Frank Kimbrough

Among acoustic pianists active from the 1980s onward, Frank Kimbrough distinguished himself through an inside/outside approach to improvisation, shaped most directly by Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett on one side and by Cecil Taylor, Paul Bley, and Andrew Hill on the other. Although capable of the same refined touch associated with Evans or Jarrett, Kimbrough readily ventured outward to engage Taylor’s advances. His first recording, the 1988 album Lonely Woman—named after the Ornette Coleman piece—signaled the emergence of a significant new piano voice, while Quickening, issued in 2000, represented his initial exploration of Thelonious Monk’s rhythmic language. Verrazano Moon, a 2008 duo session with vibraphonist Joe Locke, juxtaposed seven of the pair’s own compositions with lesser-known works by Duke Ellington (“Single Petal of a Rose”) and Monk (“Trinkle Tinkle”). Monk’s example grew increasingly central, culminating in 2018 with Monk’s Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk, a six-disc set on which Kimbrough directed a quartet comprising drummer Billy Drummond, bassist Rufus Reid, and multi-reedist Scott Robinson.

Born and raised in North Carolina, Kimbrough absorbed an unusually broad spectrum of jazz in his youth and performed locally around Chapel Hill before relocating to Washington, D.C., in 1980. During his single year in the capital he led a trio of his own and took part in hard-bop engagements alongside Webster Young and Buck Hill. Following Bill Evans’s death in September 1980, Kimbrough participated in a two-night tribute with Anthony Braxton. He settled in New York in 1981 and began issuing recordings under his own name five years later. Two early Mapleshade cassettes—1986’s unaccompanied Star Crossed Lovers and 1987’s Double Visions with drummer Steve Williams—have long been unavailable, yet the label later reissued his 1988 trio date Lonely Woman on compact disc in 1995. Throughout the 1990s Kimbrough taught at New York University while serving as a sideman in Maria Schneider’s big band, which he joined in 1993, and in saxophonist Ted Nash’s quartet. He also became a central participant in the Herbie Nichols Project, the ensemble formed to champion the music of the overlooked pianist Herbie Nichols. Bassist Ben Allison, who led the Project, featured Kimbrough on Love Is Proximity for Soul Note as well as on his own Seven Arrows and Medicine Wheel; together the two musicians established the Jazz Composers Collective in 1992 to promote forward-looking original composition.

Igmod released Chant in 1998, a collection drawn from sessions recorded in 1992 and 1997; Saturn’s Child followed in 1999 and Noumena appeared in 2000. A further collaboration with Locke produced the 2001 Omnitone album The Willow. Quickening, a live recording, surfaced on the same imprint two years later. Kimbrough subsequently moved to Palmetto, issuing Lullabluebye in 2004 and Play in 2006; the solo-piano collection Air appeared on the label in 2007. He briefly stepped away to record the 2008 duo project Verrazano Moon with Locke, after which he toured internationally before returning to Palmetto for the 2011 trio album Live at Kitano, recorded with bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Matt Wilson and notable for its treatment of Andrew Hill’s “Dusk.” Extensive travel through Asia, the United States, and Europe occupied the next several years. In 2016 he documented the trio session Solstice for Pirouet with Anderson and drummer Jeff Hirshfield, presenting the Gershwin standard “Here Comes the Honey Man” alongside modernist pieces by Annette Peacock, Carla Bley, Paul Motian, and Maria Schneider.

The following year Kimbrough was invited to celebrate the centennial of Monk’s birth at the Jazz Standard in New York, assembling a rhythm section of Drummond and Reid and adding saxophonist Scott Robinson, a frequent associate from Schneider’s orchestra. The engagement proved so rewarding that Kimbrough’s friend Matt Jones proposed documenting Monk’s complete oeuvre with the same personnel. In April 2018 the pianist prepared the seventy compositions at the Kitano, employing both trio and quartet formats. Recording took place at Matt Balitsaris’s Maggies Farm studio with the initial intention of completing one disc per day across six consecutive days; the schedule was later revised to two three-day blocks separated by a matching interval. Most selections required only one or two takes, whether performed solo, in duo, trio, or quartet configuration. Sunnyside issued the resulting six-disc box set in a deluxe edition that November, attracting the strongest critical response Kimbrough had yet received.