Philly 3

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.