This new live album captures intimate duet performances from pianist-composer Kevin Hays’ residency at John Zorn’s avant-garde New York venue. Serving as the first vinyl release for AHT Records nyc, an independent record label founded by musician and producer Adrien H. Tillmann, the project features a series of improvisational dialogues involving multi-keyboardist Craig Taborn, last heard by this blog playing with The Bad Plus at the Barbican during their farewell tour, guitarist Gilad Hekselman whose Downhill From Here was a thrill last year, saxophonist Ben Wendel whose work I like with Tom Ollendorff, and drummer Kenny Wollesen known for his collaborations with ‘Don’t Know Why’ songwriter Jesse Harris. Also don’t forget KH’s contribution to Patrick Zimmerli’s Songs of Innocence.
Hays, 58, was born in New York City and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. He began playing piano at the age of six, introduced to the instrument through his father’s playing. Initially drawn to rock music, he turned towards jazz as a teenager, attracted by its harmonic possibilities. He began performing in New York clubs while still at high school and enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music in 1986, leaving after a semester to pursue a professional career.
Hays began his recording career as a leader in 1990 with the nowadays very hard to find El Matador, with Joe Henderson, Steve Wilson and Scott Colley, followed by a series of releases for Danish jazz indie SteepleChase and then Blue Note, including 7th Sense and Go Round.
That scratches the surface as it is indicative of only some of his prodigious output down the years and Hays has also maintained a trio partnership with bassist Doug Weiss and drummer Bill Stewart.
His duo work to look at that and pertinent in the current context includes Hope with guitarist Lionel Loueke. In 2015, he began incorporating his own singing more prominently into his work with New Day, an album that brought together his piano playing, compositions and voice.
Turning to the new release tunes are fourfold.
Firstly, it is Hays’ ‘Bob Dylan’ spookily arrived at after what comes over like a siren – the melody eventually revealed in a nasally vocalised sounding synth setting followed by some wonderfully grandiose power chords towards the 7 minute mark after the rustling Kenny Wollesen early scene setting thickets of the sonic undertow.
Secondly, there’s Hays’ and Craig Taborn’s ‘Presence’ which seems like an improvisation in character – it is jointly credited. Taborn is a very different, far more oblique and essentially more avant-garde pianist to Hays (who seems more interested in melodicism and minimalism at a certain level) but they mesh well together. The piece I think is like futuristic and sits well if you are an electronica listener.
Then, thirdly, the Stone set sequences Gilad Hekselman’s ‘The Dove Will Fly High’ that has a synth that sounds like a tubular bell at the beginning.
Watch the brief video above as it’s useful in discovering Hays’ personality when he presents what it is he trying to do in terms of the preparation and process behind jazz solo performances. Footage is from Porto’s Casa Da Musica concert hall in Portugal where Hays has performed
The Trio Grande version of ‘The Dove Will Fly High’ (no bells, Esmeralda, this time) begins with a trundling guitar figure and then the Metheny-esque motif reveals itself quickily. Trio Grande: What’s Left was released at the end of May. Trio Grande are the guitar-sax-drums combination of Hekselman from Israel, the Englishman Will Vinson and American Nate Wood. They play The Yard, Manchester on 2 November, Ronnie’s on the 3rd, Magy’s Farm, Northern Ireland on 4 Nov and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff on the 5th.
The piece is very differently arranged to the new Trio Grande version mainly because the main theme does not emerge until about 3 and a half minutes in. That’s after the fascinating increasingly church bell-like tolling build-up whereas the main theme appears early on in the TG treatment.
Fourthly, it’s the very beautiful Hays ballad, ‘Remember Me’. Referring to the last of these Live at the Stone pieces which to me is the best thing on the album the ‘Remember me’ version has an electronic keyboard sheen to it – sort of modular monophonic sounding with a woozy “vocalisation” fed in – that’s extremely appealing before peeling off into a piano continuity passage after the hazy introduction and then an incredibly tender Ben Wendel solo. When Hays comps later on before opening up with some trebly piccolo-like lines it’s in a Mehldau-eseque vein engagingly.
