In&OutJazz: Hey there, Kris. It’s a pleasure to host you as a very precious and special guest in In&Out Jazz Magazine. Since the beginning of your career, you have explored the piano through extended techniques. What motivated you to delve into this constant exploration beyond the conventional?

Kris Davis: I heard the music of Benoît Delbecq, a French pianist, in 2004. He was doing a lot of prepared piano, using wood sticks and different materials… I was very interested in what he was doing, like how he was combining musical influences from György Ligeti, for example, and I’m a great fan of Ligeti. I am always trying new things; every pianist who does preparations finds their own material. I went to a couple of stores to find what I wanted; I was checking John Cage as well, looking at what he uses, and trying to get the material that resonates with me.

Pyroclastic Records is a label you have created, known for hosting some of the best avant-garde jazz albums. Where did this idea come from, and how is it developing?

I worked with a couple of labels around Europe, Fresh Sound Records, Clean Feed, and I had some funds to be able to produce and make some albums and music. At some point, I did not need financial help and support, and then I thought it would be great to create Pyroclastic to help extend a bigger community and include people I want to bring in who I like and what they propose. Pyroclastic is there to support adventurous artists when it comes to improvisation and composition. Everyone is very different; when people see Pyroclastic Records, they know it’s going to be good in terms of the packaging and the music. Being part of the improvised music scene in New York is what helped Pyroclastic come to life. Listening to people who take risks and create innovative music is essential.

Do you feel that you have had to struggle for recognition in the jazz world due to being a woman, especially in your role as Associate Director of the Creative Development Program at the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice?

No, I feel that, considering I make challenging and unconventional music and bring different influences into my music, sometimes my music doesn’t get attention… but in a way, I have had attention, sucess and support, especially with the critics. I received support, and they respond to what I do; my music I feel gives something different from the mainstream. So if you are a critic and listen and see something that is different, with many influences and taking risks, you value it, you want to support it and uplift it.

You have developed a very defined and avant-garde personal language, and your playing style is unique and unrepeatable. Despite being a leader proposing concrete material, your work as a sideman is also notable. How do you experience this duality, if you perceive it as such, and how do you navigate between your own vision and that of others?

I think it is important to have different musical personalities in a band. When everybody approaches the same solo the same way, the music sort of loses its dynamic quality, so I am always drawn to bandleaders who are looking for different personality types. For instance, I played with Dave Holland for the last couple of years, and he is an amazing bandleader because he puts together people who come from different places and musical backgrounds, with different ways of thinking about how to play solos and how to interact with the group. This group includes Jaleel Shaw, Nasheet Waits, Dave Holland, and myself. When Jaleel Shaw plays, she does amazing, beautiful lines, and there’s beautiful time; these solos come from a place of perfection. When I solo, I am more interactive and rhythmic, and it also helps elevate the music. As a listener, you appreciate that; you listen to different ways that the solos respond to each other within the form of the piece.

In your album «Diatom Ribbons,» you collaborated with artists like Esperanza Spalding (vocals), J.D. Allen (tenor sax), and Terri Lyne Carrington (drums), receiving praise from The New York Times and winning the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll for Best Jazz Album. This time, you are joined by the innovative Haitian DJ Val Jeanty and bassist Nick Dunston. How do you manage to fuse free improvisation, spoken word, electronics, and jazz? Additionally, can you tell us about «Diatom Ribbons» and your collaboration with Julian Lage at the Village Vanguard?

The first album was very produced and was a meeting of two different communities with Terri Lyne Carrington, Val Jeanty, and Esperanza Spalding, who I was playing with at that time. I also wanted to bring in the improvised community in New York to see what happens. In the studio, we met, learned the pieces in the moment, and recorded a few takes, and that was it. Regarding the Village Vanguard, it’s more about dealing with the music night after night and recording it after five or six days. We recorded on the last day. It’s always nice to be on tour and then go home and record it so you get the chance to learn the music, see its development, and then capture that in the end. But there’s always something special about meeting for the first time in the studio. The collaboration with Val Jeanty and Terri Lyne Carrington actually happened before Diatom Ribbons, at a concert at the Stone in New York, which was really fun and gave us the appetite to do «Diatom Ribbons.» Due to the fact that the music has a lot of groove, we brought Nick Dunston in because the music needs bass.

Your collaboration with different pianists in two-piano formats, such as with Craig Taborn in «Octopus» or with Angelica Sanchez, is intriguing. How have these collaborations influenced your music and style? Moreover, how did the idea for «Duopoly» arise?

It started with Duopoly which was an album of meetings, and the producer there was David Breskin. We were excited about the particular connection we had musically in the studio. He then suggested making a tour and recording every performance to create an album. Octopus was a consequence of that; we went on tour for two weeks, recording every night, and I then chose my favorite parts from it. The tour was all over the United States.

In light of your latest album titled Run the Gauntlet, which you dedicate to your female pianistic influences, can you tell us a little bit about the meaning behind the title of this album, the intentions behind it, and how it came to fruition?

The title track is one of the pieces from the album. I originally wrote it to navigate a series of challenges. I wrote it for Jonathan Blake because he is so good at playing over vamps and framing them in different ways. I wrote a series of different vamps for him to navigate. While putting the album together, I listened to the way we were interacting and recognized all my influences from Geri Allen, Angelica Sanchez, and Marilyn Crispell—who I saw last night at the Berlin Jazz Festival; they are all in there in some way. I am also doing some work with the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, bringing attention to women composers and players, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to highlight those particular pianists who are really important.

Your compositions include a lot of atonality and freedom in a melodic and harmonic sense. How and when did you start incorporating these elements into your compositions, and how does it relate to the role that visualizations play in your music?

I sort of played classical music as a kid, then got into playing more mainstream jazz and fell in love with Keith Jarrett’s music. When I got to New York, I fell in love with the improvised music scene, which made me question the role of the piano and what I had trained to learn, you know, like, «Is it a comping instrument? Does it have to lay down the harmony, play chords in a certain part of the piano that sound the best?» When I improvised with people freely, all those rules didn’t really apply, so I didn’t want to be the one always controlling the harmony; I wanted other players to also contribute and build the harmony together. This journey led me to explore how I can relate to the instrument not just as a harmonic instrument, but by focusing more on timbral issues or range, bringing more rhythm out of the instrument and putting harmony somehow back. I think that experience of exploring the instrument as an orchestra and looking at contemporary classical music shaped my feelings and ideas about harmony, dissonance, and different approaches to music. Now, when I come back to play more mainstream or groove-based things, or one-chord vamps, where there are more chord changes, I bring in a language that creates these elements of dissonance or unusual ways of approaching foundational harmonic structure.