Short Cuts: Courvoisier, Rothenberg and Waits — 29 October 2026, Jamboree (Barcelona)

Jazz

The bassless trio of Sylvie Courvoisier, Ned Rothenberg and Nasheet Waits play Plaça Reial on the only Spanish stop of an eleven-date European tour

Short Cuts —Sylvie Courvoisier on piano, Ned Rothenberg on clarinet, alto saxophone and shakuhachi, and Nasheet Waits on drums— play Jamboree Sala 1 on Thursday 29 October, in two sets, at 7pm and 8.30pm. General admission is €25 and members pay €21. Mas i Mas promotes it.

It is a collectively led trio with no chordal instrument and no double bass, and the music is entirely improvised. “It feels so natural to improvise with Ned and Nasheet,” Courvoisier says. “They are such beautiful players, and they both love grooves, even in a freely improvised setting. Not having a bass player gives Ned and I more room to play in the lower register, just as it gives Nasheet more freedom with his bass drum.”

Rothenberg describes it from the other side: “Some bands work off of a sonic unity. This one works with three different sound worlds, both stylistically and timbrally, interacting with each other.”

The European tour is eleven dates, from 19 October in Tours to 1 November in Ulm, taking in Bruges, Rijkevorsel, Cologne, Berlin, Zurich, Ljubljana, Graz, Barcelona and Pančevo. The Barcelona show is the only one in Spain.

The trio recorded its first album in the spring of 2025 and no release date or label has been given for it. Before this run it had played the Saalfelden festival and the University of Mexico City, and it toured South America in November 2025.

Courvoisier, born in Switzerland and a long-time New Yorker, leads her own trio with Drew Gress and Kenny Wollesen, a long-running duo with guitarist Mary Halvorson and a new quartet with vibraphonist Patricia Brennan. Intakt released “Éclats – Live in Europe”, with the trio, on 27 March this year. Waits is a member of the cooperative trio Tarbaby, with Orrin Evans and Eric Revis, and has played with Jason Moran, Dave Holland and Christian McBride. Rothenberg has worked with Evan Parker, John Zorn, Sainkho Namchylak and Katsuya Yokoyama.

Text by Aina Torrents