Kris Davis’ Diatom Ribbons – Live At The Village Vanguard – Out September 1, 2023
Listen to first single "The Dancer"
Pianist/composer Kris Davis introduced her acclaimed 2019 album Diatom Ribbons by talking about the micro and the macro, using the titular microalgae as an evocative analogy for her compositional approach. The comparison could be extended, in a way, to describe the legendary Village Vanguard – although in time, rather than in space (the basement club’s notoriously intimate confines don’t allow for much of a macro view). On this venturesome new double album, the long and storied history of one of jazz’s most revered venues coexists with the immediacy of contemporary invention in thrilling and unexpected ways.
With Live at the Village Vanguard, Davis’ second release with her far-reaching Diatom Ribbons band, Davis adds her name to the astounding roster of legends who have recorded at the Vanguard, yet the music takes forms that even visionaries like John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins or Bill Evans could never have imagined. The album, due out September 1, 2023, via Davis’ Pyroclastic Records label, reunites Davis with her core collaborators from that album – drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, turntablist and electronic musician Val Jeanty and bassist Trevor Dunn – and adds a new voice to the mix in the person of guitarist Julian Lage.
Kris Davis on the cover of DownBeat Magazine’s September 2023 issue
“It's such an honor and a rare opportunity to be able to say you've recorded an album at the Vanguard,” Davis says. “This album, which throws a wrench in the traditional jazz quartet format by adding a DJ and electronics, stands as a testament to the forward-thinking nature of the Vanguard and its willingness to embrace some of the new elements that are coming into the music.”
The recording took place at the end of a weeklong stint at the club, which afforded the band the luxury of investigating Davis’ music in front of an audience, especially valuable in the case of Lage. “I like the idea of not allowing the group to feel too comfortable,” Davis explains. “So I intentionally chose Julian, who I’d played with in a duo setting many times and whose playing I admire. This new configuration challenged us to find a band sound while playing this new music, and I like that process of discovery.”
Live at the Village Vanguard follows in the kaleidoscopic spirit of its celebrated predecessor, which was hailed as one of the top five albums of 2019 by both DownBeat and JazzTimes magazines while topping the list of both the NPR Critics Poll and The New York Times. The music is an inspired collage of eclectic influences, drawing on the music and philosophies of Wayne Shorter, Olivier Messiaen, Sun Ra, Geri Allen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Charlie Parker, Eric Dolphy, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Paul Bley and Conlon Nancarrow, among others.
“My influences are wide-ranging,” Davis says, “and I'm always trying to digest them and filter them through my own language and concept. With this music I wanted to be more overt about some of the influences that have shaped me and that continue to shape me.”
The album begins with Ronald Shannon Jackson’s “Alice in the Congo,” which she’d originally arranged for a duo concert with fellow pianist Craig Taborn, along with her own “Endless Columns,” which opens Disc Two. The quintet also reimagines Geri Allen’s “The Dancer” and Wayne Shorter’s “Dolores,” the latter in two stunningly different renditions that showcase the ensemble’s exploratory versatility. Davis’ “Nine Hats” is an atmospheric original piece that mines deconstructed elements from Dolphy’s “Hat and Beard” and Nancarrow’s “Study No. 9 for Player Piano” for raw material.
The three-part “Bird Suite” was originally composed for a tour planned to commemorate Charlie Parker’s centennial, co-led by Carrington and Rudresh Mahanthappa, which fell victim to the COVID pandemic. The pieces draw inspiration both from the iconic saxophonist and from Messiaen’s birdsong-influenced “Petites Esquisses D’Oiseaux,” and enfold both Messiaen’s voice and bird calls recorded near Davis’ home in Ossining, New York.
As Diatom Ribbons did with Cecil Taylor, Live at the Village Vanguard also incorporates the spoken words of some of Davis’ most profound influences, refracting her philosophies through their own ideas. On “VW,” Sun Ra can be heard explaining that, “this music is from another dimension,” while the “Bird Suite” includes Bley talking about Charlie Parker and Stockhausen discussing “Intuitive Music.” “I found that including interview clips of some of my musical heroes was a way that I could convey messages that resonate with me, while paying tribute to those artists that I admire.” Davis says, “I also found that the clips could frame the music in ways that expressed my sense of playfulness and humor, which was a revelation.”
In her role as Associate Program Director of Creative Development for the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice at Berklee College of Music, Davis plays an active part in remedying the historic injustices and imbalances in the jazz world while serving as a role model in her own work. She and bassist Linda May Han Oh are only the second and third women to win the Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for Terri Lyne Carrington’s 2022 album New Standards Vol. 1 – an honor they share with Carrington, the first woman to win the category with 2013’s Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue.
With Live at the Village Vanguard, Davis also becomes one of very few women instrumentalists to have recorded at the Vanguard, preceded only by Geri Allen, Shirley Horn and Junko Onishi. Horn is one of several vocalists to have released music from that stage, including Betty Carter, Barbra Streisand, Cécile McLorin Salvant and esperanza spalding. “That is meaningful to me and my students as jazz communities struggle to become more equitable and inclusive. I am grateful to the women artists who came before me and paved the way for my generation. I hope this album inspires the upcoming generations of musicians for years to come, as many of the iconic albums recorded at the Vanguard inspired me.”
“On Diatom Ribbons, [Kris Davis’] skills as a composer, band assembler, system builder and improviser — a musical auteur, basically — come fully into focus.”– Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times
Kris Davis
Pianist/composer Kris Davis has been hailed for her “ferocious and bold artistic vision” by PopMatters, while DownBeat writes that, “anyone closely concerned with contemporary jazz keeps an ear open for Davis’ next move.” The album New Standards Vol. 1 earned Davis and her bandmates the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, and in 2021 she was awarded a Doris Duke Artist Award. To date, Davis has released twenty-four recordings as a leader or co-leader and in 2016 founded the label Pyroclastic Records. Her 2019 release Diatom Ribbons topped “best album of the year” lists at NPR and The New York Times while placing in the top five at both DownBeat and JazzTimes. Davis has collaborated with a diverse array of artists including Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Holland, John Zorn, Craig Taborn, Tyshawn Sorey, Eric Revis, Michael Formanek, Tony Malaby, Ingrid Laubrock, Mary Halvorson, Julian Lage, Nicholas Payton, Linda May Han Oh and Tom Rainey. She is the Associate Program Director of Creative Development for the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice at Berklee College of Music.
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—Julian Charriére, Dike Blair, Mimi Chakarova, Jim Campbell and Raymond Pettibon among recent examples.
2023 Pyroclastic projects include albums from Ingrid Laubrock, Mark Dresser, Sylvie Courvoisier and Cory Smythe, Brandon Seabrook, Kris Davis, and Angelica Sanchez.
