Kris Davis's "Run the Gauntlet"

It's been a decade now since pianist-composer Kris Davis's last outing at the helm of a trio -- 2014's Waiting for You to Grow on Clean Feed, with John Hebert and Tom Rainey. After two albums with her Diatom Ribbons ensemble, a Grammy award for the first album with Terry Lyne Carrington's New Standards project, three albums with the collaborative Borderlands Trio, and a year of touring with Dave Holland's New Quartet, Davis is back with a new trio, featuring some surprising collaborators. 

Bassist Robert Hurst is best known for his work with Wynton and Branford Marsalis, while drummer Johnathan Blake is a leader in his own right, as well as a veteran of side gigs with Kenny Barron, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Tom Harrell, among others. If Davis's new bandmates' pedigrees seem more mainstream than the folks she usually runs with, check out the YouTube videos of the Vision Festival set she played with William Parker and Wynton's old drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts a couple of years ago.

In a way, Run the Gauntlet -- out on Davis's Pyroclastic label on September 27 -- can be seen as an extension of Davis's work with Carrington at Berklee's Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice: a celebration of women who inspired and supported Davis as she embarked on a career in music as "a woman, an immigrant, a parent, [and] a fan of avant-garde music." But where Carrington's New Standards strives to bring the works of women composers into the jazz canon, on Run the Gauntlet, Davis uses her own compositions to pay tribute to fellow pianists Geri Allen, Carla Bley, Marilyn Crispell, Angelica Sanchez, Sylvie Courvoisier, and Renee Rosnes. 

Davis was first exposed to Allen's work via Carrington's project, while Bley is a formative influence whose "Sing Me Softly of the Blues" Davis has covered, most recently on her Octopus duet album with Craig Taborn. Crispell, Sanchez, and Courvoisier have all released music on Davis's label. Crispell and Sanchez were role models in pursuing  experimental directions, while Courvoisier was an inspiration for Davis's use of prepared piano (a Davis trademark since 2011's Aeriol Piano, audible here on "Softly As You Wake" -- with gorgeous arco work from Hurst and wonderfully subtle accompaniment from Blake -- and the freely improvised "Subtones" that ends the album). 

Davis's fellow Canadian Rosnes (whose son Davis once babysat) and Sanchez served as exemplars of how to balance career and family. Waiting for You to Grow was made while Davis was pregnant with her son, who's now 11. A triptych of tunes on Run the Gauntlet, originally composed for Dave Holland's quartet, charts his growth, from the rhythmic irregularity of "First Steps" through the growing assurance of "Little Footsteps" (with a mightily grooving rhythm section) to the elegantly swinging "Heavy-footed" (which floats cascades of notes over Davis's steady left-hand comping). 

The title track showcases Blake's rhythmic flexibility and responsiveness as he negotiates a series of vamps, which also afford the leader ample opportunity to demonstrate the different facets of her burgeoning keyboard artistry. It's a good intro to the trio. "Knotweed," inspired by an oppressive invader to Davis's Massachusetts garden, glides along with a straight-ahead swing that belies the tune's title until the sprung-rhythm conclusion. Blake also contributed the lovely lyrical composition "Beauty Beneath the Rubble," which provides an oasis of calm in the middle of the album and is continued in the "Meditation" that follows it, replete with more exquisite arco bass and prepared piano.

Run the Gauntlet is a new milestone for Davis, and ranks with Waiting for You to Grow, Capricorn Climber, and Live at the Village Vanguard among her most accomplished works. Looking forward now to hearing her Solastalgia Suite, which she'll record in Poland with the Lutoslawski Quartet in November.