| Jazz |
Paul Hecht is a singular figure, at once writer, poet, jazz pianist, and classically trained violinistand this new album is unmistakably his own. Pyrography draws deeply from classical music while remaining rooted in jazz, unfolding a poetic narrative shaped by refined arrangements that lend the work a distinctly intellectual character. It’s a recording likely to resonate most with seasoned listeners of contemporary jazz, those attuned to its many evolutions and intersections.
Hecht’s musical and artistic sensibilities were profoundly shaped early on by an encounter with the legendary Yusef Lateef. That experience sparked in him a lifelong interest in boundary-defying creativity, beyond genre, beyond medium. He moved fluidly from his formal musical training into the world of letters, eventually earning a joint PhD and MFA in poetry and poetics from Cornell University, during which time he also pursued intensive studies in classical violin.
One could argue that Pyrography is more literary than strictly musical. Each track title reads like a line from a larger narrative, and indeed, Hecht, ever the man of letters, seems intent on telling a story. During his time in Chicago, he has continually broadened his artistic range: as a professor of English, a theater director staging Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, and a working musician. In 2022, he published a scholarly volume on Renaissance poetry with the esteemed Oxford University Press, further cementing his stature as a polymath of the arts. It is from this rich intersection of movement, language, and music that Pyrography emerges, a suite of original compositions firmly grounded in jazz.
Nothing is left to chance in Hecht’s work, not even the album cover, which evokes the world of fine art, a canvas alive with texture and abstraction, reflecting the album’s own aesthetic. The title itself, Pyrography, comes from the Greek for “writing with fire.” The image of flame burning words into wood, of taming heat to carve meaning, is a powerful metaphor for artistic creation, and one that haunts Hecht’s imagination. He observes that “jazz is by nature ephemeral, tied to the moment, to the air, to the room, to the specific meeting of people in a place,” and he poses a question at the heart of the album’s conception: “What does it mean to compose for such a medium?”
It is, in essence, a search for meaning, a need to make sense of the act of making sense. To understand, one must first know. Beyond its multiple resonances, the album title also nods to John Ashbery’s poem Pyrography, in which the poet, with his trademark abstraction and irony, sketches a sweeping view of American history, geographic, social, and psychological:
Not just the major events but the whole incredible mass
Of things happening simultaneously, crowding in,
Headed for history, all of them
As carefully as casually arranged as talk in a room.
In this passage, Hecht found an echo of the jazz dialectic between composition and improvisation. It became his creative launching point for Pyrography, a project undertaken “with care and with nonchalance.”
This is not an album for casual listening. It is demanding, at times elusive, but endlessly rewarding for those who return to it. With each listen, Pyrography reveals new depths, a brilliant, uncompromising work from one of the most multifaceted artists on today’s jazz scene.
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, April 26th 2025
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Musicians:
Paul Hecht – piano,
Ben Dillinger – bass,
Gustavo Cortinas – drums,
James Davis – trumpet
Tracklist:
He Made Up His Mind
Waltz for Franny
Frankie’s Place
Pyrography
Femme R
Come la sete
Idler
Further Places