Heroes + Misfits

Personnel: Kris Bowers (piano, Fender Rhodes piano, synthesizer); Adam Agati (guitar); Burniss Earl Travis II (electric bass); Jamire Williams (drums).Audio Mixer: Brian Bender.Recording information: Sear Sound (12/11/2012-12/14/2012).Photographer: Janette Beckman.Pianist, composer, and arranger Kris Bowers' debut album, 2014's Heroes + Misfits, is an expansive and ambitious work that showcases the Juilliard-trained artist's genre-defying skills. Based in jazz but with an ear for contemporary R&B, film scores, and electronic music, Bowers is somewhat of an amiable iconoclast. Raised on his parent's old-school soul albums and '90s hip-hop and trained since high school in jazz and classical piano, Bowers is certainly a wunderkind of sorts, able to cross musical boundaries with ease. And crossing boundaries is exactly what Bowers does on Heroes + Misfits, delving into an elegiac, vocal-driven R&B ballad ("WonderLove") one minute and improvising over a fractured, post-punk dance be