One of Jazztopad’s traditions is to invite an artist who performs several times during the festival and in different contexts. This time, it will be Kris Davis – an improviser who has garnered accolades over the past two decades. This has been due to her important albums, prestigious collaborations and many awards.

Before pianist Kris Davis was absorbed by the avant-garde, she was a diligent student of jazz classics. She became interested in free improvisation during workshops in Canada led by Tony Malaby and Angelica Sanchez. “When I moved to the States, I started playing with them, all the time hearing their encouragement to write freer music,” she recalled a year ago in an interview with Jazz Forum magazine. These suggestions fell on fertile ground, because Davis soon became one of the most important improvisers of her generation. Although free and contemporary music dominated her art for many years, she now increasingly returns to more mainstream forms of jazz. “I am playing again compositions that are traditional in harmony and form, but I am enriching them with twenty years of experience in playing freely improvised music,” she noted. 

During the concert, Davis will first perform in a duet with pianist Paul Grabowsky, a leading jazz musician from Australia and a very important figure in the local music life. The Tales of Time and Space from 2005 is often quoted as his best album, recorded with Branford Marsalis, Joe Lovano and Jeff “Tain” Watts, among others. He is the founder of the acclaimed Australian Art Orchestra. He regularly composes for the cinema, writes operas, and sometimes collaborates with vocalists. Therefore, one can assume that his duet with Kris Davis will be marked by melodic and friendly dialogue dictated by the virtuosity of both artists. This will be the first performance of this artist in our country. The second part of the evening will be the Polish premiere of Davis’s composition The Solastalgia Suite. The pianist, together with the Lutosławski Quartet, presented it during the New York edition of Jazztopad last June. The word “solastalgia” used in the title means suffering and sadness caused by changes in the natural environment. It is significant, too, that Davis cites Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time as her main musical inspiration.