Kris Davis

Kris Davis is a jazz pianist and composer from Vancouver, Canada, born in 1980. She works in avant-garde jazz, free jazz and jazz, and is known for balancing improvisation with composition in her writing and piano playing. She becomes an active part of the New York jazz scene after relocating there from Canada.

Background and training

Davis studies classical piano through the Royal Conservatory of Music and earns a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto. She attends the Banff Centre for the Arts jazz programme in 1997 and 2000, where she meets saxophonist Tony Malaby. In the early 2000s she receives a Canada Council grant to move to New York and study composition with Jim McNeely, and later receives another Canada Council grant to study extended piano techniques with Benoit Delbecq in Paris.

Groups and collaborations

In 2002, Davis forms her working quartet with Tony Malaby, bassist Eivind Opsvik and drummer Jeff Davis. The quartet tours widely and performs at festivals in the United States, Canada, Norway and Sweden. It records two albums on Fresh Sound, and her writing for the group is noted for creating a controlled tension between different musical forces.

She also performs with John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble, Theo Bleckmann, Ron Horton, Ingrid Jensen, Steve Swell, Peter Herbert and Chris Speed. Other regular work includes playing as a sideman for younger bandleaders such as Jon Irabagon and Tony Barba, and performing harmonium with the Brooklyn Qawwali Party.

Other ensembles and teaching

Davis is a founding member of the RIDD quartet, which releases its first record, Fiction Avalanche, on Clean Feed. She also leads and appears in several listed ensembles, including Kris Davis Infrasound, Kris Davis Trio and Kris Davis Quartet, and is associated with Ingrid Laubrock Anti-House, Tom Rainey Obbligato, Michael Formanek Elusion Quartet and Eric Revis Trio.

Alongside performing, she teaches at the Maine Jazz Camp and in the Preparatory Jazz Studies programme at Queens College.

Style and reception

Her playing and composing are described as adventurous and refreshing, with writing that uses angular movement, colour and an emphasis on interplay between musicians. Her quartet recordings on Fresh Sound are presented as central to that approach.