Pianist-Composer Chris McCarthy Marks a Decade in New York with Too Late To Quit – out September 18, 2026 via La Reserve
La Reserve proudly announces the September 18, 2026 release of Too Late To Quit, pianist Chris McCarthy‘s debut for the label and his fifth album as a bandleader. Arriving on the tenth anniversary of McCarthy’s move to New York, the album reflects a decade spent establishing himself as one of the city’s most versatile pianists, composers, and collaborators. Across eight original compositions, McCarthy draws together the many musical directions his career has taken, pairing his signature compositional voice with poignant original lyrics. Joining him are the members of his working quintet including trumpeter Takuya Kuroda, baritone saxophonist Eden Bareket, bassist Sam Minaie, and drummer Steven Crammer, with vocalist and longtime collaborator Vanisha Gould featured on five tracks.
A play on the title of and companion to his warmly received sophomore album, Still Time To Quit (Ropeadope, 2020), Too Late To Quit takes its inspiration from McCarthy’s first decade in New York. Conceived to mark this milestone, the project finds him reflecting on the musical life he has built since arriving in the city. “I was at first considering recording an album of all Great American Songbook standards,” he says. “But I started wondering why I couldn’t just write my own standards? I’ve spent most of my life learning and performing this repertoire that I love so much.”
Known for his “high skill and sensitivity” (The New York Times), McCarthy has quietly become one of New York’s most sought-after pianists, equally at home leading his own projects and navigating demanding work as a sideman. In just the past two years, he has appeared on recordings by Aubrey Johnson, Eden Bareket, Tony Davis, Vanisha Gould, Samir Langus, Marwan Allam, John Sturino, and Alex Tremblay, while continuing to develop his own artistic voice through his own releases, including the duo album Life’s a Gig with Gould and Add a Zero (2024). Whether accompanying singers, contributing to ambitious ensemble projects, or leading his own groups, McCarthy has developed a distinctive musical voice rooted in lyricism and a deep respect for song.
That sensibility owes much to his longstanding partnership with vocalist Vanisha Gould. Named an “Essential Jazz Discovery” by NPR Music’s Nate Chinen in 2024, Gould has become one of the most distinctive rising vocalists on the scene, with McCarthy serving as her closest musical collaborator. Together they have now recorded four projects, including Too Late To Quit and Gould’s forthcoming sophomore album, What An Interesting Girl, due later this fall.
“I’ve logged more hours playing with Vanisha than anyone else on Earth,” McCarthy says. “So I set out to write tunes that could hopefully be mistaken for old obscure songbook songs, with the voice of Vanisha in my mind as I wrote.”
That same sense of familiarity extends throughout the album. McCarthy’s working quintet has performed together regularly since 2023, developing a collective sound that balances careful arrangements with spontaneous interplay. “Our sound has evolved a lot as an ensemble since we recorded Add a Zero in 2024,” McCarthy reflects.
Too Late To Quit opens with “Curtain Call” and “As If,” two songs written in the spirit of the Great American Songbook while remaining undeniably fresh. “These two songs were inspired by a period of extreme romantic tumult in my life, and you can hear me working through stages of grief in the lyrics,” McCarthy says. “My goal was to write melodies and forms that were simple enough that I could fully hear and conceptualize away from the piano. I then wrote lyrics to the sketched-out melodies, channeling my experience into songs that I hoped would sound like forgotten staples of yesteryear.”
Another side of McCarthy’s musical personality emerges on “Overnight Excess,” a feature for the quintet built around angular harmony and restless rhythms beneath a deceptively smooth melody. Bareket, Kuroda, and McCarthy each stretch into high-energy improvisations on what McCarthy describes as “a tribute to the hustler in anyone who chooses to live in New York City.”
“When you move to New York, I think everyone’s expecting to be an overnight success on some level and just start working with everyone you want to right away,” he says. “That ended up not being my experience, and in fact most people will have to play an excess of overnight engagements that will pay the bills just to get through their first few years in the city as a freelancer.”
At the center of the album is “Insomnia Waltz,” inspired by McCarthy’s ongoing work with the Mark Morris Dance Group. “Playing those classes requires a constantly changing repertoire of symmetrical pieces in 3/4,” he explains. “I wanted to write something that would work for a combination at barre but also be fun for my band to improvise over.”
“Tuck and Draw” reflects another lifelong influence, with McCarthy revisiting the funk and soul sounds that first drew him to the Wurlitzer electric piano. Featuring Kuroda, the piece pays tribute to his earliest years in New York. “When I moved to New York I would drag the massively heavy Korg SV-1 around on the subway because I loved this one specific Wurlitzer sound so much,” he recalls. “I wanted to play one song on Wurlitzer in tribute to that 22-year-old kid who was finding his way through the city.”
Elsewhere, “MTA (Much Too Angry)” channels the frustrations of daily life underground into an adventurous, dry-humored excursion, while “After All” once again highlights the musical chemistry between McCarthy and Gould. The album concludes with “Sonder,” revisiting the opening theme from McCarthy’s self-released debut, issued just six months after he first arrived in New York. “One of the melodies I was most proud of from that project was simply called ‘Intro,'” he says. “I thought closing this new album with the first track of the first project I released in New York would be the perfect turning of the page.”
In many ways, Too Late To Quit serves as both a reflection and a beginning. It captures the lessons of McCarthy’s first decade in New York while looking toward whatever comes next, bringing together the many musical worlds he has inhabited. Grounded in the language of the Great American Songbook but unmistakably contemporary, the album finds McCarthy writing the kind of songs he has spent a lifetime studying, performed by the musicians who have become his closest artistic community over the past ten years.
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