Feb 13, 2018
PETER_GANNUSHKIN
In jazz, the duo is perhaps the most underappreciated, and least commercially viable, of any combo setting. Consider all the classic trios, quartets, quintets, and sextets throughout the music’s history. Even septets, octets, and nonets get more love. Big bands, too. Solo performances, especially from pianists—for whom it’s right of passage—can be memorable events, and enhance a career. (See Keith Jarrett.)
And although duos have made a comeback in recent years, two musicians playing together on the same instrument remains rare. Not that it’s without precedent, of course. Two drummers? Check. (Milford Graves, who else, with Andrew Cyrille.) Two bassists? Check. David Holland and Barre Phillips recorded Music from Two Basses in 1971 and William Parker conspired with Stefano Scodanibbio ten years ago. Two pianists? More common, sure: Marian McPartland, most famously, played with many of her luminous guests in the long-running NPR program Piano Jazz, and the first Blue Note album, back in 1938, was a duo of the boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, enthusiastically reimagined by Jason Moran and Robert Glasper at Town Hall four years ago.
But no two pianists have played with the kind of freedom and grace, abandon and emotion as Kris Davis and Craig Taborn on their new album, Octopus (on Davis’s label, Pyroclastic Records). Davis, 38, and Taborn, 47, are among the most respected pianists working today: rock stars in the jazz world, if you will (if the former remains more “indie”).
Davis, from Vancouver but New York based, has made a name for herself mainly on small European labels, while Taborn, a Minneapolis native, came to New York in the 1990s, mainly as a sideman, with musicians such as James Carter, Roscoe Mitchell, and Tim Berne. He’s now part of the esteemed ECM crew and his 2017 release, Daylight Ghosts, was cited by many critics, including this one, as one of last year’s best.
Octopus, a live recording, came out of Davis’s 2016 album, Duopoly, where she gathered an impressive group of musicians—clarinetist Don Byron, guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Marcus Gilmore—for a series of, yes, duos. One was with Taborn, about whom Davis, in her liner notes for Octopus, writes: “From the moment we started playing I felt instantly transported and free within the music, and had the sense we could go anywhere. . . There was a feeling of deep listening, a dynamic sense of push and pull, and yet it strangely felt like a conversation we’d been having for years.”
Davis and Taborn felt there was more to say. So in the fall of that year, they, along with sound engineer Ron Saint Germain, took the show on the road, to twelve cities throughout the U.S.
As Davis suggests, it is a conversation—and, I’d add, a collegial debate—and an intellectual one for sure; it’s perhaps no coincidence that five of the concerts were on university campuses and another at the Kennedy Center.
Seven pieces from the various dates—at the University of Michigan; UC San Diego; and the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State—were selected for Octopus, three composed by Taborn, two by Davis, plus a Carla Bley tune, and another by Sun Ra, all of which offered ample space for free improvisation.
If two thinkers in dialogue—and Davis and Taborn are the deepest of thinkers musically—sounds like a potentially long afternoon at the 92nd Street Y, this encounter, on the contrary, is full of engagement and daring. One will bring up an a thought or a phrase and sometimes repeat it, and the other might elaborate on it, or change direction. The interplay also recalls the physical as much as the cerebral, as if it were in a sporting context. At times they’re in opposition, whacking ideas back and forth, sometimes at a frenetic pace—as on Davis’s prolix “Chatterbox”—while other points are played as if the two are doubles partners, one taking to the net, the other intuitively drifting back to cover the baseline. It leaves plenty for the highlight reel.
Taborn’s three “Interruptions” pieces fuse the free-expressionism of Cecil Taylor (and his disciples) with an edgy tenderness that suggests Don Pullen — someone, Taborn told me early last year, whose work has been important to him.
“Ossining,” by Davis—who recently moved to that Westchester town from Brooklyn with her family—is a blisteringly rhythmic piece over the first half of its eight minutes, the two trading staccato figures, that transitions into something quieter and lyrical.
The duo’s cubist reworking of Carla Bley’s “Sing Me Softly of the Blues”—as lovely as its title implies—segues, medley-like, into Taborn’s third “Interruptions” piece, where they volley short phrases to and fro in the stirring final quarter.
The album ends with a good old-fashioned ballad, “Love in Outer Space,” which Taborn selected from the catalogue of Sun Ra, that good old-fashioned futurist himself. It’s a gorgeous piece already—whether in Sun Ra’s vocal single version or his extended instrumental—and their rendition, slowed down here, the drama heightened, is ravishing. What opens as almost childlike, with Taborn in the highest of registers, progresses to a triumphant finale.
You can rack your brain at times figuring out which pianist is which—on this song and throughout the set—but, well, you needn’t. It’s an intellectual exercise, true; it’s also, simply, beautiful music.
Davis—whose 2013 Massive Threads was as good a solo piano album to come out so far in this young century, maybe bested only by Taborn’s Avenging Angel from two years prior—was at the Stone last week, where she led a variety of trios, quartets, and sextets. In her 17 years in New York, though, she’s probably most often played in the narrow, claustrophobic downstairs basement of the Cornelia Street Café. It’s an endearing spot, sure, but there’s this other downstairs basement, a few blocks away at 178 Seventh Avenue South. She’d be a worthy headliner there, even if only one grand piano fits.
Feb 11, 2018
Pianist Kris Davis’ 2015 self-released Duopoly CD/DVD set paired her with eight first-time partners and generated several ongoing collaborations. But while Davis has also toured with pianist Angelica Sanchez and drummer Billy Drummond as a consequence, it is the chemistry with fellow pianist Craig Taborn that has resulted in the first issued documentation of these extended encounters. It’s an eye-catching combination as both are among the most in-demand practitioners on the scene. Selected from three different fall 2016 concerts, the program encompasses five originals as well as two covers.
Entitled Octopus to reflect some concertgoers’ perception that the pair functioned as a single multi-limbed entity, there are times when at least three minds seem to be at work. One such juncture comes during the opening “Interruptions One”, when Taborn’s grounding chording anchors simultaneous independent sparkling runs from each of the principals. That precedes a simply dazzling shimmer of clipped and rolling notes and a rich tapestry of ringing overtones. While the challenge for two players on the same instrument is often to stay out of each other’s way, the feel here is of a meeting of minds in which the instrumentation is irrelevant.
The only thing that separates them is Davis’ occasional singular use of preparations and insistent Morse code repetitions and Taborn’s characteristic groove figures, which surface in slow motion towards the end of that first cut. But elsewhere, like “Interruptions Three”, they pass rhythmic phrases back and forth between them almost quicker than the ear can register. Fireworks erupt on Davis’ “Chatterbox” as sweeping staccato attacks and pealing tremolos jostle with intricate unisons. A chiming melody stands in sharp relief amid the lapping pianistic waves on “Sing Me Softly Of The Blues/Interruptions Two”, where fleeting blues inflections apart, they dress up the Carla Bley tune as if trying to smuggle it through customs. But there’s no disguising the glorious lilt of Sun Ra’s “Love In Outer Space”, even though Davis hits a repeated note like she’s hammering down a particularly stubborn nail during the warmly enveloping conclusion to a terrific set.
John Sharpe
The New York City Jazz Record
Feb 11, 2018
Kris Davis & Graig Taborn
Octopus
Pyroclastic CD/DL
In 2016, pianist Kris Davis recorded Duopoly, a collection of duets with eight colleagues: reeds players Tim Berne and Don Byron, guitarists Bill Frisell and Julian Lage, drummers Billy Drummond and Marcus Gilmore, and fellow pianists Angelica Sanchez and Craig Taborn. Each pairing recorded one composition and one free piece. Subsequently, Davis and Taborn undertook a US tour of 12 cities and composed new music for the occasion. The gigs were recorded, and the highlights are preserved here. Two Davis compositions – “Ossining”, named for a town in upstate New York, and “Chatterbox” – are heard, along with versions of Carla Bley’s “Sing Me Softly Of The Blues” and Sun Ra’s “Love In Outer Space”, while Taborn brings in three small figures he labels “Interruptions”, and which are used for exactly that. They disrupt the flow of the music, sending it in surprising new directions that keep both players and listeners on their toes.
At times, it’s easy to know who’s doing what. Davis has a fondness for prepared piano that manifests strongly during “Ossining” – her keys sound muted, plinking rather than ringing out, like someone tapping a ceramic implement on a granite countertop. Taborn plays short, staccato figures to match her energy, but his actual sound is still fuller and more alive than her sharpened bone percussives. During “Chatterbox”, the two lock in with each other, releasing high speed figures that sound like one organism conversing with itself. The version of Bley’s “Sing Me Softly Of The Blues” segues into “Interruptions Two” with deceptive smoothness, dual keyboard flurries gradually replaced with individual notes from Davis like water dripping from a cave ceiling, as Taborn strikes booming chords, occasionally punctuated by a brief, ominous trill. It’s almost horror movie music.
“Love In Outer Space” closes the album with a soft, romantic feeling, the tenderness of the music (which starts out with Taborn alone) augmented by the room sound, which is simultaneously wide open and intimate. Throughout this nearly hour long collection, the creative relationship between Davis and Taborn reveals depths and intricacies, while remaining simple and emotionally potent when that’s what’s called for.
Phil Freeman
Jan 26, 2018
Ms. Davis and Mr. Taborn are two pianists with an ear for stark clarity and unflinching abstraction. Each is the kind of player whose presence is reason enough to go see a gig: They can hold an entire band together, then throw its bone structure apart with a flick of the wrist. On Friday they released “Octopus,”a collection of duets recorded on tour in 2016. The pair ventures often into free improvisations: playfully dyspeptic, scattered, opaque. But on “Love in Outer Space” — a Sun Ra classic that Mr. Taborn keeps in regular circulation with his quartet — the six-beat, Middle Eastern plod grows only more hypnotic over the course of the nearly eight-minute performance. Toward the end, a high note starts tolling in a rusty chime; that’s Ms. Davis’s piano, prepared with a bit of metal clipped to a high B-flat string, rattling like a beacon or a tin heartbeat. G.R.
Giovanni Russonello
The New York Times
Jan 23, 2018
‘Octopus’ by Craig Taborn and Kris Davis Review: Diving for Deep Listening
Live recordings of the jazz piano duet offer insights into the roots of the players’ technique.
‘Octopus’ is the new album from jazz pianists Craig Taborn and Kris Davis PHOTO: PETER GANNUSHKIN
By Martin Johnson
The Wall Street Journal
Piano duet recordings are rare in jazz compared with trios or solos, yet they offer huge rewards. A duet of artists with contrasting styles—say, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock or Cecil Taylor and Mary Lou Williams —enables listeners to find surprising common ground between the performers and appreciate the idiosyncracies more. Duets pairing pianists with similar approaches—as on the albums featuring Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan or the one with Muhal Richard Abrams and Amina Claudine Myers —offer insights into the roots of their technique and often take listeners into unexpected sonic territory. The latter is the case with “Octopus” (Pyroclastic, out Friday), a splendid document of live recordings featuring pianists Kris Davis and Craig Taborn.
With their lean, restrained and abstract music, both Ms. Davis and Mr. Taborn often remind me of the painter Paul Klee in their embrace of the modern trends that recently preceded them. In addition, their style is bright but not sunny, like the flavor of a Sancerre. “Octopus” consists of two compositions by Ms. Davis, three by Mr. Taborn, and two covers—the Carla Bley jazz standard “Sing Me Softly of the Blues” and Sun Ra’s “Love in Outer Space.” The recording opens with Mr. Taborn’s “Interruptions One,” a spare, lyrical piece in which both pianists skillfully interact with silences as capably as they do with each other. The proceedings heat up a little on Ms. Davis’s “Ossining,” which is named for the town in the Hudson Valley, a region where she and many other musicians now live. The pace quickens and each pianist layers cluster over cluster, with Ms Davis playing prepared piano in parts to exhilarating effect. Their reserve gives Ms Bley’s composition a wistful air; they find a soulful edge with the music of Sun Ra.
“Octopus” is compiled from concerts in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio; and San Diego, when the duo toured following the Ms. Davis’s 2016 album, “Duopoly” (Pyroclastic), which featured duets with Mr. Taborn and such other jazz luminaries as guitarist Bill Frisell, clarinetist Don Byron and saxophonist Tim Berne. One stop on the tour, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, can be found on YouTube, and the variance is instructive. There are elements of the compositions found on Octopus, but many are taken in substantially different directions. Both pianists are restless improvisers with enormous arsenals of ideas.
Mr. Taborn, who is 47 years old, has had notable sideman gigs with saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Chris Potter as well as bassist Chris Lightcap, but his recent work as a leader on three recordings for ECM has solidified his reputation as one of the leading pianists in jazz. Ms. Davis, who is 38, has been a standout in bands led by bassist Michael Formanek, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and others; she leads the acclaimed quintet Capricorn Rising and several other bands. She will perform nightly in various configurations at The Stone in New York from Jan. 23-28.
Ms. Davis and Mr. Taborn, as well as many of their contemporaries, are elevating jazz beyond the limiting continuum of accessibility and abstraction. Long rhythmically intense stretches of “Octopus” are easy to grasp, yet so too are the austere sections. It’s music that is defining its own terms rather than shoehorning itself into categories like tradition and avant garde. The audience gets it; the enthusiastic ovations that punctuate the recording border on ecstatic.
—Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal
Jan 22, 2018
Kris Davis/Craig Taborn, Octopus(Pyroclastic)
Two-piano albums are relatively rare in jazz (or any other music), but often interesting. Cecil Taylor made one with Mary Lou Williams that’s like two rams charging at each other headfirst. This record, featuring Kris Davis and Craig Taborn, is significantly less combative. In 2016, Davis made Duopoly, a collection of duets with Tim Berne, Don Byron, Bill Frisell, Julian Lage, Billy Drummond, Marcus Gilmore, Angelica Sanchez, and Taborn. Once it was out, Davis and Taborn toured together, and recorded the gigs. “Ossining,” named for a town in upstate New York, is a Davis composition. She’s using a prepared piano that sounds weirdly muted, with almost no reverb to it at all. Her notes sound like someone tapping a metal rod on a granite countertop, and she sticks to an almost maddeningly steady rhythm, ticking like a machine. Taborn plays little burbling figures that match her mechanical/twitchy energy, but with a fuller piano sound. The effect is like watching a robot dance while listening to a gentle autumn rain hit the window.
Phil Freeman
stereogum.com
