Eric Revis Trio - Crowded Solitudes

2016 release

The Eric Revis Trio is back, this time with Gerald Cleaver using sticks against skins and metal, replacing his elders Andrew Cyrille from “City of Asylum” – Cecil Taylor’s drummer of choice for a decade – and John Betsch from the project’s recent European tour – Steve Lacy’s partner for the same period of time.

The brilliant newcomer Kris Davis remains at the piano. Although the music is different, the principles, objectives and personality are the same, coming from the mind and heart of the same man who has plucked his double bass for 17 years with the Branford Marsalis Quartet.

“Crowded Solitudes” is another example of Revis’s “back-to-the-future” philosophy: the invention of the future of jazz is rooted in its past and tradition. With this attitude the bassist and composer defined his path in the world of jazz, travelling the routes of the mainstream and the avant-garde, with Kurt Rosenwinkel or Peter Brötzmann.

In the case of this mutable trio, the tradition is represented by free-jazz and its connection with earlier forms and vocabularies. What’s coming appears through the creative exploration of all of the assumptions of the Sixties “New Thing”, showing that there’s always something new after the new gets old.

As Søren Kierkegaard wrote, «life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.»