Kris Davis Trio | Athenaeum Music & Arts Library | La Jolla | Athenaeum Jazz Fall 2025 (October 29)

The series opens on Wednesday, October 29, with an Athenaeum debut by the Kris Davis Trio, featuring Davis on piano, Robert Hurst on bass, and Johnathan Blake on drums. Recognized in the DownBeat Critics Poll as Pianist of the Year in 2025, 2022, and 2020, Davis has become one of the most celebrated jazz pianists of her generation. A Grammy Award–winner, she has been described in The New York Times as a beacon for “deciding where to hear jazz on a given night.” She was named a Doris Duke Artist in 2021, alongside Wayne Shorter and Danilo Perez, and Pianist and Composer of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, also in 2021. Her 2019 album, Diatom Rhythms, was voted jazz album of the year by both The New York Times and NPR Music’s Jazz Critics Poll.

On her latest album, Run the Gauntlet, Davis is accompanied by the extraordinarily talented bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake. “Hurst, who powered bands led by both Wynton and Branford Marsalis in the ’80s, and Blake, one of the contemporary scene’s most reliably propulsive percussionists, are both expert drivers of the beat” (The New York Times). Seamlessly melding composition with improvisation, Run the Gauntlet stands as a testament to Davis’s singular voice within the jazz landscape. Of the album, The New York Times commented, “The trio digs heartily into Davis’s obliquely funky vamps, uniting and diverging in turn to dazzling effect.”