View or download ELECTRONIC PRESS KIT (EPK) here.


Hope dawson Is Missing is featured in The New York City Jazz Record gazette
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Jessica Pavone Army of Strangers, in the Signal To Noise (Summer 2011)
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Jessica Pavone in the Anmeldt, "Lyden av New York"
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The Mix: 100 Composers Under 40
WQXR's Q2 Presents A Crowdsourced Selection Of Young Composers
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Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone
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Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone with Mantra Percussion
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PopMatters' Andrew Dietzel's review of Songs of Synastry and Solitude
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Roulette NYC has posted an interview with Jessica Pavone on its blog in advance of her upcoming concert on November 10th
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Jazz Times' Mike Shanley's review of Songs of Synastry and Solitude
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“Violist and composer Jessica Pavone has been a fixture on the New York scene for over a decade. Songs of Synastry and Solitude is Pavone’s highest profile release as a composer to date, demonstrating her flair as a lyrical writer and supple orchestrator. A straightforward contemplation on the power of song, Songs of Synastry and Solitude is a timeless collection of elegant themes from a young composer of significant merit.”
- Troy Collins
AllAboutJazz.com


“…a set of 11 original compositions that are emotionally weighty and dark, yet ultimately uplifting. While there is no direct stylistic or thematic link to Cohen’s songs, Pavone communicates the same sense of inevitability and universal suffering as the singer does, and leaves the listener with the same sense that there is hope in living—if only hope that daily suffering will be alleviated by the joy of song, love, spiritual enlightenment, and other forms of grace. This is measured, deliberate music that might be a love song, a prayer or just an acknowledgment that, as John Lee Hooker and Van Morrison once sang, you’ll never get out of these blues alive.”
- James Hale
Jazz Chronicles


“In this release, she has presented compositions that are simple and stately, with a sombre grace that stands in wary contrast to Cohen’s finite pronouncements. The thoroughness and narrative direction of a songwriter inform her work, much as a good folk song would…pieces are performed with sensitivity and rigor by members of the Toomai String Quintet, projecting a sober view softened occasionally by a considered wistfulness. Pavone’s music reflects an austere but tender landscape where watchfulness orders reality.”
- Nilan Perera
Exclaim!


“These 11 instrumentals are songs, too, in scale and shape, wordless distillations of feeling and reflection, brief musical narratives of relationship, star-blest or star-crossed…it’s a bittersweet chamber music evoking accord or aloneness that she is after, simply rendered and neatly crafted. The inclusion of double bass heightens both mellowness and melancholy, and it serves as a pivot for elegant dance rhythms that crop up among the wistful melodies.”
- Julian Cowley
The Wire


"Songs of Synastry and Solitude is full of lyrical beauty and lush melodicism, but it’s smart and spare, composed with an economy that never veers into anything saccharine. Performed with aplomb, these songs, no matter their tips of the hat, sound clean and fresh, imbued with an unobtrusive slice of personality. It’s further evidence (though, by now, hardly needed) that Jessica Pavone is a vital force in New York’s music community, capable and competent of playing way out in left field, or keeping things much closer to home."
- Adam Strohm
Dusted


Thin Air review in All About Jazz March '09
Read the interview here


The Thirteenth Assembly in the Wall Street Journal March '09
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Ten Questions with Jessica Pavone (October 2008)
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Travellin' Light Interview in Point of Departure
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Interview in El Intrusio
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English Translation here


"Pavone Brings Her Strings Back Home"
Read about Jessica in The New York Sun, March 2008


Read about Jessica in London's Jazz Review, Feb. 2008


Read the Interview in Sound Speaks for Itself Blog, Feb. 2008


Quotidian in Time Out Chicago
...Pavone's notes for the piece emphasize the way natural phenomena, like the weather and the quickening of light into shadow, act as filters for our consciousness...
Read the entire article here.


"Pavone has the ability to transform a naked tonal gesture into something special"
- Philip Clark
The Wire, November 2007


"distinct and beguiling...its core is steely, and its execution clear."
- Nate Chinen
The New York Times, August 2007


(Mary and Jess ) "Thorny compositions that sound as if female teen punkers the Shaggs received doctorates in the music of 12-tone composer Alban Berg, and then rewrote their Philosophy of the World.... Carefully notated structures and interplay morph effortlessly into free improvisation that is intelligent and expressive, but never self-indulgent. Also featuring intense lyrics sung with their clear and melodic voices, the two women make transcendent chamber music outside of any genre."
- Elliott Sharp
Guitar Player Magazine, December 2007


"Pavone's compositions lead you to a mesmerizing place where the usual mad scramble to express something 'weighty' or 'important' doesn't count for very much.
- Philip Clark
The Wire, July 2003


"...lush beauty and exquisite delicacy....'Quotidian' is powerful and probing and thoughtfully written and executed."
- Bruce Gallanter
Downtown Music Gallery


Guitarist Mary Halvorson and violist Jessica Pavone are in the thick of New York's bustling new music scene, routinely erasing the lines that separate free improvisation, jazz, experimental, and pop musics ...
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- Peter Margasak
The Chicago Reader


Mary and Jess review in All About Jazz
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The guitarist Mary Halvorson and the violist Jessica Pavone have worked together in ensembles led by the avant-garde eminence Anthony Braxton, and separately in a wide array of upstart new-music groups. As an acoustic duo they produce something distinct and beguiling: an amalgam of experimental folk, rock and chamber music that feels both meticulous and raw. Their debut, "On and Off" (Skirl), presents a dozen pieces of modest scale but impressive metabolism. There's a disarming openness to their interaction, never more pronounced than when the two are blending their voices in something like a campfire harmony. But this music isn't clever or cute. Its core is steely, and its execution clear. (Catch the duo this Thursday in New York at Cake Shop on the Lower East Side.)
- Nate Chinen
The New York Times


"Unlike the leather-jacketed punk godfathers that prompted the name, Jessica Pavone, of The Pavones, doesn't insist that her bandmates change their surnames to gain membership into the band. Still, the vibe remains one of the extended family."
"I've chosen the musicians in this band because they're all friends of mine," Pavone said via e-mail. "I feel it adds so much more to the music as well as the experience of playing it."
- Shaun Brady
Metro
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"The American prairie sound rebuilt with modernity" is how the Brooklyn duo of guitarist Mary Halvorson and violist Jessica Pavone describe the stylistic basis of their debut album Prairies. Halvorson's guitar is an expressive beast, with a repertoire of moods that shift effortlessly from funky John Lee Hooker twangs to cerebral harmonics. Pavone's viola must also be two-headed: her recklessly exposed melodic monodies are met the other way with ornate decoration.

From this side of the Atlantic, the process of defining what a 'prairie sound' could be is likely to be coloured by preconceptions about John Wayne movies and Aaron Copland scores. But there's a roomy expansiveness to the music that sounds authentic. The title track reveals a deftly conceived relationship between composed and improvised elements - Pavone and Halvorson were mentored by Anthony Braxton, after all. The viola begins with a brief fanfare that immediately gets gobbled up into an improvisational flow, which itself settles onto a perky outburst of melodic unison. Halvorson has her Derek Bailey moments and Pavone explores rarefied outer limits, but they both instinctively know when to fall back into the composition. They listen as though they're hotwired into each other's brain, their taut structural discipline prompting a domino effect of great ideas.

The album winds its way towards an elegiac conclusion. The gentle tremolos of "Your Reason is Dead" roll into "Last Hymn", the duo's wordless singing voices teasing with ambiguous harmonic details and wandering towards a mysterious resolution.
- Philip Clark
The Wire, May 2006


Demonstrating that musical experimentation isn't necessarily difficult listening, the duo of guitarist Mary Halvorson and violist Jessica Pavone offers a refreshing album of playful and somber instrumental compositions (with two vocal songs), rooted in modern classical music with touches of improv. On certain tracks, they cycle between sustaining patterns and diving into freestyle moments, and on others (in particular the album's final two selections) they create eerie moods with simple yet penetrating melodies. Brimming with ideas, odd moments, and proficient guitar/viola interplay, Prairies is both adventurous and inviting.
- Ernest Paik
Chatanooga Pulse


"Jessica Pavone is standing closest to Braxton a few feet away, holding her viola in the "off" position, head down, concentrating, listening, expressionless. Sir Braxton is radiating enough joy to burn the back row of the theater. Jessica Pavone looks up at Sir Braxton and smiles with the understated warmth of a person just reminded of why they love this complex man in a cardigan."
- Michael Anton Parker
Bagatellen


"Pavone's compositions lead you to a mesmerizing place where the usual mad scramble to express something 'weighty' or 'important' doesn't count for very much. Pavone's own viola solos are placed between miniatures for a glacial-sounding quartet and a warmer trio, and her deliberately paced mobile-like forms infatuate the brain while calming the pulse."
- Philip Clark
The Wire


"The music on "27 Epigrams" is not easily pigeonholed. The solo pieces do not stick to one style, the quartet tracks often have a chamber music feel and the trio compositions could be called avant-garde jazz. The variety is impressive, perhaps not as a selling point but as a description for what Pavone has created. This is her music, played the way she wrote it and how she wants it to sound. Instead of an ego trip, it serves as a defining moment for her as a composer. If you can set aside your preconceptions about "new music" and take your time exploring these "little" pieces, you'll discover Pavone's "epigrams" are intelligent and clearly drawn. Yes, it can be challenging yet this music can also be pleasing."
- Richard Kamins
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"The pieces on 27 Epigrams are all only about a minute or two long, which works perfectly for Pavone's style of composing. Her pieces last only as long as it takes for her to exhaust a simple idea. She sets up tiny hurdles, then leaps over them with ease: for example, a piece might consist of a short phrase played on the viola in several different octaves. Her clear, simple approach to the way the instruments she uses are actually played allows the listener to concentrate on the lovely way the notes circle around each other... Her music moves with balance and grace to spare, and few composers bother to take as much care with as few materials as she does."
- Charlie Wilmoth
Dusted Magazine


Her epigrams are compellingly moving and stir deep feelings that range from despondency to lightheartedness, but the artistry of Pavone and the other musicians overflows in these ever-transforming sequences. Art does imitate life, and the musical expressions of Pavone are a microcosm of life's reality.
- Frank Rubilino
All About Jazz


"Individual personalities, though, are subsumed by Pavone's powerful writing, which exhibits considerable potential. Hard to categorize and often difficult to absorb, Pavone nonetheless has planted the seeds for some unusually innovative and demanding works that require concentrated listening."
- Steven Loewy
All Music Guide


The music is gripping, startling, and astoundingly provocative. Although the music could be intimidating to unexpected ears, its overly serious tenor, inventive improvisations, and excellent execution combine and make it an enticing symphony of new music. There is ample room on each tune for the musicians to demonstrate individual virtuosity, but the recording is at its exciting best when the collective ensembles expound robustly and vigorously. The untitled selection includes a cat and mouse affair where freeform call and response is the pattern, but it builds collective integrity with monstrous pronouncements, as do the other cuts. The entire recording is intoxicating and will stir the emotions of listeners seeking innovation in their music diet"
- Frank Rubolino
Cadence