Kris Davis: The Solastalgia Suite

For her first excursion into string quartet writing, Canadian pianist Kris Davis shapes a restless interplay of atmospheric texture and rhythmic urgency on The Solastalgia Suite. The title takes its cue from philosopher Glenn Albrecht's term for mourning environmental loss, a concept that resonates throughout the work's uneasy lyricism. Commissioned by the Jazztopad Festival in Wrocław for the Lutosławski Quartet—following previous contributions from Craig Taborn, James Brandon Lewis, and Vijay Iyer—the suite was captured during the festival's 2024 edition in both rehearsal and performance.

Although calling on inspiration from figures such as György Ligeti and Béla Bartók, Davis filters contemporary classical language through her own kinetic sensibility. While largely through-composed, the score leaves space for improvisational elasticity, allowing both quartet and pianist to bend its structures from within. The movements unfurl through contrasting compositional strategies, from the driving cadences of the opening "Interlude" to the spectral whistling glissandos of "Towards No Earthly Pole" and the fragile, unsettling harmonics of "Life On Venus."

Davis often disrupts continuity even within individual pieces. At first, "The Known End" pivots between dramatic stop-start string attacks and a flowing piano solo that alternately locks into jagged unison and breaks free into looser phrasing. Thereafter, sawing motifs accelerate and violin pinwheels before receding into a wistful melody and, finally, a subdued close that undercuts its earlier volatility. Piano moves to the foreground again on the final "Degrees Of Separation" where unfettered bursts and hammered tremolos engage the quartet in terse exchanges, before resolving into a spare unaccompanied coda.

The suite operates through shifting emotional registers, its abrupt turns and unresolved tensions mirroring the unfolding chaos and loss of predictable climate alluded to by the title. Rather than settling into consolation, Davis keeps the music in motion -agitated, probing, and resistant to closure— posing questions rather than offering bromides.