Pyrography by Paul Hecht

Paul Hecht, piano
Ben Dillinger, bass
Gustavo Cortiñas, drums
James Davis, trumpet

Release shows:
April 5, 2025 · North Street Cabaret, Madison WI
April 17, 2025 · Constellation, Chicago IL
April 25, 2025 · The Pablo, Eau Claire WI
April 26, 2025 · Berlin, Minneapolis MN

Jazz is ephemeral by nature, attuned to the moment, the air, the room, the particular meeting of people in a place. What does it mean to write for such a medium? Pyrography alludes to the ancient art of writing or drawing with heat on wood—writing as singeing or controlled burning—and comes from a poem of the same title by John Ashbery, from which we hear this:

. . . . . And not just the major events but the whole incredible
. . . . . Mass of everything happening simultaneously and pairing off,
. . . . . Channeling itself into history, will unroll
. . . . . As carefully and as casually as a conversation in the next room

As interested in exploiting throwaway musical objects as unabashedly romantic, camp-adjacent flights of fancy and romps, this album shows Hecht and his fellow musicians drawing on their wide musical histories to create music both tightly integrated and profoundly restless.

Pyrography is a product of the Chicago scene, one of the world’s most vital crossroads for musical and artistic enterprise. The band includes Gustavo Cortiñas, a drummer and composer originally from Mexico who has distinguished himself with a series of projects of increasing ambition and scope. James Davis on trumpet is a longtime fixture of the Chicago scene, a notable composer and bandleader as well as a member of some of the most memorable outgrowths of the scene in recent years, including some of Matt Ulery’s important ensembles. Ben Dillinger is one of the most sought-after young bass players in the city, equally at home in traditional jazz and avant-garde projects.

The band is thus a fitting vehicle for this recording, which builds on Hecht’s wide-ranging musical curiosity and eclectic experience to take listeners on a journey that stretches from the center of jazz tradition to zones that overlap with New Orleans dancehalls, Romantic symphonies, and the spiritual avant-garde.

An initially self-taught pianist, Hecht fell in love with jazz in high school and pursued traditional music education in college in Amherst, Massachusetts, studying with, notably, Yusef Lateef (even as Lateef famously scorned the use of the word “jazz”). But his interests in classical music and literature led him to study poetry and poetry writing, in Cornell University’s highly unusual PhD/MFA joint degree program. During those years he also studied violin and eventually performed with various chamber ensembles, and later in an orchestra. Then as a young English professor living in Chicago, he quickly fell in with musicians, including the remarkable pianist and composer Rob Clearfield. Along the way he also befriended members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), a force in new music in the late 2000s in Chicago as well as New York, and eventually organized a performance by director Claire Chase at Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus Festival in Austria.

During this time Hecht was writing about Renaissance poetry, as professors do, which culminated in a book published by Oxford University Press in 2022 (_What Rosalind Likes_), and was also directing student performances of Shakespeare and other Renaissance drama in northwest Indiana. These productions also served as opportunities to make further artistic connections in Chicago, with Clearfield composing music, and other artists helping with choreography (both dance and violence!) and costumes and design. In retrospect, however, the musical connections were more important: Hecht was hearing how more and more music could be connected with emotions and scenes of the maximum interest and vitality: his passions were finding how they could entwine and merge in music. And teaching students how to make audiences pay attention turns out to also be a useful skill set for live musical performance.

A sabbatical to work on his book also afforded the opportunity to return to the piano with Clearfield as a new guide. Eventually Hecht began attending jam sessions hosted by some of his most admired members of the scene: Ulery, Quin Kirchner, and, critically, Greg Ward. On those stages he absorbed as a performer things that he had until then understood more theoretically: the commitment to honesty, openness; the work ethic to do justice, by long hours of practice, to the myriad traditions that flow into the music; the commitment to the humanity and potential of everyone who participates in the music, on stage and off, on any given night.

In 2020, his wife (also an English professor) got a new post at a college in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and the couple agreed that it was time for Hecht to make the big switch: he would leave his professorship and turn his full attention to performance and composition, aiming to make up for lost time.

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The music reflects movement both deeper into the cerebral complexity and penchant for wild dramatic gestures in improvised music, and also a persistent impulse toward guilelessness and simplicity. The opening track “He Made Up His Mind” balances these impulses, speaking in modern jazz language, with a rhythmic basis influenced by ECM records of the 70s and 80s, with Brazilian music and prog rock simmering under the surface. “Waltz for Franny” draws on the jazz tradition for its melody and form, but then opens into mostly free improvisation for a group solo (inspired here by Cortiñas on his recent album Kind Regards/Saludos Afectuosos). “Frankie’s Place” is a direct effort to translate the metrical and harmonic language of Mark Turner into a personal expression. “Pyrography,” almost fully improvised, is instigated by a single, apocalyptic chord from a Prokofiev violin sonata, as well as a dream vision of a vast factory/warehouse space, probably inspired by years of driving by the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, flames shooting from the blast furnaces into the night sky. “Femme R” draws its influence from New Orleans dance hall music. “Come la sete,” Italian for “Like Thirst,” draws on a childhood memory for its low, simple statement, in an ABA structure where the only improvisation comes from the bass and drums. Here Cortiñas provides a wash of sound that is initially from an unrelated tempo. Then, as though weather is clearing, the second statement calms and clarifies. “Idler” is a brief provocation for open improvisation in the style of Ornette Coleman, and “Further Places” a vehicle for Cortiñas in drums-n-bass mode. “Rejoice” is dedicated to Soviet dissident composer Sofia Gubaidulina, and “Dasha” begins with a loose piano transcription of the start of Schumann’s fourth symphony, before exiting into a jazz waltz that both celebrates traditional jazz language and plays with it.

pauljhecht.com