| Jazz |
On a gray autumn morning in Montreal, the kind that seems to quiet the city into a slower rhythm, pianist Kate Wyatt sits at her instrument with the kind of concentration that makes time feel suspended. Her hands linger above the keys, waiting, listening. Around her, the members of her trio exchange almost imperceptible glances, as if sharing an unspoken agreement. Then, without count or signal, the music begins, not with a dramatic flourish but with something subtler: a pulse, a breath, a murmur.
This is the essence of Murmurations, Wyatt’s latest album, whose very title alludes to the mesmerizing spectacle of starlings sweeping the sky in fluid formations. The metaphor feels apt. Just as thousands of birds in motion create shapes that are both chaotic and cohesive, so too does Wyatt’s trio find order in risk, beauty in uncertainty. Each track unfolds less like a prewritten script and more like an organism reacting to itself in real time.
From the opening track, a bold reimagining of Kurt Weill’s “Mack the Knife,” listeners are drawn into a sound world that is at once intellectual and visceral. The choice of Weill immediately conjures the shadow of Bertolt Brecht’s theater, satirical, political, poetic, and the trio leans into that association, letting irony and lyricism share the same space. The rest of the album leans heavily on Wyatt’s own compositions, with just a few contributions from collaborators Adrian Velady and Louis-Vincent Hamel. Yet the overarching voice is unmistakably hers: precise but never rigid, exploratory without losing sight of melody, deeply rooted in both jazz and the formal clarity of 20th-century classical composition.
Albums like this invite more than casual listening. They ask for immersion. Wyatt’s writing rewards patience: themes emerge slowly, rhythms shift like tectonic plates, and moments of stillness carry as much weight as cascades of notes. In this sense, Murmurations feels like a dialogue not only among musicians but also between artist and audience, demanding courage from both sides. For Wyatt, the courage lies in exposing so much of herself through original work; for the listener, it lies in the willingness to surrender to a music that values depth over immediacy.
Critics have long recognized Wyatt’s ambition. She has been compared to an elite circle of jazz pianists, Brad Mehldau, Yaron Herman, Shai Maestro, Fred Hersch, and praised as “one of the finest artists in Montreal, in Quebec, or even in Canadian jazz” (Cardin/Brunet, Pan M360). Her 2022 debut, Artifact, already signaled her arrival as a pianist of rare sensitivity, leading a quartet with what one reviewer called “melody, wit, and a joy in making music together that brings hope to the listener.” Murmurations builds on that promise, distilling her vision into a trio setting where interplay becomes everything.
That interplay is no accident. Wyatt’s career has been forged in collaboration, alongside names like Kenny Wheeler, Jay Clayton, Ira Coleman, Yannick Rieu, Christine Jensen, Itamar Borochov, Ranee Lee, Don Thompson, Barry Elmes, Mike Murley, and the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal. Across these encounters, she has cultivated an ethos rooted in improvisation and innovation, in sensitivity and interaction. You hear it in the way her trio listens—to one another, to silence, to possibility.
But perhaps what makes Murmurations most striking is not its virtuosity—though there is plenty of that, but its sense of inevitability. Each piece feels as though it could not have been written or played any other way. The structures are complex, even cerebral, yet the effect is natural, as if the music simply had to exist. In an era when jazz recordings often feel like showcases of individual brilliance, Wyatt’s album insists on the collective, the organic, the shared breath.
For listeners who crave music that challenges the intellect while nourishing the spirit, Murmurations offers a rare gift. It is not background music; it is an invitation. To sit with it, to think with it, to feel with it. To recognize that in the act of listening closely, one becomes part of the murmur too.
With this record, Kate Wyatt stakes her claim not only as one of Canada’s most compelling jazz voices but as an artist whose work resonates far beyond geographic or genre boundaries. Murmurations is proof that jazz, at its best, still has the power to think deeply, to move collectively, and to remind us that music, like those starlings in the sky, is always more than the sum of its parts.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, September 25th 2025
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Musicians :
Kate Wyatt – Piano
Adrian Vedady – Bass
Louis-Vincent Hamel – Drums
Track Listing :
Mack The Knife
Murmurations
Sunrise
Coruscation
Finding
Patience
Going To The Sun
Bardo
Succession
Embers
Music Is Beautiful