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 tunes and 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.
Hays, 58, was born in New York City and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. He began performing in New York clubs while still at high school and enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music in 1986 but stayed only a short while. He then began his recording career as a leader in 1990 with the nowadays very hard to hold in your hands El Matador for real. That was with Joe Henderson, Steve Wilson and Scott Colley. Later on Blue Note he released 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 Benin icon the Herbie Hancock guitarist Lionel Loueke. While Loueke is Franco and George Benson inspired, however, Hekselman on Live at the Stone and elsewhere ploughs a different furrow and is far more of a fiery bebopper in the Peter Bernstein mould stylistically. In 2015, KH 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 (I doubt that it is spontaneously 100 per cent composed on the spot, is there really a need to attempt this feat?) – 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, Brahmsian Mehldau-iana and minimalism at a certain level) but they mesh well together. The work of Taborn’s I love most is when he was in Dave Douglas’ band and I also liked him with Chris Potter & Nasheet Waits at the Pizza Express in Soho in 2021. The piece I think is like futuristic and is highly complex. It sits well if you are an electronica listener or – let’s go out on a limb and offer up a hunch – like Steve Lehman’s spectral experimentations.
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. No I am not going to be “literal” and go down a Mike Oldfield rabbit hole today. Tubular bells often make me come over Christmassy or think about buying a cape & magic carpet and being preposterous again. But you’ll hear some, or the effect at least, a bit differently on a fine new Mari Wilson album quite enjoyably in the pop idiom by the way on current marlbank track of the week ‘Good News’ that isn’t ludicrous at all. What Hays does here mercifully isn’t prog or pop.
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 Trio Grande version from an earlier release this year largely 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.
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