Born in Singapore to a Swedish mother and British father, Davis grew up in the United States from the age of six, settling first in Atlanta, then Texas and ending up in Chicago, where she attended Northwestern University and received a Ph.D in Music Cognition. It was in Chicago that Davis became engrained within the local jazz and improvisatory music community, one that is tight knit, diverse and particularly open to each player’s musical inclinations.
Davis’s Chicago experience was instrumental in her development as a player. Regularly hearing local greats, like saxophonist Von Freeman, guitarist Bobby Broom, and pianist Ron Perrillo, playing in wide ranging musical contexts and interdisciplinary collaborations helped to shape her into a well balanced and genre defying artist. Davis was also privy to a range of artists, including one of her biggest influences, the iconoclastic composer/conceptualist Steve Coleman.
Upon her move to New York City in 2013, Davis found herself as an outsider looking in. It was difficult to come from a place where she was established to an entirely different community, especially one as fractious as New York’s. Though, Davis soon showed that she was equal to its demands.
It was about this time that Davis found out that her father had heart arrhythmia. The news prompted her to do detailed research on the physical aspects of the human heart.
It was with all of this in mind that Davis decided to compose this music, using the heart for its emotional connotation or utilizing ventricular rhythms as metrical devices. Composing helped not only in her emotional transition but also focused her study on biological aspects of the body. Heart Tonic finds Davis employing more standard jazz elements than in the music of her previous work, including formal harmonic changes and shifting meters.
To assist in the recording, Davis employed a brilliant ensemble of young musicians, more aligned to swinging, straight ahead jazz, but who could also handle the challenges the composer posed for them in her idiosyncratic music. Pianist and keyboard player Julian Shore and percussionist Rogerrio Buccato had been friends with Davis since her time at Litchfield Jazz Camp nearly a decade ago. Trumpeter Marquis Hill is a Chicago contemporary and a perfect foil for Davis’s lithe alto. Originally from Israel, Tamir Shmerling is unwavering on acoustic and electric bass, while longtime friend and drummer Jay Sawyer always insures the music is remarkably propulsive.
Wayne Shorter’s “Penelope” lent itself to the project as its heart beat like pulse is reminiscent of the rhythms her father’s arrhythmia was making in his own heart. Originally written for another album, Davis rewrote “Dionysian” in New York with a new mindset eschewing the filters of frustration that had limited her on her arrival; it provides an emphatic proclamation of place. The haunting “Air” floats on a bassline in 7 while the rest of the instruments play in 4, thus generating an ambiguous but stable cycle and bedrock for Shore’s lovely piano solo. The stirring “Ocean Motion” closes the recording with a piece in 9/4 in three sections, which leaves the listener with a healing final melody and incendiary drum solo.
Caroline Davis’s new Heart Tonic is a moving and pulse livening journey through Davis’s emotional relocation from Chicago to New York and her investigation of the biology of the heart.
1. Footloose and Fancy Free
2. Loss
3. Constructs
4. Fortune
5. ...TuneFor
6. Penelope
7. Dionysian
8. Air
9. Ocean Motion
Releases March 23, 2018
Caroline Davis - alto saxophone
Marquis Hill - trumpet
Julian Shore - piano, Fender Rhodes, Yamaha DX7, Roland JD-Xi
Tamar Shmerling - acoustic & electric bass
Jay Sawyer - drums
Rogerio Boccato (percussion 2, 9)
Benjamin Hoffman - organ (4, 5)
