Kris Davis: The Solastalgia Suite

Pianist/composer/raconteur Kris Davis dazzles again with The Solastalgia Suite, her headfirst dive into third stream composition.

Echoing Ravel's harmonic conversations and guided by the environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht, who describes his concept of solastalgia as a form of homesickness while we are still at home, Davis and Poland's revered Lutoslawski Quartet, named for twentieth-century Polish composer Witold Lutosławski, sear into the slicing opener, "Interlude," with a furor only those generations threatened with death by storm front understand. But Davis, with a rebel eye, righteous call, and optimistic streak, runs parallel to the quartet's onrush, the voice of a people fighting back.

As she is creatively driven, Davis—violinists Roksana Kwaśnikowska, Marcin Markowicz, violist Arur Rozmysłowicz, and cellist Maciej Młodawski—flip the script with the elegant intimacy of "An Invitation to Disappear." "Towards No Earthly Pole" captures the ear like a siren call drifting from roiling seas. Those rising, climate change seas then break the shore with the fiery insistence that drives "The Known End" into the furtive consequence of "Ghost Reels," whose nostalgic drive and hints of lost TV themes only serve to solidify Albrecht's theory.

"Pressure and Yield," with its mad staccato string attack, posits the planet making a stand against human nature's relentless wanting. As we doom-scroll one environmental disaster after another, dread hangs heavy. Still, Davis, broaching no fools and taking no prisoners, closes her often feral, sustainable argument with a dogged uneasiness. "Degrees of Separation," its reflective closing coming after the frantic body of the piece.

Commissioned by the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, Davis premiered The Solastalgia Suite in New York at Dizzy's Club in late November 2024. The breadth of the music, as well as our deepening understanding that climate change and global disaster are cause and effect, cut through the misinformation and conspiracy BS into a realization and reality that are all too real.

It is a grand thing for both the state of mind and the state of music 2026 that a work this adamant, defining, and binding comes early on in the new year. In the end, Kris Davis and her The Solastalgia Suite set a high bar for other creatives, of whatever discipline, to hurdle. An instantaneous best-of '26.

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