Steve Kuhn describes “Promises Kept”, a programme of original compositions in which his piano is flanked by a string ensemble, as the realization of “a life’s dream”. In the liner notes, critic Bob Blumenthal observes that “Kuhn, a pianist who has displayed many and diverse strengths in a career now in its fifth decade, has reached a point where melody and feeling have taken centre stage…In giving full reign to his emotions, Kuhn has created both his most personal and his most beautiful recording.”

Steve Kuhn with Strings… Kuhn’s lyrical improvisations and the bold contours of his melodies - some old, some new – are set against nuanced string arrangements, by Kuhn and by Carlos Franzetti, who is also the orchestrator on “Promises Kept”. The album is both a ‘departure’ from Kuhn’s work of recent years and an extension of projects begun at least 40 years ago.

One of Steve Kuhn’s best-loved pieces carries the autobiographical title “Life’s Backward Glance”. It is reprised here, along with other favourites - “Trance”, “Oceans In The Sky”, “Lullaby”. And there is an autobiographical flavour to the album as a whole: “Promises Kept” tells us something of who Kuhn is, and how he got this way. Dedicated to the memory of his parents, Hungarian immigrants from Budapest, the project hovers between American and European atmospheres, between jazz and romanticism, between improvised flights and a strong sense of form, and the music expresses both yearning and nostalgia.

Though Hungarian echoes are evoked in the music, New York connections are stronger. When the Brooklyn-born Kuhn returned to New York from Boston in 1960 he plotted his jazz career from a rented room on Broadway, an address that has more than incidental meaning in “Promises Kept” and not only because of Carlos Franzetti’s involvement in soundtrack work, or bassist David Finck’s experiences in musical theatre. A “filmic” undertone is palpable throughout, and while listening it is easy to imagine cameras panning the Manhattan skyline.

At the same time, “Promises Kept” has more experimental roots in a period when jazz and classical music were looking longingly at each other. In the late 1950s Kuhn attended the famed Lenox School of Jazz where fellow students included Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and vibist/composer Gary McFarland. Modern Jazz Quartet founder John Lewis and “Third Stream” initiator Gunther Schuller were amongst the teachers, and the idea of a new form, somewhere between jazz improvisation and ‘classical’ structural rigour, was very much in the air. In 1966, Kuhn and McFarland reconvened to make one of the enduringly important between-the-genres statements, “The October Suite”, for Impulse, a recording now regarded as a landmark by cognoscenti. Kuhn had always yearned to return to its chamber music colours and sensibility. But if Kuhn is revisiting his musical past, it is with heightened knowledge. As Blumenthal points out, “there are distinct differences between ‘The October Suite’, where Kuhn and trio improvised within the chamber-music environments that McFarland generated, and the present collection, where Kuhn’s own compositions provide the frames for each performance. The focus has shifted here to a body of work that is rare in its lyricism and originality. Kuhn has long had a capacity for creating indelible melodic notions and developing them with a sure sense of drama and unpredictable logic. His compositions rarely unfold with symmetrical regularity; like streams seeking their own course, they twist and surge, gaining emotional power in their turns from quiet reflection to bold passion”. (This mercurial unpredictability has been a factor linking Kuhn, as a soloist, to Charlie Parker. The influence is still obvious, and the specific territory staked out by “Promises Kept” can also be easily related to the Bird-with-Strings projects that Parker initiated in 1951, early instances of jazz music striving to liberate itself from the limits of the form.)

While planning “Promises Kept”, Kuhn, casting around for an orchestrator/arranger, was frequently recommended to seek out Carlos Franzetti. Bob Bluementhal: “It turned out that Franzetti, a pianist himself, was also a Kuhn fan of longstanding who not only knew the latter’s work, but could also sing lyrics to songs that Kuhn had written 30 years ago from memory. With Kuhn providing a general directive to ‘make it beautiful but not background music, be spare and heartrending,’ Franzetti fashioned arrangements that allowed piano and ensemble to blend seamlessly while constantly serving the melodic material at hand. One can sense Franzetti’s affinity for this music in the introductory passages he has crafted for several tracks, and in the grace with which each arrangement unfolds.”

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Born in Brooklyn in 1938, Steve Kuhn was fascinated with jazz very early in his life. He began classical piano lessons at age five and soon began to “improvise and syncopate the classical repertoire.”
In his early teens, Kuhn studied with legendary teacher Margaret Chaloff who schooled him in the “Russian Technique”, an invaluable tool for tone production and projection. Chaloff’s son, Serge, baritone saxophonist for Woody Herman, hired the 13 year-old pianist to play in his group. Throughout his teens Kuhn continued to play in Boston jazz clubs with, amongst other visiting celebrities, Coleman Hawkins, Chet Baker, and Vic Dickenson.
After graduation from Harvard College, Kuhn attended the Lenox School of Music where he recorded with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry The faculty included Bill Evans, George Russell, and Gunther Schuller. While at Lenox, Kuhn met trumpeter Kenny Dorham and began a two-year stint, interrupted when Kuhn was asked to join John Coltrane’s newly-formed quartet.
Kuhn next joined Stan Getz’s band, which included bassist Scott LaFaro. After a period with Art Farmer, he formed the first Steve Kuhn Trio, with drummer Pete LaRoca and bassist Steve Swallow. At the end of the 1960s he spent four years living in Europe, where his performance had a significant impact upon local players. Upon returning to the United States, Kuhn began his long-term affiliation with ECM, resulting in a string of important albums including “Trance”, “Ecstasy”, “Non-Fiction” and the collaborations with Sheila Jordan, “Playground” and “Last Year’s Waltz”.
In the mid-80’s, Kuhn co-founded the popular ‘All Star Trio’, with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Al Foster, and launched a new, and still evolving, edition of his trio with bassist David Finck – drummers for the latter have included Joey Baron (as on the ECM recording “Remembering Tomorrow”), Lewis Nash and Billy Drummond. He continues to tour widely, with a strong following in Europe and, especially, Japan where his albums frequently appear in the jazz charts.
Born in Argentina, Carlos Franzetti studied piano from early childhood, and began his studies in composition after moving to Mexico in 1970. Since graduating from New York’s Juilliard School he has worked as a composer, conductor and arranger. Film music has been one priority and movies he has scored include “The Mambo Kings”, “Misunderstood” and “Beat Street”. Artists he has worked with include Joe Farrell, Mercedes Sosa, Chakha Khan and Paquito D’Rivera – the Franzetti/D’Rivera collaboration “Portraits of Cuba” won a Grammy award in 2001. Franzetti has also arranged for the Carnegie Hall Jazz band and the American Symphony Orchestra, and issued several albums under his own name.

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Bassist David Finck has worked extensively with Steve Kuhn since 1986, and with very many other musicians in projects ranging from jazz to popular music to Broadway and classical music performance. Born in Philadelphia, Finck studied at the Eastman School of Music. On graduating in 1980 he joined the Woody Herman big band, with which he spent a year on the road, subsequently working also with Dizzy Gillespie, Phil Woods, James Moody, Clark Terry and Lee Konitz. He has also toured widely with Paquitio D’Rivera’s Havana-New York Ensemble, and worked with Sir Andre Prévin on recordings for Phillips. His recording credits as a pop session musician are prodigious and include albums with Carly Simon, George Michael, Natalie Cole and Peter, Paul and Mary. For several years, Finck also taught bass and jazz improvisation at Bennington College in Vermont.
Steve Kuhn, Carlos Franzetti, David Finck and Strings premiere the material from “Promises Kept” at a special launch concert at Merkin Hall, New York, on April 29th.