About Ghosts

Brooklyn-based guitarist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Mary Halvorson’s new album About Ghosts features eight new compositions by Halvorson, performed with her sextet Amaryllis, the improvisatory band that also was featured on her critically praised albums Amaryllis, Belladonna, and Cloudward. Amaryllis comprises Halvorson, Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Adam O’Farrill (trumpet). Saxophonists Immanuel Wilkins and Brian Settles join the ensemble on five tunes, including lead track ‘Carved From’. About Ghosts is produced and mixed by John Dieterich (Deerhoof).

“I started writing this record in the fall of 2023, for Amaryllis, and I thought, ‘You know what? I want to add saxophones.’ And I just started writing,” Halvorson says. “It felt like an experiment. I was just feeling ... denser harmony, more horns. But I wanted to stick with Amaryllis, so it felt natural to add a couple of saxophones to Amaryllis rather than doing an entirely new thing; I’d been playing so much at that point with Amaryllis and we were in a really good place. I guess I do that a lot. Take something that already feels good and then add an element, kind of throw a wrench in it, and see what happens,” she laughs.

Another instrument that can be heard on ‘Carved From’, among other tracks, is a Pocket Piano synthesizer that Halvorson’s childhood friend Owen Oborn, from Critter & Guitari, recently gave her. “I’ve never played a synthesizer before, but I thought, ‘Wow, if he gave this to me, I should really figure out how to play it.’ I used it on a bunch of tracks, as overdubs. You’ll hear weird non-guitar sounds woven in throughout,” Halvorson says. “I wasn’t using it to improvise. I was trying to find an additional layer to build into the compositions, the whole time being like, ‘I’ll throw it out if I don’t like it.’ But John Dieterich, who mixed the record, incorporated the synth perfectly. It felt like a subtle layer had settled there, which could almost escape one’s notice. Sort of like the ghost member of the band.”

Mary Halvorson’s last three records were named Jazz Album of the Year in DownBeat’s annual Critics Poll, where she was also named Guitarist of the Year in 2023 and 2024. Pitchfork noted in its review of her most recent record, “There is something curiously absolute about Cloudward, whose eight pieces seem chiefly to express their own elegant systems of order and disorder, rather than reaching outside themselves to convey particular emotions or images.” And Bandcamp said, “Halvorson continues to give her excellent band plenty of freedom in how the pieces come together, producing her most richly contrapuntal music yet. That achievement speaks to the elasticity, presence, and imagination of her bandmates, who built spectacular, rigorous marvels from her malleable frameworks.”

In addition to her three previous Nonesuch recordings, Halvorson has released a series of critically acclaimed albums, from Dragon’s Head (2008), her trio debut featuring bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith, expanding to a quintet with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon on Saturn Sings (2010) and Bending Bridges (2012), a septet with tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and trombonist Jacob Garchik on Illusionary Sea (2014), and finally an octet with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn on Away With You (2016). She also released the solo recording Meltframe (2015). Her ensemble Code Girl, featuring vocalist Amirtha Kidambi, trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, saxophonist and vocalist María Grand, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, released two albums, in 2018 and 2020.

One of New York City’s most in-demand guitarists, over the past decade, Halvorson has worked with such diverse musicians as Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Taylor Ho Bynum, John Dieterich, Trevor Dunn, Bill Frisell, Ingrid Laubrock, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey, Jessica Pavone, Tomeka Reid, Marc Ribot, and John Zorn. She is also part of several collaborative projects, most notably the longstanding trio Thumbscrew with Michael Formanek on bass and Tomas Fujiwara on drums.