Mary Halvorson & Noël Akchoté - Mary Halvorson & Noël Akchoté (2016)

Throughout his career, Noël Akchoté has been a consistently inventive and innovative guitarist. While often associated with the avant-garde, he has a well-rounded style that is an extension of the earlier jazz guitar greats.

His newest recording is simply called Noël Akchoté & Mary Halvorson. It is a set of duets with the brilliant guitarist Mary Halvorson, a major innovator ever since she emerged on the scene in 2002. While he had been familiar with her playing for several years, Noël did not have direct contact with Mary until 2015 when she recorded “Cheshire Hotel” (from his Lust Corner album) on her Meltframe CD for the Firehouse 12 label. “I invited her to participate on my performance of ‘Gesualdo Madrigals for Five Guitars.’ We spent three days together before we played a show in Nantes, France. A little later on, we recorded our duet album. I can recognize her playing immediately. In many ways playing music isn't just about what you play but how you are and who you are in life. Performing with Mary challenges me a lot. She pushes me into some much different areas than usual.”

Noël Akchoté and Mary Halvorson went to Les Ateliers Claus, a recording studio in Brussels, creating their joint CD in two hours with no real rehearsals. “I love the very first moments in music and I did not want to spoil them by having too much preparation.” The first ten selections on this set are all Noël’s originals which he modestly describes as “nothing too complicated, mostly lyrical lines with open changes.”