Mary Halvorson: Amaryllis

“It sounded like a band from the first note.”

Mary Halvorson still marvels as she recalls the initial rehearsal of the sextet that anchored her acclaimed 2022 Amaryllis, and the new Cloudward. She’d written music for an unusual new-to-her lineup—trumpet, trombone, vibraphone, guitar, bass, drums—as a post-pandemic “reset” experiment. It was a hunch, and Halvorson, a veteran of countless ad-hoc groups and short-term projects, kept her expectations earthbound. Until they started playing.
“It was fun right away,” the guitarist and composer says. “Everyone connected. And as we’ve played more over the last couple of years, it’s definitely gotten better. It’s almost like you start to, not finish each other’s sentences, but you start to understand someone’s language a little bit more. The more touring we did, and hanging out, I think everyone feels they can take more risks because we’re comfortable with each other. It’s one of the most fun bands to tour with for me.”

The band hadn’t been a band for very long when Amaryllis was recorded. Yet during the sessions, the players went beyond the notes and dynamic markings Halvorson had provided. The band was fully immersed in bringing the sonic infrastructure she’d dreamed up to life, breathing fire into her broad, overlapping melodies, metric skirmishes, and tense harmonies like it was no big deal. Before the album landed on countless best-of lists and was named DownBeat magazine’s album of the year, Halvorson knew she would be writing more for this ensemble.

“I never want to do the same thing twice,” says Halvorson, who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2019. “This band, though, I could see myself writing music for it for years.”

Described by NPR as “the most future-seeking guitarist working right now,” Halvorson has long been a provocative original voice among those exploring the jazz/not jazz axis. One explanation for that is her temperament—she’s both a restless seeker and an exacting critic of her work, wired for both the spontaneous outburst and the carefully considered score. “I think it’s important to challenge yourself. That’s how this group started. I love the instrumentation, and I still feel there’s lots of room to explore. And at this point they know my music—they get it. So it’s easy to bring in a piece and have it take shape pretty quickly.”