Pyrography II is a record that rewards attention.
Ears And Eyes Records
Paul Hecht – piano, composition; Ben Dillinger – bass; Gustavo Cortiñas – drums; James Davis – trumpet; Michael Hudson-Casanova – alto saxophone
The quartet behind Pyrography, one of the best jazz releases of 2025 — pianist Paul Hecht, bassist Ben Dillinger, drummer Gustavo Cortiñas, and trumpeter James Davis — return on Pyrography II, and if the first record felt like a conversation, this one feels like the same four people pulling that conversation into rooms they haven’t been in before. The first record had jazz as its gravitational center, Hecht pressing against its structures from the inside, with Prokofiev lurking in the vocabulary as provocation. Here, he’s pushing toward an abstract language that feels entirely his own — a bigger discussion, as he puts it, and a more demanding one.
Hecht is an unusual figure — a joint PhD/MFA from Cornell, spent years directing theater, a student of Yusef Lateef, and he even published a book on 16th-century English poetry. You can hear that history in how carefully Pyrography II is constructed.
Alto saxophonist Michael Hudson-Casanova joins on several tracks, expanding the group into a quintet — Hecht liked what he heard when Hudson-Casanova’s alto sat alongside Davis’s trumpet, and wrote toward it. He blends well. Whether the quartet needed the expansion is another question. There was an intimacy to the original four that Pyrography II occasionally trades for something larger and more complicated.
“Seriously” and “LDD” are where the record gets most demanding. In “Seriously,” Cortiñas opens with something that sounds less like jazz drumming than a child beating a pot from the kitchen — a blunt, pounding pulse that the band throws short phrases against, seeing what sticks, before he shifts into something more complex and then back again. In “LDD,” Hecht asked Davis to approximate a violin double-stop on trumpet — the result is something that moans, the piano pounding a repeated phrase underneath while the horn sounds more like an animal in pain than a trumpet.
“WWFH” and “A Lullaby” are quieter, more intimate; “WWFH” may be the prettiest thing on the record. Davis and Hecht trade solos gently, with Davis even reaching for a touch of vibrato, Dillinger’s bass melodic and resonant. The piano opens “A Lullaby” and it could pass for one but it’s too mournful. It keeps trying to be a bedtime song, but then it pulls back, begins again, the piano picking out notes ascending the keyboard while the bowed bass hums beneath it, a moment of genuine comfort in a lullaby that can’t quite commit.
There are three standards on the record. “My Chromatic Romance” is Rogers and Hart’s “My Romance” pulled apart and rebuilt — the band handles it as if afraid it will go away, trumpet caressing the melody, everyone tiptoeing, until something shifts, the bass rumbles, the drums push harder, and suddenly they’ve gone too far. Then everyone steps back and it begins again. It’s a dynamic that runs through the whole record — loud then soft, agitated then not. “Like Someone in Love” is more relaxed, Davis playing the melody straight before the piano takes off, lyrical and fluid, and then Davis solos — bright, clear, a touch of swing, even getting a little breathy before he quiets and restates the melody.
Pyrography II is a record that rewards attention. Hecht isn’t standing still — he heard Hudson-Casanova alongside Davis, liked what he heard, and started writing toward it. That’s who he is, and reason enough to keep listening.
