MARY HALVORSON: CANIS MAJOR with Nelson Devereaux

Incomparable guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson brings Canis Major to the Cedar stage for the first time. Dave Adewumi (trumpet), Henry Fraser (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums) round out the quartet.

There’s a theory of record production that says the best results come shortly after musicians have encountered a piece for the first time. That’s when it’s possible to get the intuitive reaction, before players develop a frame of reference. First thought, best thought.

An opposite theory holds that the magic happens later, after the ensemble has absorbed the material. That’s when the musicians can lean into its nuances, leveraging familiarity into swagger.

Mary Halvorson’s dramatic, daringly intricate new album About Ghosts suggests that these approaches can be complementary. The eight-song work is the guitarist and composer’s fourth full-length with her sextet Amaryllis—plus saxophonists Immanuel Wilkins and Brian Settles. Halvorson wrote some of the music for the core group in 2023, and then, following what she describes as a snap impulse, experimented with a piece for four horns instead of two. Just to try it.

“This record is actually a good example of both approaches mixed together,” Halvorson explains. “The songs I had written for the sextet (‘Eventidal,’ ‘Absinthian,’ ‘Amaranthine,’ ‘Polyhedral,’ and ‘Endmost’) had already been performed a lot on the road; we were quite comfortable with the music by the time the session rolled around. And because the music was in a good place, it felt easy to add Immanuel to ‘Absinthian’ and Brian to ‘Endmost.’ “However,” she continues, “the three songs I wrote explicitly for octet (‘Full of Neon,’ ‘Carved From,’ and ‘About Ghosts’) were brand new; we rehearsed only once, one or two days before the recording session. Of course there’s always the risk it won’t quite gel, but if it does, and I feel it did, there is certainly a freshness, magic, energy that can go along with playing something for the first, second, third time and needing to just dive right in and go for it.”

Note the verb choice: Needing, not wanting, to dive in and go for it. Suggesting a certain urgency within the creative act, as though Halvorson is aware of being almost physically compelled to leap into the unknown.

“I guess I do that a lot,” she laughs. “Take something that already feels good and then add an element, kind of throw a wrench in it, and see what happens.”

Nelson Devereaux is a Minneapolis-based multi-instrumentalist, touring musician and session artist that has worked with with artists like Bon Iver, Lizzo, Craig Finn, Mild High Club, This Is The Kit, Jungle, Paul Cherry, Layton Wu, 9m88 and many others. In early 2025 he was featured on Miley Cyrus’ Grammy-Nominated record, “Something Beautiful”, playing the saxophone solo on the single “More To Lose”. His latest release is “reel mu$ic” under his alias “cool nel d”- which is out on Taiwanese super-group, Sunset Rollercoaster’s label, Sunset Music Co.