Biography
Drawing from influences spanning diverse musical traditions and avant-garde jazz, the work of New York violinist, violist, and composer Jessica Pavone merges improvisational passages with composed structures by setting conventional harmony against selected dissonance while pursuing tonal and textural experiments. As both bandleader and collaborator she has built an extensive recorded catalog across multiple imprints beginning with the 2002 release 27 Epigrams. An enduring partnership with guitarist Mary Halvorson commenced in 2005 on the album Prairies. Her first Tzadik appearance arrived in 2009 with the contemporary classical piece Songs of Synastry and Solitude scored for string quartet; that project emerged during her seven-year stint, spanning 2005 to 2012, as a performer in the Anthony Braxton Sextet and 12+1tet, on which she can be heard in at least a dozen of his recordings. The follow-up Tzadik effort, 2012’s Hope Dawson Is Missing, earned widespread praise as a song cycle featuring vocalist Emily Manzo, the Toomai String Quintet, and a rhythm section of drummer Tomas Fujiwara and Halvorson. On the 2016 Relative Pitch album Silent Spills she blended sustained-tone practices with delay, restrained melodic lines, and minimal lyrical passages, an approach she revisited for 2019’s In the Action just months before the J. Pavone String Ensemble issued Brick and Mortar.
Pavone trained in classical music and music education at the Hartt School of Music and spent a short period teaching in the public schools of Hartford, Connecticut. During that time she encountered improvisers and composers connected to nearby Wesleyan University, several of whom had studied or worked with Anthony Braxton. Her first appearance on record came in 1998 with the Middletown Creative Orchestra, a collective largely organized by Wesleyan students. The next year she joined the Correspondence Quartet and contributed to its four-disc box set Live Performances, 1999, which presented a radical approach to free improvisation across ten tracks drawn from eight concerts throughout the United States. The group took conceptual direction from Braxton and emulated his orchestral palette, relying on repetitive rhythms, pulsing and pounding tones, and expansive sonorities that varied from performance to performance according to the strategies each member chose.
Pavone relocated to New York City in 2000. She founded the Peacock label, which released the 2001 EP Jessica Pavone & the String Army and the 2002 collection 27 Epigrams, a set of miniatures written for small groups featuring viola, wind instruments, and marimba. Over the ensuing three years she worked with numerous other New York composers and improvisers while establishing her continuing partnership with guitarist Mary Halvorson; the duo’s first recording, Prairies, appeared in 2005, the same year Pavone entered Braxton’s touring and recording sextet and 12+1tet, whose personnel also included four original classical compositions for string trio, piano, and bassoon. That year she and Halvorson reconvened for On and Off on Skirl, a song collection that highlighted both their voices and instruments. In 2006 they issued Calling All Portraits on Skycap and briefly expanded the duo into a quartet with drummer Ches Smith and bassist Devin Hoff. The following year proved pivotal for her sideman and collaborative work: she participated in William Parker’s Double Sunrise Over Neptune, appeared on Vampire Weekend’s self-titled album, and played on the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet’s Asphalt Flowers, Forking Paths. In 2009 Halvorson and Pavone released Thin Air on Thirsty Ear, a recording that combined vocal songs with improvisations.
Also in 2009 Pavone made her Tzadik debut with Songs of Synastry and Solitude, performed with the Toomai String Quintet. Conceived in the spirit of Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate, the eleven pieces for string quartet employed melody, texture, and physicality to summon the lingering presence of absence. Pavone and Halvorson delivered Departure of Reason on Thirsty Ear in 2011 amid the violist’s engagements with Braxton; she simultaneously issued Cast of Characters with Jessica Pavone’s Army of Strangers, an electric-guitar-trio lineup that included drummer Harris Eisenstadt together with her viola and voice. That same year NPR named her one of its 100 Composers Under 40.
In 2012 Pavone concluded her association with Braxton after twelve recordings and extensive touring. She then released her second Tzadik album, the song cycle Hope Dawson Is Missing, scored for voice, string quintet, and rhythm section; its compositions reflect on destruction and rebirth, truth and falsehood, and migration, receiving international recognition. In 2014 she issued her first solo recording, Knuckle Under for solo viola and voice, on Taiga; the pieces grew out of sustained long-tone practice and a focused exploration of repetition, song form, and “sympathetic vibration.” She continued combining long-tone techniques with delay, understated melodies, and ongoing formal experimentation. A second solo viola album, Silent Springs, appeared on Relative Pitch in 2016, the same year she participated in the premiere recording of Braxton’s large-scale opera Trillium J as part of its star-studded orchestra. In 2019 she released In the Action, her third solo viola recording; its thematically organized pieces emphasized her longstanding interest in tactile experience and bodily engagement in sound production, with indeterminate compositions written solely for her own performance. Later that year the J. Pavone String Ensemble, formed two years earlier, issued Brick and Mortar. The ensemble’s repertoire rests on her investigations into cymatics—the influence of sonic vibration on human physiology and emotional well-being—employing sustained sounds, pitches, and collective sonorities to elicit targeted physical and cognitive responses that extend past purely aesthetic perception.
Pavone trained in classical music and music education at the Hartt School of Music and spent a short period teaching in the public schools of Hartford, Connecticut. During that time she encountered improvisers and composers connected to nearby Wesleyan University, several of whom had studied or worked with Anthony Braxton. Her first appearance on record came in 1998 with the Middletown Creative Orchestra, a collective largely organized by Wesleyan students. The next year she joined the Correspondence Quartet and contributed to its four-disc box set Live Performances, 1999, which presented a radical approach to free improvisation across ten tracks drawn from eight concerts throughout the United States. The group took conceptual direction from Braxton and emulated his orchestral palette, relying on repetitive rhythms, pulsing and pounding tones, and expansive sonorities that varied from performance to performance according to the strategies each member chose.
Pavone relocated to New York City in 2000. She founded the Peacock label, which released the 2001 EP Jessica Pavone & the String Army and the 2002 collection 27 Epigrams, a set of miniatures written for small groups featuring viola, wind instruments, and marimba. Over the ensuing three years she worked with numerous other New York composers and improvisers while establishing her continuing partnership with guitarist Mary Halvorson; the duo’s first recording, Prairies, appeared in 2005, the same year Pavone entered Braxton’s touring and recording sextet and 12+1tet, whose personnel also included four original classical compositions for string trio, piano, and bassoon. That year she and Halvorson reconvened for On and Off on Skirl, a song collection that highlighted both their voices and instruments. In 2006 they issued Calling All Portraits on Skycap and briefly expanded the duo into a quartet with drummer Ches Smith and bassist Devin Hoff. The following year proved pivotal for her sideman and collaborative work: she participated in William Parker’s Double Sunrise Over Neptune, appeared on Vampire Weekend’s self-titled album, and played on the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet’s Asphalt Flowers, Forking Paths. In 2009 Halvorson and Pavone released Thin Air on Thirsty Ear, a recording that combined vocal songs with improvisations.
Also in 2009 Pavone made her Tzadik debut with Songs of Synastry and Solitude, performed with the Toomai String Quintet. Conceived in the spirit of Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate, the eleven pieces for string quartet employed melody, texture, and physicality to summon the lingering presence of absence. Pavone and Halvorson delivered Departure of Reason on Thirsty Ear in 2011 amid the violist’s engagements with Braxton; she simultaneously issued Cast of Characters with Jessica Pavone’s Army of Strangers, an electric-guitar-trio lineup that included drummer Harris Eisenstadt together with her viola and voice. That same year NPR named her one of its 100 Composers Under 40.
In 2012 Pavone concluded her association with Braxton after twelve recordings and extensive touring. She then released her second Tzadik album, the song cycle Hope Dawson Is Missing, scored for voice, string quintet, and rhythm section; its compositions reflect on destruction and rebirth, truth and falsehood, and migration, receiving international recognition. In 2014 she issued her first solo recording, Knuckle Under for solo viola and voice, on Taiga; the pieces grew out of sustained long-tone practice and a focused exploration of repetition, song form, and “sympathetic vibration.” She continued combining long-tone techniques with delay, understated melodies, and ongoing formal experimentation. A second solo viola album, Silent Springs, appeared on Relative Pitch in 2016, the same year she participated in the premiere recording of Braxton’s large-scale opera Trillium J as part of its star-studded orchestra. In 2019 she released In the Action, her third solo viola recording; its thematically organized pieces emphasized her longstanding interest in tactile experience and bodily engagement in sound production, with indeterminate compositions written solely for her own performance. Later that year the J. Pavone String Ensemble, formed two years earlier, issued Brick and Mortar. The ensemble’s repertoire rests on her investigations into cymatics—the influence of sonic vibration on human physiology and emotional well-being—employing sustained sounds, pitches, and collective sonorities to elicit targeted physical and cognitive responses that extend past purely aesthetic perception.
Albums
