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| Out Sept. 27 – Kris Davis Trio's 'Run the Gauntlet' + Tour Dates Out September 27, 2024 via Pyroclastic Records, the album – with bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake – celebrates Geri Allen, Carla Bley, Marilyn Crispell, Angelica Sanchez, Sylvie Courvoisier and Renee Rosnes "Davis' music is precisely and unmistakably the sound of today… [she] has the acuity and focus to root a farsighted vision firmly in the present." – Michael J. West, DownBeat Album Release Tour October 5 – 12, 2024 with stops in Ann Arbor, Columbus, Boston, Denver, Seattle, Santa Cruz, Portland, Los Angeles January 7 – 12, 2025 – Village Vanguard, NYC European Tours January 23 – February 8, 2025 and May 17 – 25, 2025 To pave the way for an artist as omnivorously inventive as the Grammy Award-winning pianist and composer Kris Davis, it has taken a broad spectrum of innovators to blaze the trails and overcome the obstacles that might once have stood in her way. On her thrilling new album, Run the Gauntlet, Davis pays tribute to six remarkable women pianists who have provided inspiration and support over the course of her own journey in music: Geri Allen, Carla Bley, Marilyn Crispell, Angelica Sanchez, Sylvie Courvoisier and Renee Rosnes. "These trailblazing women were beacons of possibility during different stages of my development, " Davis writes in her liner notes, "showing me that a career in music – whether as a woman, an immigrant, a parent, or a fan of avant-garde music – was attainable." Due out September 27, 2024 via Pyroclastic Records, Run the Gauntlet is Davis' first trio outing as a leader in a full decade, following a pair of acclaimed releases by her ambitious, amorphous ensemble Diatom Ribbons. The album debuts a new group featuring bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake, allowing Davis' pianism to come to the fore and showcase the ways in which the voices of these six formidable pioneers are refracted through her own singular vision. "These six pianists are all very different in their own ways, " Davis says. "There are different aspects of their artistry that speak to me – and there are elements that go beyond their artistry. In many ways their inspiration has been around just having a life in the music, especially as a mother." The balance of family and career is always a precarious one, and Davis has benefited from the examples she observed in Rosnes and Sanchez. Their lessons came into her life at different yet equally meaningful points along her path: Rosnes when Davis was just embarking on her career, when she hired the younger pianist to babysit her son. Sanchez, a close friend and mentor, became a mother roughly a decade later, and Davis admired the ways in which she navigated the travails of parenting while pursuing her own goals. Sanchez and Crispell served as models for making a career along a more experimental trajectory, remaining dedicated to their uncompromising creativity in the face of resistance. Courvoisier, another friend who, like Sanchez, has released music through Davis' Pyroclastic imprint, was an influence in her use of prepared piano techniques, inspiring Davis' own explorations (represented here on tracks like the solo "Softly, As You Wake" and "Subtones"). Both Carla Bley and Geri Allen are revered figures in the music as both composers and performers. Bley has been a profound and formative influence on Davis, who recorded her "Sing Me Softly of the Blues" for the 2019 New World collection New American Songbooks Volume 2 and with Craig Taborn on their duo album Octopus. Allen's impact has been more recent, introduced to Davis through her work with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, with whom she's performed a number of tribute shows to the late piano legend. Davis explains, "I never met Geri Allen in person, but I feel like I know her music intimately now from all the time I've spent studying it and being around the people that knew her best. I feel like her ideas and her compositional approach have really seeped into my writing and playing in recent years, in a way that it hadn't before." While she has released music with the collective Borderlands Trio, Davis has not released a trio album under her own name since 2014's Waiting For You To Grow, created while she was pregnant with her son. Now almost 11 years old, his growth (and its accompanying floorboard soundtrack) is charted on the three-part composition "First Steps, " "Little Footsteps" and "Heavy-Footed, " originally written for bassist Dave Holland's quartet. "The piano trio format has always been kind of daunting for me, " Davis reflects. "I feel like I'm stronger as a player and composer now than I was in the past, so I wanted to dip my toe back in and see where that might take me. I've played on and off with Johnathan for years, and there's something about the way that he plays groove and time that really speaks to me. And he's such an interactive player. When I asked Robert to play in this trio, I had never played with him until our week-long run at the Village Vanguard with this group, but I love his playing with Branford Marsalis and his own music, so I thought it would be an interesting combination. I have always been drawn to the unknown factor of musicians meeting for the first time, and what kind of discoveries and connections might develop from those first encounters." The title track is literal in the way that it traverses a series of vamps as a challenge for Blake's gifts, but also represents the hurdles faced by the album's six dedicatees. The relentless "Knotweed" draws on the battle that Davis has waged with the invasive weed at her Massachusetts home, while on "Coda Queen" she anoints herself with the tongue-in-cheek sobriquet in honor of her talent for song-ending gems. "Dream State" is named for the tune's hazy, somnambulant atmosphere, while "Subtones" is a captivating free improvisation. Blake contributed the gorgeous "Beauty Beneath the Rubble, " mirrored by an accompanying "Meditation." In some ways the idea of dedicating Run the Gauntlet to these six women is an outgrowth of Davis' work with Carrington at the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, an endeavor that has rippled through her work on Carrington's Grammy-winning 2022 album New Standards Vol. 1 and the Institute's Score Compilation Grant for women composers. "I've seen the importance of women mentorship to other young women, as well as men and non-binary folks having stong female role models, " Davis says. "I had that growing up and at different stages of my development, and now I can look back now and see how much hope, confidence and support it provided. I wanted to highlight some of these pianists that were really important to me and that continue to be sources of inspiration." Kris Davis Kris Davis is a Grammy award-winning pianist and composer described by the New York Times as a beacon for “deciding where to hear jazz [in New York] on a given night.” Davis has released 25 recordings as a leader or co-leader and collaborated with artists such as Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Holland, John Zorn, Craig Taborn, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey and esperanza spalding. She was named a 2021 Doris Duke Artist alongside Wayne Shorter and Danilo Perez, Pianist of the Year by DownBeat magazine in 2022 and 2020, and Pianist and Composer of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2021. In 2019, Davis’ Diatom Ribbons was named jazz album of the year by both the New York Times and the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. In September 2023, she released Diatom Ribbons – Live at the Village Vanguard featuring Grammy winner and NEA Jazz Master Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, Julian Lage on guitar, Val Jeanty on turntables and electronics, and Trevor Dunn on bass. Davis is the Associate Program Director of Creative Development at the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, the founder of Pyroclastic Records and co-founder of the International Creators and Collaborators Workshop. Davis is a Steinway Artist. Pyroclastic Records Pianist-composer Kris Davis founded Pyroclastic Records in 2016. By supporting artists in the dissemination of their work, Pyroclastic empowers emerging and established artists to continue challenging conventional genre-labeling within their fields. Pyroclastic also seeks to galvanize and grow a creative community, providing opportunities, supporting diversity and expanding the audience for noncommercial art. Its albums often feature artwork by prominent visual artists—Ellsworth Kelly, Julian Charriére, Dike Blair, Raymond Pettibon and Gabriel de la Mora among recent examples. 2024 Pyroclastic projects include albums from Ches Smith, David Leon, Modney, Brandon Seabrook, Patricia Brennan and Kris Davis. Kris Davis – Run the Gauntlet Pyroclastic Records – PR 36 – Recorded January 14, 2024 Release date September 27, 2024 write your comments about the article :: © 2024 Jazz News :: home page |