James Fernando, the prodigiously talented pianist-composer known for equal parts mischief and mastery, releases Philly 3—his sixth album overall and powerful debut recording with his working trio. The nine-track suite of original compositions, plus a single nod to Erroll Garner, finds Fernando at the intersection of virtuosity, humor, and a serious compositional voice that pushes the piano-trio tradition forward while keeping listeners both on their toes and unable to stop tapping them. The album will be released on Spring Garden Records, a boutique label run through the Community College of Philadelphia that highlights the city’s music community and provides real-world learning opportunities for students.
The trio—Fernando on piano, Dan McCain on bass for most tracks (with Sam Harris guesting on “The Parisian” and “Like It Is”), and the incandescent drummer Kyon Williams—first came together in 2023, when Fernando received a call to assemble a project for a Kennedy Center performance on just three days’ notice. After meeting onstage that day, they quickly became one of the most dynamic groups emerging from the region, appearing at venues and universities across the country.
After five leader albums and years of touring and collaborations, Fernando felt compelled to document the trio that had gelled so quickly and emphatically. He wrote with their individual voices in mind while advancing compositional ideas he had been developing: metric modulation as a narrative device, multi-section forms that unfold like short films, and an approach that borrows as readily from classical counterpoint as from bebop. The album is both a laboratory and a love letter: a testing ground for technique and a celebration of the stories that inspired the music.
“As much as I love a big, ridiculous piano flourish,” Fernando says, “I wanted this record to feel like a conversation; fun, surprising, sometimes dark, always human. I also wanted to make music that couldn’t have been written by just anyone with a jazz degree—and certainly not by an algorithm. I crave music with breadth, humor, and contradictions.”
Fernando’s influences are wide-ranging: Erroll Garner’s joyful and swinging spirit is honored in a cover of “Like It Is”, the lyrical and technical footprints of Oscar Peterson and Brad Mehldau inform phrasing and harmonic risk, and Tigran Hamasyan’s adventurous rhythmic vocabulary can be felt in the record’s odd-meter maneuvers. Yet Fernando’s goal isn’t imitation. He positions himself as the next inventive voice in that lineage, pursuing a career path that aims to transcend genre boundaries and situate the piano as a vehicle for broader cultural outreach.
Track Highlights:
• “Persistence” opens with bowed bass and a classically inspired piano introduction before launching into a groove shaped by Williams’ inventive drumming. A drum solo rides a vamp into a Vijay Iyer-esque pocket before giving way to a fierce, independent-handed piano solo.
• “Unlikely Animal Friendships” tells a narrative through music: a 5/8 solo-piano opening, a composed counterpoint section, a melodic but expansive piano improvisation, and a tearful bass solo by McCain, ending in a triumphant reprise that dramatizes an improbable but tender bond between animals of different species.
• “The Parisian” combines odd meters, slap bass, and stride piano for a buoyant contrast. It’s cute, swinging, and powerful. The tune was written with Harris in mind, and he turns it into a standout bass feature.
• “Singularity” is Fernando’s human answer to computerized music: it begins with computer-like processing and blossoms into a montuno—a rebuttal to the idea that machine-derived textures must be inhuman.
• “Neon Kyon” is an ode to the drummer’s luminous energy. Equal parts bop, blues, and second-line grit, the trio’s telepathy is on full display.
• “Beings On Toast” Sparked by a family joke from Fernando’s UK side that riffs on the classic British breakfast, the tune imagines humans themselves as the “beings” served up on toast. The music leans into that absurdity with witty interplay, but underneath the humor is a gently philosophical question about how we value one another.
• “Potions” moves through ballad, quintuplet-driven modern jazz, and a final djent-like section, linking disparate worlds into a single haunted arc.
• “What’s The Password?” reframes bebop for 2025, using metric modulation, compositional structure, and modern vocabulary to carry Charlie Parker’s spirit forward.
• “Like It Is” swings hard and is an affectionate homage to Erroll Garner with enough twists to make it modern. Harris steps in on bass to drive the band’s feel.
Philly 3 is a challenge to the jazz tradition to stay alive, playful, and unafraid. It presents James Fernando as a storyteller and technician, a musician who can make an audience laugh, think, and move—all in the space of a single performance. The trio’s debut recording is an invitation to listeners to follow a band that is equal parts daring and rigor, dedicated to craft, connection, and the kind of joyful risk-taking that makes jazz feel relevant today.