Chris McCarthy Plays Too Late to Quit
Chris McCarthy has spent ten years in New York playing on other people’s records. Singers, mostly. Then a dance company. Hot House Jazz Magazine called him “one of the most imaginative and impressive voices on the New York jazz scene.”
On September 22nd he is playing his own.
Too Late to Quit is out September 18th on La Reserve Records, all original writing. Four days later it goes on our system, front to back, in the order he put it in.
What we’re playing
A pianist making his own record could have kept it to a trio. McCarthy wrote for six instead.
Vanisha Gould sings. Takuya Kuroda is on trumpet, Eden Bareket on baritone saxophone, Sam Minaie on bass, Steven Crammer on drums. Put a voice at the front of a sextet and the piano stops being the thing you listen for, which is a strange decision for a pianist to make on purpose, and the reason this record is more interesting than most piano-led dates.
He and Vanisha Gould already have a duo record from 2024. Nobody here was hired off a list.
Still Time to Quit, six years on
In 2020 he called his first record Still Time to Quit. Six years and four albums later, this one is Too Late to Quit.
It is a joke. It is also a fairly exact description of what happens if you keep going. Somewhere between the two titles the exit quietly closed behind him.
What he does the rest of the year
Singers first. There is the duo record with Vanisha Gould, plus her She’s Not Shiny She’s Not Smooth and What An Interesting Girl, and Aubrey Johnson’s The Lively Air. He has toured and recorded with Joshua Henry and Renée Elise Goldsberry.
Then there is the dancing, which you would never guess from a jazz record. He tours with the Mark Morris Dance Group in Pepperland and The Look of Love. In 2023 he played Dormeshia’s Rhythm is Life, a New York Times critic’s pick. In 2025 he sat down and documented the tap choreographer Brenda Bufalino’s work for the Lincoln Center library archive.
That is a lot of years spent playing for people who are counting on your time with their feet. You can hear it. This record moves like somebody has spent a decade watching dancers land.
How the night works
Doors at 5:30, which is just when we open on a Tuesday. The record goes on at 5:30 and runs to 7:30, front to back, nothing skipped.
Nobody plays live, and that is the point. A jazz kissa is a room built so the music is the event rather than the background to it, and our sound system was put together for records heard that way.
Warm Welcome runs 5:30 to 7:00 and covers most of the evening: $2 off drafts and wines by the glass.
Free. No cover, no ticket. Walk in, or book a table if you would rather not gamble on a seat.
The record itself lands four days earlier, on September 18th. You can pre-save it now.
Tuesday, September 22nd
Doors 5:30. Too Late to Quit plays 5:30 to 7:30. Free and open to the public, no cover and no ticket. Typically 21+.
667 Franklin Avenue, Crown Heights. Reserve a table if you like, or just turn up. If this is your kind of Tuesday, our Verve Mondays series runs the night before.
Come listen
667 Franklin Avenue · Crown Heights, Brooklyn
No cover. No reservations required but always encouraged.
