Nils Kavanagh – Piano
Marcus Baber – Bass
Sam Green – Drums
It is perhaps unsurprising that Sligo is now producing musicians of note, given the educational focus of the annual Jazz Project there. At a mere 21 years old Nils Kavanagh, an alumnus of the festival and summer school, and student of the exceptional-playing and always well-dressed Belfast pianist Scott Flanigan, has released a recording of introspective yet dynamic piano trio music that projects a sense of self-awareness and assuredness uncommon in a musician of his age.
Kavanagh is an Irish and Danish duel national, and here on his debut recording entitled No Expectations he presents seven of his own compositions that thematically reference notion of place and being. In his own words, he asserts that the overarching theme, which fuelled the creative drive for this release, was the question of what it means to “dwell”. Indeed, the music itself carries a quality of some sort of suspension in place. No doubt a good deal of this has come by way of the Jazz and adjacent improvised music he has absorbed through his associations in Scandinavia. Congruent with much of the Scandinavian Fjord-Jazz, the pianist describes his music in heavily narrative terms, citing a mix of mythology and geography, such as the cairn at Knocknarea, and personal touchstones such as his relationship to his Danish grandmother’s clock.
Acclaim is accruing for the young pianist. He was a finalist in the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year competition and won the Young Irish Jazz Musician of the Year award. He has since graduated with a first-class honours degree (congratulations!) in jazz performance from The Royal Welsh College, and he is joined in this endeavour by two fellow young musicians from that institution: Marcus Baber on the bass, and Sam Green on the drums. Green has notably progressed in his studies to The Greig Academy in Bergen, a further connection between Scandinavia and the music of this trio. All three are of similar ages and it is heartwarming to see young players of this age so obviously focussed on creative ensemble playing.
Much of the music has a somewhat minimalist quality to it. It would be easy to make comparisons to piano trios such at the Esbjorn Svensen trio. So, let’s not do that. Insofar as reverb-laden Scandily-clad piano trios are now somewhat of a European genre, it is the aspects that set this trio apart that I find most interesting. The Old House on the Hill for instance is one such track that while it contains the floating time and ample space has a little extra in terms of harmony and very subtly implicated dissonance, which renders the whole take somehow more graphic than cinematic (for whatever that might mean). It is less about sweeping fjords and somehow more contained and delicate, which I appreciate. It is hard to play like this – where the musicians are feeling pulse rather than time. These guys obviously have played a lot together and you can sense them listening very hard to each other a trying to feel the pulse as a unit.
Queen Maeve’s Grave is another composition that must be mentioned here. While drawing something from Irish Trad music, the influence is mild enough to not be too on the nose, and the band wisely wind their way to a more or less straight-ahead jazz feel. The pianist’s sense of dynamic here is on display, and when the improvisation heats up we catch a glimpse of his sense of line formation, which is a nice occurrence as much of the more up-tempo solo content is more driven by rhythmic themes and chordal soloing surely intentionally designed to drive interaction between the players.
I like this recording, and I like these young musicians. There is a lot of intent in this music, that they deliver in soft blows that retains a billowing gracefulness. They are doing everything right. There is beauty, there is communication, there is space, and there is energy. It is hard out there for young musicians, so let’s all go to the Bandcamp page and buy this recording. You are going to like it.
No Expectations is Available on Bandcamp