Hôtel du Nord is a studio album by American violinist Mark Feldman and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier together with drummer Gerry Hemingway and bassist Thomas Morgan.
John Fordham of The Guardian wrote "his album follows up last year's To Fly to Steal, on which Swiss pianist Courvoisier and her former Nashville violinist husband, Feldman, explored a delicate soundworld between free improv and contemporary classical music with the American bass-and-drums pairing of Thomas Morgan and Gerry Hemingway.
It was a testament to the empathy of the two leaders, but this compelling session shows how far their new partnership with Morgan and Hemingway (a former Anthony Braxton percussionist) has come.
It's full of an ethereal, non‑referential lyricism of the players' own – an affirmation of the power of pattern and audibly evolving relationships, even if very little of it resembles songs – save for Feldman's occasional offhand jazz quotes, like Goodbye Pork Pie Hat which is slipped into a drifting abstract passage.
With their second quartet outing for Intakt Records, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and violinist Mark Feldman cover a gamut of articulately designed modes of interaction.