Critically acclaimed pianist and composer Kris Davis has released her newest album, Duopoly, on Pyroclastic Records. The album consists of 16 tracks with eight different highly regarded improvisers. Each musician performs two pieces alongside Davis, one composed and the other completely improvised. For Duopoly, Davis chose to work with musicians whom she had never worked with in a recording studio. They are: guitarists Bill Frisell and Julian Lage, pianists Craig Taborn and Angelica Sanchez, drummers Billy Drummond and Marcus Gilmore, and reed players Tim Berne and Don Byron.
The CD comes with a DVD of live performances of each piece performed by Davis and collaborator. Davis explains in a news release, “We also chose to make a visual record, which we hoped would be as live and uncompromising as the music. Shot by Mimi Chakarova with one fixed camera and one handheld, the goal was for this film to have a kind of 1:1 or indexical relationship to the music itself.”
Davis continues her celebratory Duopoly tour tonight at Kennedy Center Millennium Stage in Washington DC, with pianist, and album collaborator, Craig Taborn. The tour will continue through mid-October.
