StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Sylvie Courvoisier and Mark Feldman

This week, let's peruse some videos of pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and violinist Mark Feldman, who are coming to St. Louis to perform in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Friday, December 4 at The Stage at KDHX.

The UK newspaper The Guardian in 2013 called them "both fine-tuned virtuosi whose projects sound like edgy classical chamber-music as much as improv or jazz." Courvoisier is a Swiss native, trained as a classical pianist with an early interest in traditional jazz that eventually led her toward improvised music and contemporary compositions. Feldman is an American who began his professional career playing country music in Nashville, then transitioned into jazz and free improv with a move to NYC in the mid-1980s.

Married since 1998, the two played together for the first time in 1995 and have worked regularly as a duo and co-leading a quartet since 1997. Both also lead their own projects, and collaborate frequently with other musicians, including a notable ongoing relationship with saxophonist and composer John Zorn, and in the process have amassed substantial catalogs of recording credits. One forthcoming album, which features Courvoisier and Feldman with electronic musician Ikue Mori and saxophonist Evan Parker, will be released on Intakt Records sometime in 2016.

Today, though, we focus on their work as a duo, beginning up top with a clip of Courvoisier and Feldman playing "Azriel," a piece from Zorn's "Book Of Angels, Volume 3: Malphas," in 2010 in Paris.

After the jump, there's a series of five excerpts from a performance in July 2012 at the Théatre de l'Athénée in Paris, followed by a portion of their set at the 2007 Jazz à Luz festival in Luz-Saint-Sauveur, France

The final clip is a brief video excerpting a 2010 performance at NYC's Whitney Museum in which the duo performed two works by Christian Marclay, "Ephemera" and "Shuffle."

For more about Sylvie Courvoisier, check out the interview she did in 2014 with Australia's Radio National network.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...