Avant-garde album of 2024
The Kris Davis Trio, Run the Gauntlet, Pyroclastic Records *****
Yes, got to be chief contender. Runner’s up ”prize” in the ”same” idiom goes to Francesca – David Murray’s best album in years.
But small caveat calling something avant-garde is a slippery and inexact process. It’s not ideal.
But it is useful as a headline term for a bunch of styles that sit well together like this album and the far more in your face Francesca.
Let’s face it
Avant-garde is not everyone’s cup of tea.
The whole area some would argue is a separate thing entirely.
You know the sort of two entity argument, 1: jazz; 2: ”improvised music”.
The latter of these may or may not have a lot of jazz language to it but as improv it can borrow any number of styles and languages. I can go along with that to a certain extent.
There is also the raging argument about the frequently confused matter of what spontaneous music is or isn’t.
Notions of spontaneity and the art of improvisation are always confused.
Art must be new and bring a shock
Think about it as a player you can play spontaneously but you might not necessarily or at all even be playing free jazz and you might just have memorised a lot of music you absorbed through notation and are just playing it without the music in front of you.
The labels put on all this really aren’t that interesting but certainly help focus a little.
Avant-garde used to be my favourite sub-genre of jazz after getting into late-period Coltrane when I was in my thirties. Interstellar Space and hearing in the flesh Rashied Ali a few times were revelations to me. Nowadays I just see avant as another style which isn’t, as some would maintain, the most interesting area of the music. But don’t get me wrong I do believe in Ben Vautier’s Fluxus tenet ”art must be new and bring a shock.”
But recently there has been less of it around to excite me. But an album like Run the Gauntlet which is a world away from late Coltrane incidentally gets us into the area again although in hardcore ”plinky plonky” avant terms it’s not outrageous at all or a deliberate provocation which a good deal of avant jazz sometimes becomes.
As a trio album it’s far more interesting than say – and it’s a reasonable comparison – what Viyay Iyer delivered on his latest album for ECM although that album Compassion is eminently listenable to.
Avant-garde to us in simple terms means non-standard in the sense of form, it’s usually more experimental, often – and this is a key point – far more chromatic than is the norm.
Risk taking fearlessness
Avant takes more risks but not just because it wants to. It’s not an approach that garners easy resolutions (harmonically and emotionally). It’s not a Hollywood movie with a happy ending guaranteed.
Sometimes (usually) avant is free form or takes liberties with typical structures.
Sometimes it has the rigours of modernistic contemporary classical composition. Sometimes it’s a world away.
Chief avantists we like include Evan Parker, Matthew Shipp, Alexander Hawkins, Pat Thomas, Ingrid Laubrock, Matt Mitchell, Marc Ribot.
And Kris Davis.
Tribute to pianist adventurers
Here with two players not usually identified with an avant release, the double bassist best known for his work with Branford Marsalis Robert Hurst and the drummer – more a hardbopper and beyond Blue Note artist and great composer himself Johnathan Blake who contributes one of the tunes here.
The rest of the Run the Gauntlet pieces are by the remarkable Canadian pianist Kris Davis.
The concept of the album is a mind’s-eye tribute to six remarkable pianists, improvisers and composers Geri Allen, Marilyn Crispell, Angelica Sanchez, the late Carla Bley, Renee Rosnes (whose new Crossing Paths is out in December) and Sylvie Courvoisier.
Davis does not sound like any of these incredible players incidentally – she has her own sound which makes her like all of these a great individualist.
And you know what the most avant-garde thing of all it is about this recording?
It’s coming ”in” from the ”outside” – making accommodations, not being obtuse for the sake of it and above all say on the title track harnessing the sheer rhythmic possibilities inherent in a forward facing acoustic trio. As a composer Davis is not being performative in the sense of addressing the expectations of genre or falling back on patterns that others would happily embrace.
Born in Vancouver in 1980 with some two dozen recordings as a leader or co-leader to her name including notably the widely acclaimed Diatom Ribbons this latest is certainly a new high watermark in her many recognised achievements to date.
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