Dave Douglas :: news
In a rumpled shirt and straw hat fit for a Brooklyn block party, downtown New York trumpeter Dave Douglas showed a different side to his always eclectic tastes, leading his band through fluid, expansive selections from "A Single Sky," an album released last year that was Douglas’ first big band recording.
Read the full review
"Trumpeter Douglas and experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison’s project, Spark of Being, is one of those true partnerships where both halves are complete and robust on their own." (read the entire review on Eyeweekly.com)
This just in from the Toronto Star: Dave Douglas tackles Frankenstein
Photo: Simon C.F. Yu
Check out this review of the festival, including Keystone’s set, from JazzTimes
The Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company will be performing part of the BRINK program again this December 31st as part of their Saratoga First Night festivities.
Thursday, December 31st at 6:30 and 7:30 PM
SPAC Little Theatre
108 Avenue of the Pines, Saratoga, NY 12866
Part of Saratoga First Night
(518) 583-9622 ext. 132
More info here.
Dave’s 2009 release, Spirit Moves, has been recognized as one of the Best Records of the Year by Redwood Jazz Alliance, JazzTimes, Fred Kaplan for Slate, and Gene Seymour’s list.
A Single Sky also made Howard Reich‘s best of list.
Congrats!
If you happen to find yourself in upstate New York next weekend, the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company will be performing their program of Brink again featuring four tunes from Moonshine.
Mellisa George, Claire Jacob-Zysman, Laura Teeter, Jennifer Yackel,& Andre Robles dance to the choreography of Ellen Sinopoli
Music by
Dave Douglas in BRINK
Brian Melick & Maria Zemantauski in FALLING
Alemany, Duran, Parker, Piazolla, & Saluzzi in SANDUNGERA
Zoe B. Zack in BECOMING
Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 7:30 PM
Tannery Pond Community Center,
228 Main Street, North Creek NY
Admission: $15 adults / $5 students
(518) 251-3751 www.upperhudsonmusic.org
Available as CD, MP3, FLAC, and Sheet Music pieces.
Get more information on this project, stream the record in full, watch videos, sample sheet music,
and read the full liner notes at the A Single Sky page at our store.
A Subscriber package is also available which includes A Single Sky and Spirit Moves (CD+DVD) as well as access to our ever-expanding Subscriber Downloads. Click here to join our community and access this great music.
A quick reminder that applications are due by September 15th for the Composition and Improvisation workshop this coming February at Carnegie Hall. You can download and submit your application at carnegiehall.org. More info on the workshop there as well.
Read Dave’s Workshop at Carnegie Hall blog post here.
Next week, Brass Ecstasy heads to California for a week of shows… Tickets are
still available and the band won’t be back anytime soon.
2-Sept :: Yoshi’s :: Oakland, CA :: tickets
3-Sept :: Arcata Theatre :: Arcata, CA :: tickets
4-Sept :: Fulkerson Recital Hall (workshops at 11am & 4pm) :: Arcata, CA
6-Sept :: Angel City Jazz Festival :: LA, CA :: tickets
Greenleaf will be sharing a booth with our friends at Cryptogramophone at the
Angel City Fest in Edison Plaza, so stop by and say hi.
Here’s a little teaser shot by Geoff Countryman who was managing the summer tour of Europe. Set to the tune "Spirit Moves".
Brass Ecstasy review by Richard Kamins of the Hartford Courant.
“Dave Douglas is one of the most prolific and productive artists of the past 15 years. His newest ensemble, 4 brass and drums, is dubbed Brass Ecstasy and was inspired by the work of Lester Bowie (1941-1999), one of the great free spirits of creative music. Most people remember Bowie as an original member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago but his side projects (Brass Fantasy, New York Organ Ensemble) showed his love for r’n'b, gospel and "popular music."
Surrounding Douglas is a splendid group including Luis Bonilla (trombone), Vincent Chancey (French horn), Marcus Rojas (tuba) and Nasheet Waits (drums.) Rojas is both the lynchpin and launch pad of this music. His tuba is muscular, percussive, melodic, spacious and stunning. Dig the way he dances through the scales on "The View from Blue Mountain" or supplies the proper parade bass line to "Bowie." Along with drummer Waits, Rojas makes this music move. Bonilla, best known for his studio work and gigs with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and the Jazz at Lincoln Jazz Orchestra, is an adventurous soloist, spitting out lines that go in unexpected directions.His blowsy lines on Otis Redding’s "Mr.Pitiful" are joyous while his more mellow side appears on "Twilight of the Dogs." French hornist Chancey, who worked with Bowie in Brass Fantasy as well as spending time with Sun Ra’s Arkestra and the Carla Bley Band, has a mellow tone and his works displays a gravitas that works well alongside the less restrained Bonilla and Douglas. His ensemble work is tight and he gets the opportunity to step out on pieces like the swinging "Fats" and the bluesy ballad "Great Awakening." Douglas shines throughout, his tart tone and bristling phrases flying above the other, lower, horns. His arrangements brings the horns together in pleasing and often exciting fashion - listen to the mournful trombone and French horn behind his muted trumpet "testifying" on Hank Williams’ "I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry" or the Viennese waltz via New Orleans shadings on "This Love Affair."
Noe of this would work as well without the sympathetic and colorful work of Nasheet Waits. As I stated above, he does make the music move but he never overplays. His snappy snare work provides a spark on "Bowie" while his brushes are soft and subtle on "I’m So Lonesome..." There is a lightness and cleanliness to his playing even when he channels Al Jackson, Jr. on "Mr. Pitiful." No unnecessary pyrotechnics just intelligent designs.
"Spirit Moves" lives up to its name; it invokes the spirit and creativity of Lester Bowie and moves with authority and originality. Hear for yourself - go to www.greenleafmusic.com and give a listen. To find out more about Dave Douglas’s many and varied projects, go to www.davedouglas.com/”
July brings Spirit Moves to mainland Europe. See below for countries and release dates. Pick up a copy wherever good music is sold. Or come to one of the many European tour dates in the coming weeks. Click here to see the Brass Ecstasy tour schedule.
Switzerland :: 10 July, 2009
Austria :: 10 July, 2009
Spain :: 14 July, 2009
Italy :: 20 July, 2009
France :: 27 July, 2009
Netherlands :: 31 July, 2009
Brass Ecstasy is in the middle of their run at the Jazz Standard this weekend, the start of a great summer tour. Some nice reviews have been coming in for Spirit Moves. Here’s one from The Washington Post.
Happy Release Day! Now that Brass Ecstasy is out the reviews are rolling in -
"About halfway through "Spirit Moves," his first album with the band he calls Brass Ecstasy, the trumpeter Dave Douglas presents a tune by the name of "Bowie." It begins with the huffing of a tuba, played by Marcus Rojas, and the rudimentary clatter of a snare drum, played by Nasheet Waits. Then, in quick succession: a harmonized horn riff, a swinging trombone solo, a funky French horn interlude and a kind of circus-band refrain.
The track is a nod to the avant-garde trumpet hero Lester Bowie, just as Brass Ecstasy is a nod to Brass Fantasy, a group Mr. Bowie led for his last 15 years. (He died in 1999.) Half of the muscular front line here - Vincent Chancey on French horn and Luis Bonilla on trombone - were members of Mr. Bowie’s Brass Fantasy. And just as that band used to tackle hits associated with Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, Mr. Douglas trots out arrangements of tunes by Rufus Wainwright, Hank Williams and Otis Redding.
But "Spirit Moves" isn’t entirely a tribute album, despite even a couple more namesake dedications. ("Rava" pays brooding homage to the Italian post-bop trumpeter Enrico Rava; "Fats" is a springlike salute to the bop-era horn man Fats Navarro.)
Mr. Douglas’s larger concern seems to be finding fresh ways to orchestrate this blend of timbres. He makes the most of his palette on a piece like "Orujo," which opens on a series of ping-ponging accents before settling into a loping, streetwise groove.
The five-piece ensemble, which will appear from Thursday through June 21 at the Jazz Standard (jazzstandard.net), handles each tune with soulful aplomb. Mr. Rojas and Mr. Waits, by keeping the rhythm astir, help make a sparse sound feel livable.
As for Mr. Douglas, the format brings out a hint of looseness in him, though maybe just a hint: he’s still a more fastidious bandleader than Mr. Bowie, more prone to finding ecstasy in diligence than in even the most rollicking brand of havoc." NATE CHINEN
Dave’s contributing a few guest posts about "Jazz In The Digital Age" at NPR’s music blog.
"Jazz: ‘High Speed And Broadband Ready’
Last week I played one of your more curious gigs.
Across high speed internet, thanks to software developed by Chris Chafe at Stanford University, I improvised in real time with musicians in Banff, Canada; San Diego, Calif.; Troy, N.Y.; and Belfast, Northern Ireland. The other musicians, among them Mark Dresser, Michael Dessen, and Pauline Oliveros, were visible only by video iChat (miserably slow compared to the audio)."
READ MORE…
The first installment of a 3-part exclusive video stream at magnetmagazine.com hit last night. The first video is of Brass Ecstasy in the studio recording the track Great Awakening.
Click here to stream Great Awakening.
Each of the next two Tuesday’s will see an update, the final video posting on the Spirit Moves release date, June 16th. We’ll keep you posted.
Click here to reach the Spirit Moves preorder page where you can stream the full record and explore the different package options for this title.
SPIRIT MOVES - PREORDER
...and we’re up!
Click over the to Spirit Moves page at our webstore to see the packages we’ve put out there for you. The album is streaming in it’s entirety at that page as well. Plus there’s a new video from the DVD that is included in the Deluxe packaging. And there is sheet music, too. And… and… and… plenty more over there.
Subscriber update:
There are two bonus tracks available at the subscriber section - Hope, and Prayer for Baghdad. Both are from the same Brass Ecstasy session that brought Spirit Moves to fruition. Both are available as MP3s or FLACs.
Those who want to get in on the action over at the subscriber section (we’re over 2GB of unreleased material!), we have an offer for you involving Dave’s new record. Click here for more info.
To all who helped out: thank you, thank you.
And to our illustrious label head and artist-in-awesome: thanks for the new record, DD. Have a good time at Banff.
Both the Times Union and the Daily Gazette in upstate New York wrote great reviews of the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company’s performance of “Brink”, a piece choreographed to Moonshine.
"Take “Brink,” to the high-strung, layered music of jazz trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas. This is a cool, ultra-hip work that devoured space while expending gobs of energy. Except for the parade of solos, the dancers hardly took a breath as they tore across the stage. At times, the piece felt like an assault ” on them ” as they exploded like fireworks. At other parts, it looked like a challenge to the audience as they strutted, shrugging their shoulders and snapping their fingers as if daring a glance their way."
From Schenectady’s Daily Gazette:
“Ellen Sinopoli named her newest dance “Brink” because it takes her dancers to the edge.
For 35 minutes, the dancers tear through the rhythmic intricacies of Dave Douglas’ driving music from “Moonshine LIVE.”
Sinopoli said she listened to the CD a lot. She then selected five compositions off the recording: “Dog Star,” “Moonshine,” “Flood Plain,” “Kitten” and “Tough.”
WHERE: The Egg, Empire State Plaza, Albany
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday
HOW MUCH: $24, $20 seniors and $12 children
MORE INFO:473-1845 or www.theegg.org
From the Birmingham Post, posted a short time ago…
"Top of the list has to be the Dave Douglas Quintet and since this band (with one change) played a concert in Birmingham late last year the comparison is easily made.
Then they reached atmospheric heights; here they shot out into the stratosphere.
Douglas on trumpet and Donny McCaslin on tenor shot pithy melodies and white-hot improvisations back and forth, and Orren Evans on Fender Rhodes, Scott Colley on bass and Clarence Penn on drums were equally glorious.
These are musicians at the pinnacle of their game so to hear them pushing themselves so hard was exhilarating."
And posted May 5th at Telegraph.co.uk:
"I’ve never heard him more incisive and focused than in this blistering 75-minute set…"
Greenleaf Music will be releasing Dave’s first collection of big band pieces later this year. The yet to be titled work features a collection of Douglas originals, arranged for big band by Jim McNeely and features the HR Big Band with Dave as guest trumpeter.
A sneak peak of this recording will be heard on hr2 on May 3, 7:05pm local time (that’s 1:05pm NYC). People around the world can stream at http://www.hr-online.de/website/radio/hr2/index.jsp
And if you’re in Cheltenham, UK at that moment you can listen to this show and then see the Quintet live at Cheltenham Jazz.
More info on the Fall release coming soon.
GREENLEAF MUSIC BLOG
We’re about 2 weeks out from the launch of the preorder for Dave’s newest record, Spirit Moves. Artwork is printing, press is buzzing, radio is playing, videos are streaming (for subscribers), and the tunes are blasting from our open windows. We’ll be posting more on this very soon. For now, check out the cover art — thanks to Matt at Get A Clue for all his hard work — and the final tracklist.
Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy // Spirit Moves
1. This Love Affair (Rufus Wainright)
2. Orujo
3. The View From Blue Mountain [available now for subscribers]
4. Twilight of the Dogs
5. Bowie
6. Rava
7. Fats
8. The Brass Ring
9. Mister Pitiful (Otis Redding/Steve Cropper)
10. Great Awakening
11. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams, Sr.)
Phil Johnson at The Independent wrote a nice piece on the upcoming Cheltenham Jazz Festival. The Quintet will be there performing at the Everyman Theatre at 7:30 this Sunday, May 3rd. Check out the piece HERE.
Sessions with Laurie Frink
As part of the Festival of New Trumpet Music’s June series of concerts and workshops, FONT board member Laurie Frink, one of the most respected trumpet teachers working today, regarded as the foremost authority on the Carmine Caruso method, has generously donated 10 hours of time for private trumpet lessons on Friday and Saturday, June 26 and 27 from noon to 5pm. Lessons will be scheduled on a first come, first serve basis and participants may opt to bring a friend to observe. All interested and dedicated trumpeters may contact Laurie directly at lauriefrink@mac.com. Feel free to pass this on to anyone who may like to hear of this opportunity.
After the Quintet’s residency in Essen they’ll be playing at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Tony Dudley-Evans, the festivals Artistic Director, wrote a nice preview of the Quintet’s appearance in Cheltenham on his blog. Here’s a link: Tony Dudley-Evans - Dave Douglas: My gig of the festival.
Two great residencies are happening this month. The first will be April 14 and 15 in Newport News, VA at Christopher Newport University’s Ella Fitzgerald Music Festival and will feature a performance with Christopher Newport University’s award-winning Jazz Ensembles led by CNU Professor Bill Brown and Dr. Lauren Fowler-Calisto. On Wednesday, April 22 the Dave Douglas 3 make their first 2009 appearance featuring Donny McCaslin on tenor saxophone and Marcus Rojas on tuba. 7:00 PM EDT (6:30 PM Doors) at Bucks County Community College Auditorium in Newtown, PA.
More Upcoming Concerts
The new recording with Brass Ecstasy, Spirit Moves, is set for release this late Spring. The album features a new collection of Douglas tunes with the great brass players: Luis Bonilla, Vincent Chancey, and Marcus Rojas and the great drummer Nasheet Waits.
AllAboutJazz just recently published an article on listening to the Live at the Jazz Standard Full Books. Mark Corrato details his experience going through the 7 GB, 22 hours of music in 20 sets spanning 10 days. Likening each set to a chapter in a book, Corrato gives interesting illuminations on the consumption of music, the changing marketplace, and the sizable but fruitful task of listening to the Douglas Full Books.
Read it here…
Greenleaf Music Blog
Why does it sound so good in there? Doesn’t matter what instruments or how loud, it always sounds good. Once when I was playing in there they forgot to turn on the PA before the set. No one noticed…
Jim McNeely (whose marvelous big band arrangements of my music are being played this week in Darmstadt and Munich) tells me he used to have to warn cats not to talk, even whisper, onstage because you can hear everything clear as day all the way in the back row. Architect and friend of Greenleaf Music Frank Visconti was fixing things down there and showed me the floor plan he made. Doesn’t answer any questions, but makes for an elegant design.GREENLEAF MUSIC BLOG
January 19, 2009, 12:58 PM
posted by Dave Douglas
From Steven Joerg, AUM Fidelity:
Dear friends,
This is an urgent notice on David S. Ware’s health. David needs to find a kidney donor.
David S. Ware was diagnosed with kidney failure in 1999 and he began dialysis that fall. He had an intensive three week hemodialysis regime toward beginning peritoneal (self-administered) dialysis, which would allow him to travel. David has been on this self-administered dialysis regime multiple times every day and night since October 1999. While certainly difficult, he has been able to travel, and perform his music undiminished, since then.
However, late this past December, David called to say that after 9 years this treatment was no longer working as it had been, and that a kidney transplant is the only viable option for his survival. Since then a number of friends and family members have offered to give him one of their kidneys. Unfortunately, they have all been disqualified due to health reasons or not having David’s blood type, O.
Some basic/initial requirements for viable donors are that they must be under 60 years of age, do not have diabetes or high blood pressure, are in general good health, and have blood type O (either O+ or O- is fine). The hospital where a transplant would take place is the very highly regarded Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ.
Willing and able potential donors should please get in touch with us as soon as possible at the contact below:
Steven Joerg / David S. Ware management
aum@aumfidelity.com
telephone: 718 854 2387
We will then get them directly in touch with the Kidney Transplant Center at RWJU Hospital to begin the screening process for donor viability.
Thank you on behalf of David S. Ware;
please feel free to forward this notice.
Steven Joerg
AUM Fidelity
Jazz.com invited me to pick twelve tracks of Don Cherry and comment. This article will also be posted at their site along with great picks from other artists on other artists. Lots going on over there, worth a visit. I am grateful to Jazz.com, Ted Panken, and Ted Gioia for prodding me to do this. They asked for ratings for each track and, besides not liking the whole rating game, it would be seriously presumptuous of me to rate the music of this giant of American music. I requested that they enter ‘NA’ or, Not Applicable. I welcome your comments about that, as well as about the inevitable things I missed, errors, etc…
The second of four residency performances at Philharmonie Essen arrives this Saturday in Essen, Germany. The performance will feature music from the Keystone book with a selection of tunes set to video including a new work from Bill Morrison.
Here’s a taste…
Even with centuries of innovation in brass instrument making, the trumpet is still basically a metal tube through which one is expected to blow, vibrating the lips against the opening at one end. It doesn’t matter who’s making the horn. That’s basically all it is.
The notes come out following the harmonic series: beginning with a low fundamental tone and ascending, according to the laws of physics, by ever smaller intervals until the top of the range, where the series ends in pure, densely packed chromatics. Add three valves and you’ve got seven harmonic series available: 0, 1, 2, 12, 23, 13, and 123.* In the low range all the fundamental notes have their own fingering. In the high range, where the seven series converge, almost any note can be played with any fingering.
In addition, there is the quality of the attack, the flow of air, and the flexibility in moving from one note to another. All musical expressiveness on the trumpet stems from control of these few variables.
Freddie Hubbard was one of the most skilled practitioners of this art. The joy and freedom in his playing came in part from this complete mastery of the instrument. It always sounded effortless. In the high range his control of air was so sublime that his lines sometimes defied the laws of physics and harmony, resolving in odd ways just by dint of his total domination of the instrument. Freddie grabbed the opportunity of those alternate fingerings to pop in and out of chromatic chord and scale ideas. His attack was always precise and his dodging and darting lines flowed like water through a sluiceway.
A lot of people can play the trumpet well. Technical mastery is far from the reason Freddie Hubbard is the most imitated player of the last half-century. It was what he did with that mastery—the inventiveness of his harmonies and the ingenuity of his rhythmic propulsion. Freddie’s impact is so profound that you often don’t have to mention him when noting a young player’s influences. Freddie is always there. He had a lot to say, and we all soaked it up.
As a young player Freddie listened to Clifford Brown for sure. He also drank deeply at the well of Clifford’s inspirations: Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, and Louis Armstrong, among many others. But trumpeters aren’t the only influence for trumpeters. In the same way that Clifford Brown talked about putting Charlie Parker’s language on the trumpet, Freddie Hubbard brought the practices of John Coltrane, his occasional practice-mate, directly into the brass world.
Freddie’s lines drove the harmony. Freddie toyed with the music, anticipating and delaying resolutions in unexpected ways. But at the end of the day it was the maturity of his improvisations that were the most powerful aspect of his musical expression. Freddie at his best could go nuts with the lines and the harmony, but he would also ease off and play with bluesy simplicity when it more effectively served the moment.
The VSOP records of the mid-seventies show Freddie in an unusual and revealing light. This had been Miles Davis’ band in the mid-sixties: Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. With Miles this music was spare and enigmatic—no extra notes and no bravura energy added to the brilliance of the tunes. Freddie brings something quite different. He is generous with notes and all flowing grace. A different kind of grace, like a gregarious toastmaster. Freddie is so on top of the music and the horn that he is unable to restrain the joyful exuberance of his ideas and his ability to pull them off.
That explains a lot about why he is more imitated than Miles Davis—his style gave so much more material to hold onto. Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard were two very different visions of the modern esthetic. Echoes of Miles are heard a lot, but you hear the sound of Freddie everywhere.
Trumpeters have often been tragic figures in American life. Freddie Hubbard was no different. The last fifteen years of his life saw him battling a disastrous lip injury that limited his ability to execute his ideas. Freddie also battled the forces of fashion - by his own admission (though not necessarily that of his fans) he spent some years making music that did not live up to his high standards. By the early seventies he had done pretty much everything that could be done: documented many masterpiece solos, participated in dozens of seminal recordings, elaborated a personal vision for the instrument and the music that still stands up today. Where was he to go? That kind of legacy and pressure at such a young age is hard to imagine.
We can be thankful for the joy Freddie Hubbard brought to us in his seventy years on the planet. He will be missed.
+
* For those curious why 3 is not included among the seven basic fingerings—3 creates a length of tubing almost exactly identical to 12, with 12 being slightly more in tune. 3 is a widely used alternate fingering, but is not considered among the basic positions.
Darcy at Secret Society has a great collection of links to other thoughts about Freddie Hubbard, as well as some perceptive thoughts of his own.
It’s the rare mid-career artist who can write a perceptive and necessary autobiography. Writing takes time away from other creative tasks, and the distancing perspective of later life is most often what makes an insightful artist memoir hum. At sixty-one, John Adams is, by Elliott Carter standards, basically a tadpole. But this is an intensely personal and perceptive book about music, life, politics, and the field. It’s also an invaluable exploration of how an artist develops a voice, as well as a deeply felt rendering of Adams’ take on American music and musicians of all varieties, including honest appraisals of his own work. Adams’ self-awareness in examining his music never seems like latent, after the fact pop psychology. He’s brutally honest about his own work, often pointing out its shortcomings. He also takes the opportunity to mount the occasional spirited and well-merited defense.
Generous with others, there is plenty of discussion of the music of his contemporaries. Adams is brave enough to find fault with almost everyone, while also pointing out strengths with admiration. At times you get the feeling he’s airing out his own dislikes in order to more accurately limn the boundaries of his personal tastes. His writing about music is not only lucid and technically descriptive, it’s also full of spiky detail:
"Craggy, prickly twelve-tone pieces like Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto and the Variations for Orchestra continue to give me a thrill in a similar way that Francis Bacon can do. Moses und Aron, Schoenberg’s Old Testament fable of truth and falsehood, has the implacable voice of Talmudic authority written on desert stone. Berg’s Lyric Suite for string quartet is suffused with the restless and mercurial lyricism of an overwrought, hypersensitive lover. And Webern’s hyper-compressed chamber music, small and tightly compacted like a heavy atom, seems forever on the point of vanishing into pure expressive energy."
Adams isn’t afraid to wade into politics and world affairs, often farther than he needs to, albeit with thorough and fully thought-out positions. As a composer, one empathizes as he talks about the reception to Death of Klinghoffer - the resulting controversy is not the discussion he intended in writing the piece, but when it veered into sound bite politics Adams was not afraid to rebut without stooping to AM radio shock jock posturing.
Most of all Adams takes you on his journey through music: the strange and often mysteriously convoluted path of a life led in search of one’s voice, honestly and often painstakingly examining the world within and without. He gives a vivid sense of how identity revolves around national, cultural, and personal realities, resulting in a one-of-a-kind compositional tableau.The first John Adams piece that really grabbed me was the Violin Concerto, in a recording by Gidon Kremer with Kent Nagano conducting. The spiraling ascent of the first movement shed a new light on the processes of Minimalism and Adams’ work for me, bringing a deep appreciation for the music of his that I know. His search for a consciously ‘American’ sound, much like Copland years earlier, endears.
It’s not until chapter 11 that there is a hint of the "and then I wrote" vibe, but it’s a minor complaint because what he has to say is so interesting. He writes of honoring Ives with My Father Knew Charles Ives without abandoning the hard-fought language of his own. He describes a challenging collaboration with June Jordan. And in speaking about musicians he captures the confessional spirit and conversational tone that ranks this among the best of the species of "composers dishing on composers." Knowledgeable about jazz and other improvised music, Adams remains explicit in stating that he retains full control of his completely notated scores. That puzzles me, especially with his long interest in jazz and electronic sound invention. But that’s his way, and why not?
Just the other night we watched Doctor Atomic on public television’s Great Performances and it made me wonder what’s next from this thoughtful and imaginative composer who has also excelled, in the most American way, by wearing many other hats. I’ll happily wait 61 years for a Volume 2.
The recording session for the upcoming brass quintet record took place this week… More info on the Greenleaf release in 2009.
Moonshine was awarded a 2008 Choc de l’ann?e from Jazzman.
Is now available, including a new set of Quintet pieces heard on Live at the Jazz Standard. For a little while, you can get a free sample - a four page lead sheet of A Single Sky, first heard on the Quintet plus Bill Frisell album, Strange Liberation. Click HERE for this and other sheet music.
This great Catalan composer (1893 - 1987) has been interpreted by pianists such as Bill Carrothers, Michael Jefry Stevens, Frank Kimbrough, Richie Beirach, and many others. Catalan pianist Lluis Vidal invited Dave to play some of his music with saxophonist Perico Sambeat, bassist Masa Kamaguchi, and drummer David Xirgu. In addition to performances at both the Barcelona and Madrid Jazz Festivals, the project was also recorded (produced by Contrabaix) and is set for release some time next year.
Mompou was a beautiful composer of (mostly) short piano pieces, very lyrical and sometimes reminiscent of Satie, Ravel, Debussy, Janacek, occasionally Scriabin and Chopin, even. There is a four CD set of the composer playing his own complete piano works on Brilliant Classics.
This is the first of four residency performances at Philharmonie Essen, featuring four different Douglas groups. This concert will juxtapose rarely performed chamber works from the Dave Douglas catalogue with compositions from the drummerless trio DD3, featuring Mark Feldman (violin) and Scott Colley (bass).
musikFabrik will perform:
Ascendant Sextet (2007) for clarinet, string quartet, and piano
Irrational Exuberance (2003) for violin and piano
Togetherness (2002) for oboe, clarinet, trumpet, violin, viola, cello, bass
This has been an inspiring season for me personally - getting to briefly play with Wayne Shorter at the SFJAZZ Gala, as well as hearing him several times during the festival season. Wayne’s music has always been very important for me, but at this moment he has reached a pinnacle in his work that touches profoundly on many directions in modern music. I am thankful to be able to witness this moment.
As far as my own work goes, this season produced several big new pieces:
Letter From America, my first major suite for Big Band, was performed at the JazzBaltica Festival with Joe Lovano, James Genus, Clarence Penn and myself as soloists. Plans are afoot for a recording of this piece.
Dave Douglas 3, formerly Magic Circle, performed around the world in several incarnations. This is the small drummerless trio music I have been writing in memory of Jimmy Giuffre. This fall I will be touring in Europe with Mark Feldman and Scott Colley performing these pieces.
Chicago Calling: Bowie, Barack, and the Brass Ring, a new suite for the brass quintet Brass Ecstasy, premiered at the Chicago Jazz festival. This band will record later this year for a release in Spring 09.
Festival of New Trumpet Music - FONT Music 08 just unveiled the schedule. This is the 6th version of the festival I cofounded in 2003 with Roy Campbell. www.fontmusic.net.
Banff Workshop: in my 6th season as artistic director we saw Yosvany Terry, Miguel Zenon, Wayne Krantz, The Bad Plus, Laurie Frink, Ingrid Jensen, Clarence Penn, Rudresh Mahantappa, Dan Weiss, Thomas Morgan, and many others visit the Centre for the Arts.
Fresh off of their latest album, Moonshine, this group takes to the stage at the famous Jazz Standard in New York, New York for 4 consecutive nights playing 2 sets per night. With plenty of ear-bending sonics and relentless polyrhythmic funk, these performances twist and turn Douglas’ silent era-inspired compositions in ways that only a live performance would allow. The band is set to debut new compositions by Douglas, and play music from Dave’s 2003 release, Freak In, on top of the Keystone song book.
The Full Book gains you access to all 8 unique sets of music available in MP3 and FLAC formats. Click HERE to hear tracks and explore this title.
Dave is blogging and creating listening streams and more at Greenleaf Music. Please visit Greenleaf to support the music of Dave and many others. This is a new thing for the record industry and we hope you will enjoy being a part of it. Greenleaf Music and Dave will thank you profusely.
The latest CD by the Dave Douglas Quintet is the collection: DDQ Live at the Jazz Standard, featuring all the new quintet tunes that have never been released on CD. Buy it now at Greenleaf Music, it’s a specially priced 2 CD set.
Also available at Greenleaf Music: Dave Douglas Quintet, Live at the Jazz Standard, The Full Book. A recording of the entire week 12/5 -12/10, 2006. Available as a package of 12 one-hour sets for $70, or individual sets for $7. It’s all at Greenleaf Music.
And don’t forget the studio release Meaning and Mystery. The Dave Douglas Quintet, and Meaning and Mystery features Donny McCaslin tenor sax, Uri Caine on fender rhodes, and James Genus and Clarence Penn, bass and drums.
Other titles by Donny McCaslin, Michael Bates, Kneebody, Nicole Mitchell, and more.
Now available at Greenleaf Music, Moonshine features the musicians from Keystone in an all original production:
DJ Olive, Gene Lake, Brad Jones, Adam Benjamin, Marcus Strickland. Order yours HERE.
Dave’s composition Blue Latitudes, for three improvisers and chamber orchestra, will be performed for the first time in the U.S. on September 16, 2007 at Manhattan School of Music in New York. Mark Gould will be conducting and the soloists will be Dave, Mark Dresser, and Gerald Cleaver. It’s part of the Festival of New Trumpet Music, at www.fontmusic.net