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Reviews

The Kris Davis Trio — Run the Guantlet
(Bandcamp Pyroclastic Records PR 36, 2024, CD / DL)

Kris Davis and the Lutosławski Quartet — The Solastalgia Suite
(Bandcamp Pyroclastic PR 44, 2026, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2026-02-16

Run the Guantlet Cover artThe Solastalgia Suite Cover art

It is an unfortunate quirk of fate or timing that only now are we covering a release by Kris Davis under her own name. We’ve encountered her outstanding piano work as a side player with Kristo Rodzevski and Noah Preminger, both of which are notable. Her 2019 album Diatom Ribbons is exceptional and should be in the collection of anyone who likes boundary-pushing jazz. Run the Gauntlet sees her leading a trio with Robert Hurst (bass) and Johnathan Blake (drums), and there is no hint of smooth cocktail piano trio jazz here. She dedicates the album to Geri Allen, Marilyn Crispell, Angelica Sanchez, Carla Bley, Renee Rosnes, and Sylvie Courvoisier, which is a fine list of her peers. (And also a To Check Out list for anyone not familiar with all the names.) The title cut alone is worth the price of admission. It’s nearly fourteen minutes of modern jazz perfection, full of drama, complexity, and energy built on a set of intriguing motifs rather than conventional changes. Other tracks like “Heavy-footed” ply similar waters, but others like “Softly, As You Wake” are more impressionistic and moody, with arco bass and a meditative lyricism, and “Beauty Beneath the Rubble” is very much worthy of its title. Davis is a very skilled pianist, and even when she’s on the mellower side, she works very interesting clusters of notes into her lines. She also plays prepared piano at times for a different timbre. Hurst and Blake are worthy foils for her challenging music, capable of both tender beauty and explosive energy. The music is rhythmically complex without relying on simple patterns.

The Solastalgia Suite gives Kris Davis a different kind of outlet for her compositions: the venerable piano quintet of Classical music, featuring a piano with string quartet. The music was commissioned by the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw, Poland and features Kris Davis with the Lutosławski Quartet, which has worked with other jazz artists in the past. The eight parts of the suite don’t seem to include any improvisation, but the music is certainly in a modernist mode, taking advantage of many different techniques on the strings. Whether it qualifies as jazz is a question each listener must decide — I personally don’t care, and I doubt any of the participants do either. The quartet navigates this challenging material with aplomb, and to my ears it works as well as any string quartet by a modern composer. There are no touches of Classical or Romantic nostalgia to the writing, which was inspired by observations of the environmental changes she’s seen around her, especially when visiting her native Vancouver, British Columbia. The first track is called “Interlude,” giving the impression of joining in the middle of something, as we are in the midst of climate change. The angularity and dissonance of Davis’ piano playing is echoed and expanded in the strings, resulting in some of the best modern composition I’ve heard. It’s not easy to take in, but it’s powerful stuff, an album I’m sure to revisit frequently for many years.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases, 2026 releases

Related artist(s): Johnathan Blake, Kris Davis

More info
http://krisdavis.bandcamp.com/album/run-the-gauntlet
http://krisdavis.bandcamp.com/album/the-solastalgia-suite

 

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