RUST: A Homage to the Crescent City by Pianist/Composer Amaury Faye and his NOLA Quartet

 

Amaury Faye and his NOLA Quartet-RUST

The French pianist Amaury Faye is new to me. His latest music, the album released November 15, 2025 RUST, is a robust revelation. I have to thank the persistence and good taste of his publicist Matt Merewitz, for turning me onto this one. When I saw drum master Herlin Riley on the credits, that was one more positive indication to me that Faye's music might offer some welcome surprises and I was not disappointed. 

This thirty-five year old pianist comes out of Paris. Faye has a long list of achievements in the European musical world. He has been a member of the Vogue Trio where he lent his pianistic skills to the group led by Belgian double bassist Giuseppe Millaci from 2016 through 2023. The group is known for modern jazz that incorporates a European elegance and rhythmic variation. Faye has also played with the well-respected twelve-member French collective Iniative H led by saxophonist David Haudrechy.

Faye's history as a potent sideman has not stopped the pianist from finding his own voice as a pianist/leader. In  2010, he released My Big Toe with Louis Navarro on bass and Pierre Ardré,  which was a live recording based on music inspired by pianists Kenny Barron, Oscar Peterson and Hank Jones. In 2016, Faye came to the US to study at Berklee, in Boston, with Joanne Brackeen, and in March 2015, he was awarded Berklee's Jazz Performance Award for best jazz pianist of that year. In 2019, Faye released his first solo album Buran, a grand and introspective eight-piece suite that was inspired by his parent's work in the space industry. Bursan means snowstorm in Russian. It is inspired by Faye's respect for Russian music, culture and the beauty of Siberia's vast expanse and incorporates elements that combine classical, cinema, pop and jazz music.

(left to right clock wise) Amaury Faye, Herlin Riley, Julian Lee and Amina Scott  

With so many diverse influences, Amaury is never one whose musical offerings can be pigeonholed into a particular genre. On his latest release RUST,  Faye is joined by a dynamic group of musicians who add to the possibilities in the pianist's color palette. Besides Faye's facile piano work , he creates catchy, cinematic compositions which lend to creative, lively improvisation by his bandmates. Bassist Amina Scott offers plucky, booming lines that swell the beat organically and with vitality. Tenor saxophonist Julian Lee plays with a searing confidence. A fiery player whose  sax elevates this music. Trap master Herlin Riley adds  that secret sauce factor to the album. The soul and Afro-Caribbean rhythm variations that breathe New Orleans life into this offering.

The opener, "Sirens of the Crescent City," finds Lee's saxophone recreating the urgency of a siren-like plea over Faye's ostinato piano lines. Besides the images created by the music, there is a jagged line here that is punctuated by Scott's booming bass and Riley's simmering drum and cymbal work. Lee's saxophone builds the urgency like an overflowing pot of boiling water. The music aurally captures the frenetic energy of an unexpected emergency mode that a visitor to any big city might experience.

"Walkin' Down the Levee" captures a funky, sauntering musical strut down to New Orleans famous Levee. The Levee, over one hundred feet long and at times finding embankments of over sixteen feet in height, offer New Orleans a lifeline. It allows this unique city to exist below sea level. But the Levee is also a liability. The dual personality of the structure showed its dangerous side when in 2005 Hurricane Katrina ran havoc, overflowing the levees and yielding massive destruction. That being said, Faye's take on walking down at the Levee is more of a soulful, funky ode to the vitality and spirit that he has experienced there. Faye sets the tone with a slinky, captivating shuffle that opens with a syncopated drum entre by Riley and  features Lee's husky tenor stating the repeating lines of the melody, supported by Scott's pulsing bass and Faye's supportive descending piano lines. Lee's tenor work builds tension and excitement with an aplomb that  remind me a bit of Michael Brecker. Faye's piano solo is inventive with a graceful elegance that carries you along. You find yourself rocking your head back and forth to the infectious beat he, along with Scott and Riley, create. If you're like me, this one is on your repeat play list for a while.

"The Railyard," part of Faye's cinematic-like portrait of New Orleans, finds the pianist using the propulsive rhythm of the team of Scott and Riley to create an aural image of constant motion. The team play brilliantly, all four locked into a repeating syncopated synchrony. The music offers solos- first by Faye whose playing hovers in a soup of sounds that have elements of pop, classical and jazz, similarly to the way Brad Mehldau amalgamates and blurs these styles. Lee's tenor follows with his own clarion bursts and the song ends with Riley's roiling drum work finishing with authority to the coda.

"Huckabuck Garden" opens with Faye, Scott and Riley having a rollicking conversation. This has a low down, Honky-tonk, NOLA feel to it. The title refers to a sweet, fruit or sugar flavored homemade frozen desert -a huckabuck-popular in New Orleans and parts of the Louisiana and Georgia. 

The album continues with a ragtime inspired tune "Public Belt Rag." As the pianist Jelly Roll Morton was one of the first to incorporate ragtime time with improvisation, this one could easily be a homage to this inventive style. Faye once again proves just how diverse his musical education and abilities are. Pure fun.

The boogie-woogie blues is on display on "The Barges Blues." Faye's piano work  follows in the steps of early innovators of this style like James Booker, Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons. Faye's pianistic style here, like mush of what he does, always has a certain elegance to it. The quartet all have fun with this one and it has a spirit that puts a smile on your face.

The title cut "Rust" opens with an repeating rhythmic phrase that creates a signature, a theme to the song. Faye's piano lines set the scene, Scott and Riley add the rhythmic counterpoint and Lee's saxophone play a serpentine line over the riff. Rust is a pervading, often a never-ceasing deterioration that is usually associated with aging metal. For old cities like New Orleans, infrastructure like bridges and railroad tracks have their share of rusting. As the cover photo of the album reveals, Faye seems to have witnessed this ongoing fight to keep valuable structures from rusting away and ultimately failing. As an artist, Faye's music is raising awareness of these issues, as well as celebrating the area's celebratory musical feel and I applaud that effort. 

"The Old Empress in the Gloaming" is a very telling title to this haunting ballad. Faye has a poetic flair here. While its hard to know his intention, the title refers to the fading grandeur of an old royal lady. "In the gloaming" refers to in the twilight or in the dusk. The music evokes mystery, a little melancholy and reflection. The music seems to have been based on Faye's experience in New Orleans. One might project that this song is the pianist finding the Crescent City, presumably the old empress, to have been through a lot (like Katrina), with its rusting infrastructure, and its once grandeur is rapidly in decline. Listen for yourself and see if that reading feels true to you.

The closing composition, "Sweet, Chaotic And Vibrant"  is a moving, classically  inspired solo piano ode, probably  to the Crescent City. Faye ends with this emotive piece and he impresses with his astute observations of what his experience has meant to him. If ever an artist revealed his love of a place, with all its warts, Amaury Faye's RUST  is a fitting and deep felt homage to New Orleans.

  

Polish Trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and his New York Quartet "Wislawa"

Tomasz Stanko's New York Quartet "Wislawa"

Creating an environment that you don’t just hear but enter as a secret visitor, this is the music of Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko. From the ruminative opening piano chords of the pianist David Virelles, we get the sense that we are being led to a peaceful place; a place where gorgeously created sounds linger in the deliberate suspension of Stanko’s haunting horn. His sparse phrasing is intimate and compelling. Bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver, along with pianist Virelles, make up Stanko’s New York Quartet and they have absorbed his sensibility brilliantly. They have mastered the art of  deft accompaniment,  superlative sympathetic support of the trumpeter’s musical vision. All the twelve compositions on the beautifully packaged ECM two cd set are Stanko compositions.

On the Wislawa Virelles, Cleaver and Morgan create a wonderfully mystical atmosphere in which Stanko’s playing emerges as a wandering, soulful voice calling out in the haze. Morgan’s bass solo is projected with booming clarity. The album and title song is dedicated to the memory of Polish poet and Nobel Laureate Wislawa Symborska who passed in 2012 and greatly inspired the trumpeter.

On “Assassins” Stanko breaks the spell using a driving, saw toothed pulse. Here the quartet plays the fractured head in tight unison before breaking it down into distinct sections of dynamic ostinato. Virelles, Morgan and Cleaver create an almost mechanical sounding pulsation of a rhythm. Stanko uses this frenzied pulse, playing over the beat with searing arpeggios and sometimes shrieking bursts. When Virelles solos he plays slightly behind the rhythm in a distinct counterpoint that resurrects the sense of jagged excitement. Cleaver’s rolling toms and splattering snare solo creates its own sense of a urgency.

On “Metafzyka” the group returns to Stanko’s signature brooding sound. He and Virelles match each other note for note in a slow and deliberate statement of theme as Morgan and Cleaver fill in the gaps with prescient accents. At the 2:20 mark the song changes time to a more upbeat tempo with Stanko playing in a more free wheeling melodic style that has its own sense of swing. Bassist Morgan creates a nice interlude with a warm, improvised solo that sings freely.

“Derrnier Cri” starts out stating a theme in Stanko’s own exaggerated pace. The deliberateness demands your attention by testing your listening resolve to see what his next musical statement will be. When the song breaks into a more sustainable rhythmic beat it is like an organism deprived of air suddenly striving to breath. You suddenly get a sense of direction and Stanko’s playing becomes more joyful, albeit sparse, as the rhythm section is allowed to set a groove. Virelles takes a prancing solo and his delicate interplay during Morgan’s vibrant bass solo is joyful and buoyant. When Stanko returns it is just a brief reminder, setting the tone to bring his group back to a more tempered resolve.

On Stanko’s “Mikrocosmos,” the music has the barest hint of a Middle Eastern melody before ascending with a series of climbing motifs. Stanko uses the loose framework of the song to search his way through, incorporating slurs, screeches and arpeggios to make his often minimalist point. Virelles, Morgan and Cleaver create a hidden space within, using marvelous interplay that emerges like a flower from a blossom. Virelles is particularly adept at creating a light, ethereal sound on his piano that Stanko uses as a palette on which to add his own stark, well placed brush strokes.

On “Song for H” Mr. Stanko builds a dirge-like melody with slow single note lines played in tandem with Virelles and Morgan. After the introduction the piece takes on a brief, free jazz core where each musician adds colors and textures in a open field of space and time before returning to where it began

The second cd starts out with a Stanko composition title “Oni.” The quiet and fluttering trumpet of the seventy year old Mr. Stanko is heard hear to great effect here. His wonderfully soulful middle register tone can warm any melody. Pianist Virelles offers a delicate, inspiring solo that he plays with incredible restraint.

“April Story” has a cinematic quality. It aurally paints a place where something has  happened that is worth remembering. Once again you perceive a suspended feeling from Stanko’s work. He creates a portal where time seems to briefly stand still. What strikes me is the telepathic interplay that he inspires in his group. While clearly the source of its inspiration, Stanko’s music is almost leaderless, seemingly flowing organically from a collective mind.

“Tutaj-Here” is a medium paced piece that finds Stanko with sleek, swift lines and occasional well placed slurs on his trumpet and some marvelous piano/bass interplay between Virelles and Morgan.  

The free wheeling “Faces” has nice ascending lines played in tandem by Morgan, Virelles and Stanko.  The maestro’s trumpet stabs his way through this one with occasional bursts of high register trills and fluttering shrieks.

On “A Shaggy Vandal” the group is perfectly adept at negotiating the quick twists, turns and changes of time in this composition. Stanko always leaves plenty of space between his outbursts.

The final piece on the album is another variation of the opening piece “Wistawa. “

Mr. Stanko composes melancholic, dirge-like melodies of the barest type; some with definite rhythmic patterns, some built more on a looser sense of time and space. They are marvelous sound scapes that can transport the sympathetic listener to an often times peaceful and reflective place.