RIBBONS IN RHYTHM

DIATOM RIBBONS STARTED LIFE AS A FUNK RECORD.

Kris Davis was simply relaxing with some music during the off hours of her 2018 duo tour with Craig Taborn when her regular producer, David Breskin, heard the muffled but unmistakable thump of a James Brown groove pulsing from her earphones. “You should do a funk record,” Breskin suggested offhandedly, perhaps at least half in jest. Still, the idea triggered connections that led Davis to think about what Brown had in common with Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, or Henry Threadgill’s Society Situation Dance Band, or the Senegalese pop of Youssou N’Dour, or with Stevie Wonder, the first artist she ever saw live …

But maybe it didn’t start there.

Maybe it started with a run of recent tribute concerts that brought Davis together with several seemingly unlikely collaborators. Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington invited Davis to join her and bassist Esperanza Spalding for a series of memorial shows celebrating the life of Geri Allen, whose music was largely unfamiliar to the younger pianist but whose adventurous spirit certainly resonated with her. A centennial tribute to Thelonious Monk found her sharing the stage with JD Allen, whose molten tenor flow seems to embody the “Pyroclastic” name that Davis gave her own record label, its brawny bop muscle a world apart from but equaled in ferocity by her kaleidoscopic angularity.

Then again, could be that it all began with Davis alone at