By Paul Robicheau

Kris Davis appeared with her current trio of acoustic bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake, a simpatico unit that clearly responds to both the pianist’s genre-pushing forms and spontaneous sense of adventure. 

Kris Davis at Arrow Street Arts. Photo Paul Robicheau

Touted for bridging traditional and avant-garde styles, pianist Kris Davis quietly garnered accolades from major polls to awards including a 2023 Grammy for an album with Terri Lynn Carrington, who brought Davis aboard Berklee’s Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. As the New York Times noted, “One method for deciding where to hear jazz on a given night has been to track down the pianist Kris Davis.”

Luckily for local jazz fans, the place to track down Davis on Saturday was Arrow Street Arts in Harvard Square, part of a four-night jazz festival separately featuring Miguel Zenon, Isaiah Collier and Sullivan Fortner, all presented by Vivo Performing Arts, the new name for the Celebrity Series of Boston. The black-box venue, once known as Oberon, has undergone a design transformation. On Saturday, it sported two rows of cabaret tables backed by a dozen rows of pitched seats like a movie theater. Not entirely intimate but with perfect sightlines and acoustics, Arrow Street Arts offers a larger alternative to the cross-square Regattabar for jazz.

Davis appeared with her current trio of acoustic bassist Robert Hurst (long a sideman to Branford Marsalis) and drummer Johnathan Blake, a simpatico unit that clearly responds to both the pianist’s genre-pushing forms and spontaneous sense of adventure. This proved especially evident during Saturday’s 70-minute late set for an attentive audience, if half a house in the 260-capacity space.

Robert Hurst of Kris Davis Trio at Arrow Street Arts. Photo: Paul Robicheau

While the trio’s first set focused largely on Davis compositions from its stellar 2024 album Run the Gauntlet (centered by the Monk-teasing “Little Footsteps” and the grand, snappy “Heavy-footed”) Davis took a more free-wheeling approach to the second show. That involved newer and older material, a few compositions from her bandmates, and an alto-sax cameo from one of her Berklee students.

Blake supplied the set’s introductory pulse, playing low-slung cymbals and drums spread before him like a table before Davis slipped into tonal clusters to steer into “Where Did That Tunnel Go…,” which the Canadian-born pianist recorded in 2009. The players perceptively dipped into half time and lowered dynamics with ease, yet continued to flex an upbeat tempo. Davis lent nimble, cascading runs while maintaining a muscular framework for the new song, “The Subtext,” Hurst’s woozy bowed bass cycling back to her melodic chord voicings. The trio engaged in a brisk, busy, deceptively complex weave over Blake’s chattering percussion, parts interlocked in near-constant complement — and some unintended competition.

Hurst’s “The Bluesy Bird in Bob’s Backyard” supplied an intriguing changeup, drawing on prepared piano techniques. Davis applied gaffer’s tape, magnets, and erasers to the strings inside her Steinway to cast kalimba-like tones, muffled stabs and – when she ripped out a strip of tape – a sweep of ringing notes. Hurst lent similar bow effects over Blake’s tapped tom as the trio developed more space in their playing, taking long pauses before Davis hit three-note figures to cue returns.

Johnathan Blake of Kris Davis Trio at Arrow Street Arts. Photo: Paul Robicheau

The pianist likewise favored rich, ribbony melodies in the ballad “Lost in Geneva,” cushioned by Blake’s brushwork on cymbals and even a fluttery strike to a thin hammered-metal leaf hanging to his side. Then the trio leaned on intuitive improvisation for “Zone 123,” which Davis described afterward as “a made-up song, partly made up at the airport.” She unleashed spidery shots of notes cut by chords in sync during the fast-charging rhythm section, which followed her in and out of a bouncy Latin vamp like they knew where it belonged.

Kris Davis Trio with Aoi Murakoshi at Arrow Arts. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Finally, Davis brought out student Aoi Murakoshi on alto sax, who acquitted herself well with tart, biting playing over the crack rhythm section on “Clues,” a composition from Blake, who contributed a rambunctious solo at the end. For an encore of sorts, the trio opted for Hurst’s “Albert Collins.” This was a jaunty blues, the bassist alternating taps to the wooden body of his instrument with his left hand and a plucked note with his right, easing the exquisite night to a relaxed close.

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian in addition to writing and photography for The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.