lawrence: Something I talk to artists a lot about is this idea, especially in instrumental music, about song titles. It's just a quirky fascination I have. And I wonder, Mary, do you collect song titles? Like, are you the kind of person that has a little notebook with turns of phrase and things written down?
Mary: Yeah, I have thousands of titles. I've got lists of thousands of titles, which is great because then if you need to title something quickly, you just go through and say, "Oh, I like that one." But I love it. To me that's a different artistic process that I really enjoy—titling songs. Some people hate it, but I really like coming up with titles.
Lawrence: I'm always really disappointed when an artist says to me, "Yeah, you know, the producer named the songs," or "Somebody else named the songs." And I'm like, "Oh, I wanted the romantic backstory." Do you ever write to the title? Do you ever start with a title?
Mary: Yeah, sometimes I do. I don't have a set way—it's always different. Sometimes I add a title after the fact, and sometimes I start with one. Usually I start with one.
Lawrence: Yeah. And Sylvie, did you spend time with the book, or was this, because of the novel's name Trust, did you trust Mary's concept here?
Sylvie: I totally trust Mary's concept, and for me, sometimes the meaning is less important than the sound of the word. I like the sound of "Bone Bells." I think there is something very magical about it. I don't really imagine a bone and a bell. Sometimes, like with "Float Queens," I don't imagine Mardi Gras and a float. I just like how it sounds.
Like when someone asks me, "Why is it called 'Float Queens'?"—is it related to France or whatever? I say it just sounds good together. So yeah, my inspiration is the same thing. I also keep a book of notes when I go to a museum, and I'm inspired by paintings. I write down the names.
Recently, I wrote all the names that the Trump administration has banned from government reports. Words we're no longer allowed to say, like "diversity" or "advocate." So those could be song titles. Or like "at risk"—we're no longer allowed to say "at risk," and that's what we do all the time. So we're influenced by politics, by art, by music, by books, by friendship, by everything we like. I think we can still play with language in this way.
Lawrence: In a time like this where there is so much uncertainty—and not just here in our country, not just there in your city, it seems it's micro and macro. We're dealing with a very, very discordant time. Do you bear any particular burden? Do you feel a specific responsibility as an artist, or what do you see as the artist's role?
Sylvie: I think I see much more now than I used to. I feel like we cannot be silent the way I used to be. Now I feel—look at what is happening in Afghanistan where women cannot even talk to each other, let alone play music. And I think "woman" is another word that Trump put on this list. I'm terrified, and you know, I would say 90% of people don't want to see it.
But I think our role as musicians, as people who are on stage—even if we have a tiny audience—I don't think I can just focus on culture the way I used to, sitting at the piano and playing my gig the best I can. It weighs really heavily on me. I'm trying to go to protests. I'm worried. I'm really worried about this world and I just hope we can still play music. I hope we still have education and other essentials. I don't know exactly how we should react to the world, but I think—I might talk with Mary about this—but I might say a few words before each concert. I've never done that before.
Mary: I'm into it.
Sylvie: You know, "gender," "diversity," "identity," "immigrants"—all these words are disappearing. He wants to erase them. He's erasing history. I don't want to see it happen. "Female" is one of the words he wants to erase.
When we recorded this album, it was before we knew what was happening now. This situation existed before, but I think nobody imagined the damage, the damage done to history. What has happened in just a year and a half is more than what happened during the previous four years.
Mary: It's so hard to believe this is what the people voted for. This is what people wanted. That part of it is so hard for me to understand.
Sylvie: Yeah, but I don't think they were really aware. I think this administration wants dumb people. They don't want culture. Obama and people like him were making fun of Trump, saying, "Nobody will care about that." But there's so much frustration. I think people voted for him because they were hoping for something different. They wanted a father figure. They want someone who talks like them. "That's good. That works for you. That doesn't work—you're a bad person." You know, that type of language.
They're tired of intellectuals; they're tired because maybe they didn't have access to good schools or much education. And I think the mistake of Democrats and more intellectual people is downsizing these people instead of trying to be more compassionate, saying, "Hey, we didn't listen to you," rather than making fun of them.
Lawrence: There's a lot of animosity. What I struggle with is whether or not this is what people voted for. When I say out loud or I say to myself, "This isn't what people voted for," what I realize is that I'm also robbing their agency and maybe intellectualism, and I'm basically being a coastal elite saying, "People couldn't actually have been voting for this," rather than doing the other thing you suggested, which is saying, "What is it that drove them to want to vote for this?" It's so hard to find the empathy in moments like this. It's so easy to say, "Why would you do this?" This country has more than enough for everyone. It's just the way we divide it up. Nothing is scarce here. We have everything. We just don't give it to everyone. It's very difficult.
Mary: But everyone's so emotional now and so upset, and it's become so divided. And I think, you know, it's not only artists—I think it's everybody's responsibility to speak up. We need a lot of people speaking up if anything's going to change. And it would be especially powerful if people that voted for him said, "Wow, I was wrong." We'll see. I think the thing that's really hard about this period is this is just the beginning. We have no idea where we're gonna be in two weeks, two months, a year.
Sylvie: My instinct is saying that we have to speak up. My grandmother is from Switzerland. My grandfather died during the Second World War from cancer. He was Swiss. And they rescued two Jewish brothers when they were 10 years old. They took them into their house, and there were a lot of neighbors who were denouncing people at that time.
So basically in 1943, they had these kids for six months in their house, and they were trying to put them in school and take care of them. But afterwards they realized, "Wow, it's dangerous for them." So what they did, they brought them to the mountains and gave them to a family there in the mountains where there were no neighbors. And basically these farmers used them to work at the farm during World War II. They couldn't go to school; they just had to work at the farm.
And I think now we are at a point where we need to ask, "Who can we save?" I'm ready to take immigrants into my house. I'm ready to do things like that and to be really compassionate and show empathy. I'm going to protests. I'm going to work my little bit. I'm trying to talk to people. I know a friend who voted for Trump. It's really hard to call her a friend, but I realize she'll never talk about it. She's silent now.
Lawrence: I appreciate you saying that because the anger in me isn't going to be constructive. If, to Mary's point, we want people to speak out and say, "I made a mistake," or "This isn't what I wanted."
Sylvie: They won't say that. They would say, "Oh no, I didn't vote," or "I liked Kennedy Jr," or whatever. They were brainwashed, I think. They were brainwashed, and they were hoping for something, but when they lose Medicare and all that, it'll be too late.
Lawrence: It's much easier to dismantle than it is to build.
Mary, I wanted to ask you—when we were talking before about inspiration, which I think kicked off this part of our conversation, you mentioned that you read a lot of fiction. Do you have any other practices? Do you have a spiritual practice? Do you have a philosophical practice? Like, do you meditate? Do you do yoga? Are there other things that open you up, I guess would be the way to say it? I think of all those things—I think of even reading philosophy—as means of opening the channel, opening the creative channel to everything around us. And I wonder, if it's not too personal to ask, do you have any pursuits in those regards?
Mary: No, totally. I try to think about ways that I can live a relatively stress-free life because I think life has a tendency to be very stressful. So yeah, I do yoga five days a week. For me, a big part of it is exercise, strengthening my body, but also part of it is relieving stress. So I'll work all day and then I'll do yoga. That'll be like the last thing I do at the end of the day.
I'm also not addicted to my phone, and that's something that's been really important. I try to have minimal involvement. I have times when I go onto the computer to do something, but I'm not just on my phone all the time, because that's something I really don't like about where the world is at. I think more times than not—and I've been there, I have had phases of my life when I have been addicted to technology—it doesn't make anyone happy, and it's stressful. So once I figured that out, that was something I was able to do that helps.
I don't look at my phone when I get up in the morning. I don't look at my emails or anything probably until about 11:00 AM, and not after 9:00 PM. So things like that. I think for me it's just trying to have some self-protection and have a bit more of a healthy lifestyle. So yeah, I guess those are some things that I do.
Lawrence: It's interesting. As you were saying that about not looking at email, the thought that came into my head was, I can't imagine many people go into the arts to have administrative tasks where they have to go through email all day. Yeah.
Mary: But we do. I mean, we're all our own managers. That's the thing. There's so much we have to do that's not music, and it could take up the whole day easily. So I'm also a very organized person, so I'm able to compartmentalize these things and get it done. But I think it can be overwhelming for people because you're your own manager—most musicians are just doing everything. They're promoting themselves, they're booking their own gigs, doing all kinds of things that aren't just practicing, which is what we would like to be doing all day.
Lawrence: I love that the last two records have come out on Pyroclastic. It's such a beautifully curated label and collection of artists that are putting out music there. I guess it's a two-part question, and I'll start with you, Sylvie. Is it important to you where you put out the music? Are you just happy to have anybody who will take it to the world, which I suppose is valid?
Sylvie: Kris is a good friend, and when she asked me to do a record, I said, "Sure, let's do the duo with Mary." And we did the first one. So it was logical to do the second one with her because I like to have continuity doing the same label with one project. And I think she's very well organized.
I'm not as organized as Mary, and I can be overwhelmed. I can never find my emails. I don't forward my—
Mary: You seem pretty good to me. I think you're better than 90% of people. You should probably give yourself more credit.
Sylvie: Yeah, that's right. I also have aging parents. My phone is always on because I always imagine the nursing home calling me or having to go to Switzerland. I wish I had the luxury to turn off the phone for like three hours when I practice, and that's a luxury.
So to be organized, yeah, we do have a lot of emails. And we are lucky—we both have agencies. I don't have an agent in America, but in Europe we have two agencies. So we don't book our gigs, and we are lucky for that. But for young musicians, I realize they have to deal with a lot. I don't do Instagram. I have a girlfriend who helps me post a few things. I realized you can get sucked into social media and phones, and you need to be really careful with that.
Also, you know, when I go to a restaurant and have a friend looking at their phone, I say, "Can we put this phone away?" It drives me nuts. And you know, Mary and I, when we were young, we didn't have cell phones, at least we know this feeling. For younger people—I've been with people who are 40 years old, or 30 years old—they always have their cell phones.
Mary: I have to say, I think sometimes people in my parents' generation are even worse.
Sylvie: It's true.
Mary: There's a sense where it's like a new toy. I know some people in their seventies and sixties that are just completely beholden to their phones. It's very interesting.
Lawrence: They didn't grow up with enough technology. I actually feel for those people because it wasn't a gradual adjustment for them. It was like a light switch. They got dropped onto social media. They got dropped onto having a cell phone. They didn't have a more staged progression of going from a computer to email to maybe the internet.
I think it speaks to some of the alienation that's part of the conversation we had earlier—that these tools and these technologies are so powerful and can be so additive, but we just don't have good hygiene as a culture. We don't teach people how to be citizens and how to be engaged with each other. And so you get this thing dropped into your hand that seems to have the whole universe available, but without proper training, how do you not get sucked into it?
Mary: Yeah, I think it's an addiction just like cigarettes or something like that. It's no different, really.
Lawrence: Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, I appreciate you both sharing some of these types of thoughts with me and for making time. But what I appreciate the most is just all the music. It's so incredible to be able to spend time talking with you. And I thank you both so much for the music and for your time.
Mary: Yeah, thank you for this.
Sylvie: Thank you so much.
