Triumvirate Billy Childs

• 1 One Fleeting Instant 06:05
• 2 Carefree 07:17
• 3 Like Father Like Son 07:31
• 4 Heroes 06:09
• 5 Whisper Not 08:49
• 6 Ask Me Now 06:40
• 7 Lazy Afternoon 06:46
• 8 Flamenco Sketches 06:53
• Total Runtime 56:10

Info for Triumvirate

Triumvirate marks Billy Childs’ first trio recording in 25 years, channeling the chemistry of his touring band into an intimate reworking of early compositions shaped by lineage and forward motion.

Billy Childs' Triumvirate arrives as a reminder that some artists spend a lifetime mastering one musical language, while Childs has mastered two. Equally revered as a classical composer and a deeply swinging jazz pianist, he has built a career that resists categories, backed by six Grammy Awards, seventeen nominations, and commissions from some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras and ensembles.

That rare dual fluency has carried Childs from Carnegie Hall and Disney Concert Hall to ambitious projects that fuse jazz and classical traditions, including his Grammy-winning Jazz Chamber Music recordings and a celebrated tribute to Laura Nyro. Since joining Mack Avenue in 2017, he has refocused on straight-ahead jazz, earning a Grammy for Rebirth and continuing the arc with Acceptance and The Winds of Change, all built around a core quartet.

Triumvirate pares that approach down even further. It’s Childs’ first trio album in 25 years, a format he loves but has rarely returned to due to his deep commitments as a composer. For the session, he enlisted bassist Matt Penman and drummer Ari Hoenig, longtime collaborators with each other whose shared intuition and elasticity immediately clicked. “They both make music in a way that elevates a trio,” Childs says. “I knew I needed to record with these people.”

The repertoire blends rediscovered early compositions with standards that shaped Childs’ musical life. Pieces like “One Fleeting Instant” and “Like Father Like Son” revisit his Windham Hill years with fresh urgency, while “Heroes” highlights the trio’s restraint and sensitivity. The album’s second half nods to masters including Benny Golson and Thelonious Monk, before closing with a stripped-down duo take on “Flamenco Sketches,” leaving space for quiet conversation between piano and bass.

A triumvirate implies shared authority, and that balance defines this record. Childs, Penman, and Hoenig listen as intently as they lead, shaping the music in real time. The result feels less like a return to the trio format than a reaffirmation of why it still matters.

Billy Childs, piano
Matt Penman, bass
Ari Hoenig, drums (except track 8)

Billy Childs
Jazz pianist/composer Billy Childs remains one of the most diversely prolific and acclaimed artists working in music today. Childs’ canon of original compositions and arrangements has garnered him the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), sixteen Grammy nominations, and five Grammy awards, most recently for Best Jazz Instrumental Album ("Rebirth") Previously he won for Best Arrangement, Instrumental & Vocal (featuring Renée Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma) in 2015 for ‘New York Tendaberry’, from his highly successful release “Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro’. Other Grammy wins include Best Instrumental Composition for ‘The Path Among the Trees’ (2011) and ‘Into The Light’ (2005), from his much-heralded jazz/chamber releases, ‘Autumn: In Moving Pictures’ and ‘Lyric’. Downbeat magazine states, “...Childs’ jazz/chamber group has taken the jazz-meets classical format to a new summit.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1957, Childs was already proficient at the piano by age 6; he was accepted in USC’s Community School For The Performing Arts at age 16, studying music theory and piano with some of the world’s most renowned musical scholars. He graduated from USC in 1979 with a degree in composition. Among Childs’ early influences: Herbie Hancock, Keith Emerson, Chick Corea and others. He credits classical composers such as Paul Hindemith, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky for also influencing his love of composition. Child’s performing career was also enriched with early-career apprenticeships with legendary jazz trombonist J.J. Johnson, and trumpet great Freddie Hubbard, in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

Childs released his first solo album, ‘Take For Example, This…’ in 1988, on Windham Hill Jazz Records. It was the first of four raved-about albums on the imprint, culminating with the acclaimed ‘Portrait Of A Player,’ in 1993. In 1995 Childs’ released ‘I’ve Known Rivers’ on Stretch/GRP Records. In 1996 he released ‘The Child Within’ on Shanachie Records. Songs from both recordings garnered his first Grammy nominations.

Childs’ multiple musical interests also include collaborations, arrangements, and productions for other acclaimed artists, including Yo Yo Ma, The Kronos Quartet, Wynton Marsalis, Sting, Chris Botti, and Leonard Slatkin, among others. He has received orchestral commissions from The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Los Angeles Master Chorale, The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and The Lincoln Jazz Center Orchestra. In 2013 he premiered “Enlightened Souls” a commission from Duke University featuring Dianne Reeves and the Ying Quartet, to commemorate fifty years of African-American students attending the school. In 2016, he premiered the piano quintet, "The Bird, The River, The Storm", also with the Ying Quartet (a piece they commissioned).

In 2014 Childs released “Map to the Treasure – Reimagining Laura Nyro” (Sony Masterworks), which was produced by Larry Klein and features Reneé Fleming, Esperanza Spalding, Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin, Rickie Lee Jones, Becca Stevens, Ledisi, Chris Botti, Yo-Yo Ma and Susan Tedeschi. In Spring 2017 he reached back to his jazz roots with aforementioned "Rebirth", a quartet album and his debut on the Mack Avenue label.

This album contains no booklet.