Biography
Canadian-born pianist Kris Davis has steered her path through unforeseen creative channels, drawing on an agile inventive mind and a thorough command of both modern classical traditions and spontaneous jazz languages, especially after relocating to Brooklyn and embedding herself in its uncompromising avant-garde jazz circles. Beyond extensive joint projects, she has issued two unaccompanied piano recordings—Aeriol Piano in 2011 and Massive Threads in 2013—and, fronting her own groups, has documented work with trios on Good Citizen (2010) and Waiting for You to Grow (2014), quartets on The Slightest Shift (2006) and Rye Eclipse (2008), a quintet on Capricorn Climber (2013), and additional configurations. These efforts established Davis as a daring explorer well matched to her Brooklyn setting in the twenty-first century, yet the 2014 debut of her Infrasound octet stood out as one of her boldest and most singular undertakings.
The Salt Lake City, Utah-based Shifting Foundation awarded Davis a grant to write the music for Infrasound, an ensemble she pictured as able to generate the sonic counterpart of a “living, breathing wild animal” both live and in the studio. To realize that vision she assembled several of Brooklyn’s strongest improvisers, mindful of timbral precedents from their prior affiliations: guitarist Nate Radley, Davis’s husband, and organist Gary Versace had played together in Bad Touch, while drummer Jim Black and clarinetist/bass clarinetist Oscar Noriega had worked as members of Endangered Blood. Davis added the octet’s most distinctive element—and justified its name, which evokes frequencies beneath human hearing—by seating four bass clarinetists: Berkeley, California-based Ben Goldberg, Antwerp, Belgium-born Joachim Badenhorst, and Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Andrew Bishop alongside Noriega. Each of the four reed players also performed on standard B-flat clarinets, with Goldberg doubling on contra-alto clarinet and Bishop on contrabass clarinet.
Infrasound made its first public appearance on 6 January 2014 at Brooklyn’s Roulette. The following two days the musicians convened at Sear Sound in N.Y.C. to capture Save Your Breath, assisted by veteran rock engineer Ron Saint Germain (Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Living Colour), whose input supplied an avant-rock edge. The resulting album, issued by Clean Feed in May 2015, juxtaposes tightly controlled composed sections, enigmatic and occasionally dark-hued textures, explosive free-jazz episodes, and the resonant low-frequency weight of the bass clarinets. It revisits two earlier Davis pieces—“Union Forever,” first recorded in trio format on the 2013 Paradoxical Frog album Union, and “Whirly Swirly,” originally heard on the 2014 trio date Waiting for You to Grow—while presenting four additional compositions written specifically for Infrasound and appearing here for the first time.
The Salt Lake City, Utah-based Shifting Foundation awarded Davis a grant to write the music for Infrasound, an ensemble she pictured as able to generate the sonic counterpart of a “living, breathing wild animal” both live and in the studio. To realize that vision she assembled several of Brooklyn’s strongest improvisers, mindful of timbral precedents from their prior affiliations: guitarist Nate Radley, Davis’s husband, and organist Gary Versace had played together in Bad Touch, while drummer Jim Black and clarinetist/bass clarinetist Oscar Noriega had worked as members of Endangered Blood. Davis added the octet’s most distinctive element—and justified its name, which evokes frequencies beneath human hearing—by seating four bass clarinetists: Berkeley, California-based Ben Goldberg, Antwerp, Belgium-born Joachim Badenhorst, and Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Andrew Bishop alongside Noriega. Each of the four reed players also performed on standard B-flat clarinets, with Goldberg doubling on contra-alto clarinet and Bishop on contrabass clarinet.
Infrasound made its first public appearance on 6 January 2014 at Brooklyn’s Roulette. The following two days the musicians convened at Sear Sound in N.Y.C. to capture Save Your Breath, assisted by veteran rock engineer Ron Saint Germain (Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Living Colour), whose input supplied an avant-rock edge. The resulting album, issued by Clean Feed in May 2015, juxtaposes tightly controlled composed sections, enigmatic and occasionally dark-hued textures, explosive free-jazz episodes, and the resonant low-frequency weight of the bass clarinets. It revisits two earlier Davis pieces—“Union Forever,” first recorded in trio format on the 2013 Paradoxical Frog album Union, and “Whirly Swirly,” originally heard on the 2014 trio date Waiting for You to Grow—while presenting four additional compositions written specifically for Infrasound and appearing here for the first time.
Albums