On Strange Liberation -- a play on a phrase of Martin Luther King's; he once said that the Vietnamese must have seen Americans as "strange liberators" -- trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas expands his quintet to realize a long-held ambition: to have guitarist Bill Frisell in the ranks of his group. Douglas has once again stepped back from the precipice of his intense gaze at the musical landscape of American culture and turned his focus directly and intensely toward jazz for this set. Along with Frisell, pianist Uri Caine, saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist James Genus, and drummer Clarence Penn join Douglas for an electric jazz outing that falls far outside the purview of "fusion." Douglas has obviously composed these works with Frisell in mind, and this is his most saturated jazz date in some time. His playing here is front-line and full of his trademark counterpoint and atmospheric fills, as Douglas engages both the pastoral nature and the complexity of his harmonic view, making Caine a conflating bridge between the horns, guitar, and rhythm section. The album starts with a sparse melodic figure that borders on modalism in "A Single Sky," Frisell's microphonics holding the edges of the piece in check as Douglas and Potter weave through Caine's beautiful chord voicings in a minor progression. The title track uses a blues framework that allows Caine to play a skeletal funk vamp on his Rhodes in order to bring Douglas and Potter into the fore as Frisell paints the backdrop deep blue until it's his turn to solo. There are silences in the margins and they are used as an improvisational device, imposing themselves from outside on the players. "Frisell's Dream" and "Mountains from the Train" could have been on one of Frisell's own recordings. The latter is a mellow, pastoral soundscape with guitars played backwards and forwards and harmonics floating freely in the solo spaces that surround the melody -- a languid and unhurried line full of color, space, and texture played by the horns. Frisell's melodicism is played inversely here, and Caine fills in the dots. On "Frisell's Dream," an elegant jazz classicism is evoked in the head where blues, swing, and Aaron Copland's wit are on display in a knotty little melodic figure that gives way to an open-chorded Americana that is now Frisell's signature. And on "The Jones," the funky mischief of Thelonious Monk is touched upon in the melody as Caine muscles up the middle and punches through Douglas' lines as Penn's rim shots accent the edges of the time signature. Potter too climbs aboard the melody and Frisell once again becomes the guitarist as impressionist painter before Caine deftly wraps a knockout heavily arpeggiated solo through the entire proceeding and changes the pace. Strange Liberation is a laid-back record in terms of its dynamics, but in its imagination and depth it is one of the high marks of Douglas' thus far prolific career. Compositionally it is head and shoulders above most of the stuff out there, and in terms of the taste in its performance and elocution it is virtually untouchable.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Trumpeter Dave Douglas is in a Miles Davis mood on The Infinite, the first album by his New Quintet. And Douglas seems to have settled on a particularly appropriate phase of Davis' recorded legacy for inspiration: the era marked by a departure from post-bop and entrance into fusion, circa 1968 and 1969. In particular, The Infinite recalls 1968's Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro, which introduced electric keyboards into the sound of Davis' second classic quintet. These two Davis LPs are apt touchstones for Douglas because they, like much of his own recorded output, represent the exciting potential of something new under the jazz sun, a break from the past, the crossing of boundaries, and the discovery of new hybrid forms. Two of the most memorable Davis-influenced pieces, the title track and "Deluge," feature assertive, angular phrasing from Douglas and tenor saxophonist Chris Potter in the thematic passages, which contrast effectively with ethereal comping from Uri Caine on Fender Rhodes and bassist James Genus' insistent pulse. As usual, Douglas gets tremendous performances from his bandmates, who navigate his charts with grace, feeling, and the sensitivity to not overwhelm the material. Drummer Clarence Penn (unlike the others appearing for the first time on a Douglas CD) deserves mention for his mastery of shifting dynamics, sometimes suggesting the oxymoronic concept of a subtle thrashing. Meanwhile, the leader's trumpet seems to get stronger with every outing; Douglas' tone is warm and full on the ballads and his control impeccable on the up-tempo numbers, as his lines gather energy and explode into glissing upper-register squeals. Yet The Infinite maintains a certain understated quality that brings the listener back to that Miles Davis vibe from the end of the '60s. It would be inaccurate to suggest that Douglas is in copycat mode, however; his own personality remains strong, certainly in his own playing but also in his writing and arranging, which can be ingeniously deceptive by masking compositional density with a floating, airy quality. The nine-plus-minute "Penelope," for example, moves through various scored and improvised passages like some of Douglas' more ambitious String Group or Sextet works, while also suggesting the dreamlike qualities of Davis' In a Silent Way album from 1969. Despite all its strengths, there is a slight air of calculation on The Infinite: By also covering tunes by Rufus Wainwright, Mary J. Blige, and Björk instead of the jazz icons to whom the trumpeter more often pays homage, Douglas seems to be aiming at a pop/rock audience and invites comparison to an entirely different Miles Davis period -- the 1980s, when Davis covered Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time." Yet on Wainwright's "Poses" and Björk's "Unison" (both featuring some lovely bass clarinet counterpoint from Potter), Douglas finds avenues for some of his most lyrical playing and arranging on the disc. Overall, The Infinite is a strong debut release from Douglas' New Quintet. Those with tastes tending toward post-bop and pre-fusion jazz should find much to like here, with the album perhaps serving as an entry point to the trumpeter's more chance-taking endeavors.© Dave Lynch /TiVo

To hear many hard bop hard-liners tell it, all avant-garde jazz is nothing more than atonal screaming. The problem with such sweeping generalizations is that some avant-garde jazz is, in fact, quite musical. A perfect example is Dave Douglas' Convergence, an experimental, adventurous outing that incorporates everything from classical and chamber music to Jewish, Middle Eastern, and East European music. Joined by violinist Mark Feldman, cellist Erik Friedlander, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Michael Sarin, the New York-based trumpeter doesn't shy away from the eccentric and the unorthodox, but he also provides his share of discernible, substantial melodies. The inside/outside approach works impressively well on pieces ranging from Douglas' "Goodbye Tony" (a passionate ode to the late drummer Tony Williams), his Miles Davis-influenced "Tzotzil Maya," and his probing "Meeting at Infinity" to the traditional Burmese song "Chit Kyoo Thwe Tog Nyin Hmar Lar" (to which he brings a strong Jewish element). You can hear a variety of influences in Douglas' playing -- everyone from Lester Bowie and Don Cherry to Miles Davis and Booker Little -- but Convergence leaves no doubt that he is very much an original himself.© Alex Henderson /TiVo

Dave Douglas mixes jazz and electronics on 2003's Freak In, but no one need worry that he has ventured into the world of rigid, synthetic beats and machine-precise loops. The music here is far more organic than robotic, despite the nearly constant presence of electronic effects; an undercurrent of burbling, sparkling, buzzing, and sometimes spacy sounds that occasionally swoosh forward in the mix to challenge the more conventional sonics of trumpet, sax, guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums/percussion. The album opens strongly with its title track, featuring a punchy and memorable theme, tabla-driven vamp, and hyper-swinging episodes, peppered throughout with fiery solos and wild effects. "Eastern Parkway" and "Traveler There Is No Road" are two more hot-wired numbers, the former with an insistent rhythm and rockish chords churning away beneath Douglas' energized lines, unleashed in a flurry and then puncturing the air with a pair of emphatic stabs; the latter alternates between sometimes lyrical, sometimes playful interaction and a full-on fusion theme suggesting Weather Report updated for the 21st century. There are moments of understated beauty as well, such as the evocative "November," with its lovely melody, balladic tempo, and swelling synth strings that could've been a tad syrupy in someone else's hands. A number of Freak In's musicians are veterans of other Douglas projects and all are strong performers, yet the album is less a "band" effort than the trumpeter's previous efforts. Rather, computer-based manipulations shaped the sound of Freak In (with able assistance from associate producer Jamie Saft), enabling Douglas to vary the sound palette from piece to piece more than if one of his ongoing groups had set up in the studio and recorded an entire album's worth of material live. As both player and sole composer, Douglas stands as the unifying force, free to approach the full possibilities of each tune individually, but not at the expense of the overall album's coherence. Quite literally crackling with energy and dense with ideas from the first to the hidden 12th track, Freak In is one of the strongest releases of his extraordinary career thus far.© Dave Lynch /TiVo

Trumpeter Dave Douglas's New World CD is consistently intriguing, the type of music that gains in interest with each listening. Douglas is quick to acknowledge the influence of Booker Little (the early-'60s trumpeter who was among the first to emerge from Clifford Brown's shadow) and on this set he performs three of Little's tunes plus his suite of Four Miniatures After Booker Little ("Sappho," "At Dawn," "Shred," and "Rapid Ear Movement"). However, it is the two lengthier pieces, "In Our Lifetime" and "Bridges" (the latter over 17 minutes long), that are of greatest interest. Douglas's originals, which are episodic and avant-garde (but not afraid to swing) while expertly mixing together improvisation with composition, are consistently colorful. His flexible band (Chris Speed on tenor and clarinet, trombonist Josh Roseman, pianist Uri Caine, bassist James Genus, drummer Joey Baron and guest bass clarinetist Marty Ehrlich on the title cut) is able to switch grooves quickly and interpret the frequently dramatic music with sensitivity and wit. © Scott Yanow /TiVo

Following in the mold of his 1994 Booker Little album In Our Lifetime, his 1997 Wayne Shorter-inspired Stargazer, and his 2000 Mary Lou Williams project Soul on Soul, Dave Douglas again draws inspiration from a jazz hero and digs into the music of legendary bop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie on his artfully nuanced 2020 sextet album, Dizzy Atmosphere: Dizzy Gillespie at Zero Gravity. The music showcased on Dizzy Atmosphere was initially presented by Douglas at a 2018 concert at New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center. Included in that line-up was trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Linda May Han Oh, and drummer Joey Baron. Due in part to scheduling conflicts, and a desire on Douglas' part to avoid repeating himself, he decided to bring together a different ensemble for this studio recording. Only drummer Baron makes a return, joined instead by trumpeter Dave Adewumi, guitarist Matthew Stevens, pianist Fabian Almazan, and bassist Carmen Rothwell. Barring newcomers Rothwell and Adewumi, each of these musicians have played with Douglas in the past and bring an empathetic sense of excitement and group interplay to the recording. The interesting choice to bring on board a second trumpeter is no happenstance and falls in line with Gillespie's own tradition of playing alongside younger up-and-coming trumpeters, including Miles Davis, and in the case of his storied big band, Lee Morgan. Here, New England Conservatory and Juilliard graduate Adewumi takes on the role of the second horn, his warm tone and inventive lines working as both complement and contrast to Douglas. As with his past tribute albums, Douglas eschews basic cover arrangements and instead offers a mix of originals and reworked versions of Gillespie's songs that use the iconic trumpeter's music as a jumping-off point. That said, there are two straight-up covers here in the group's effusively funky reading of Gillespie's classic Afro-Cuban bop anthem "Manteca," and their bluesy, plunger mute-accented take on the Cab Calloway band tune "Pickin' the Cabbage'; both of which find Douglas marrying the kinetic energy of Gillespie's swinging '40s ensembles with his own group's edgy harmonies and off-kilter improvisations. Equally synergistic are Douglas originals like "Con Almazan" and "Cadillac," which reference Gillespie's "Con Alma" and "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac," but take them in unexpected directions; deconstructing their groovy and soulful Latin rhythms into dramatically fractured soundscapes. Similarly unexpected are cuts like the moody "See Me Now" with its juxtaposition between Stevens' shimmering high-end guitar lines and Almazan's burnished low-end piano, and the buoyant "Subterfuge, whose sparkling, harmonized trumpet melody still manages to bring to mind Gillespie's bright-toned big-band arrangements.© Matt Collar /TiVo

As a highly experimental musician, trumpeter Dave Douglas has spent his career investigating sounds often far outside the acoustic jazz tradition. Douglas' 2015 effort High Risk finds him testing the boundaries of the genre yet again, this time in a collaboration with electronic musician Zachary Shigeto Saginaw, aka Shigeto. The entirely improvised tracks on High Risk are gorgeously loose and in the moment, a mélange of what the album dubs "electro-acoustic" jams with Douglas' lithe trumpet framed by Shigeto's atmospheric, layered electronics. Joining Douglas and Shigeto here are Jonathan Maron on electric and synth bass and Mark Guiliana on acoustic and electric drums. While Douglas has employed synth elements on recordings in the past, High Risk is his most digitized album to date. It's an immersive experience that blurs the lines between adventurous modal jazz, electric fusion, post-dubstep electronica, and avant-garde free-form improvisation. What's particularly fascinating about High Risk is the live, organic feel of the final product. Although one assumes that Shigeto must have employed a bevy of manipulated electronic sounds, the music here never comes off as canned; you never get the feeling that Douglas, Maron, and Guiliana are running through the motions of a prerecorded loop. Many of the tracks, like the opening "Molten Sunset," begin with Shigeto summoning a kaleidoscopic, shimmering rainbowscape that Douglas and his band ride ever cloudward. Other cuts, like the foreboding "First Things First," conjure images of Douglas navigating his way through a pixelated, post-apocalyptic video game landscape, his steps marked by Maron's foreboding doom-funk bass, his horn furrow-browed against Shigeto's Mars-like sandstorms of computerized menace. While the hallucinatory nature of High Risk certainly brings to mind trumpeter Miles Davis' '70s and '80s electric period, Douglas smartly bucks direct comparisons by largely eschewing heavy effects on his own horn. He blends well into the band's soundscape, but continuously finds key moments for his trumpet's warm timbre to stand out. Even when he does marry his lyrical lines to a ghostly, synthesized echo, as he does on the aptly titled "Tied Together," the result only works to magnify the textural, cellular quality of his musical voice.© Matt Collar /TiVo

The second album from Dave Douglas' High Risk ensemble, 2016's Dark Territory, finds the trumpeter reuniting with electronic musician Zachary Shigeto Saginaw (aka Shigeto), for another set of ambient, highly inventive, and exploratory cuts. Once again joining Douglas and Shigeto are group members Jonathan Maron on electric and synth bass and Mark Guiliana on acoustic and electric drums. As with 2014's High Risk, Dark Territory features live, in-studio performances Douglas has dubbed "electro-acoustic" jams. These primarily consist of computer- and synth-based soundscapes created by Shigeto that Douglas and his ensemble play along to. Shigeto then manipulates and interacts with the band and his soundscapes in real time, sculpting the proceedings. The result is a sound that falls somewhere in between experimental electronica and avant-garde jazz improvisation. For fans of High Risk, Dark Territory offers much of the same otherworldly, acid-soaked vibe of its predecessor with cuts that feel looser, more organic, and live. Ironically, while nothing here sounds as if it was noted on staff paper, these rambling, groove-oriented tracks feel more composed, or at least mapped-out, than the dark sci-fi dreamscapes of High Risk. Where that album felt like it was recorded on the bloodshot-eyed surface of mars, Dark Territory is the sound of a band skimming the waves of an ocean planet. Cuts like the airy "Celine" and the loping "Mission Acropolis" showcase the group's ability to create the sound of three-dimensional aural space with Douglas' burnished tone bumping gently against Shigeto's bubbly electronics, Guiliana's woody drums, and Maron's densely gurgling bass. Similarly, tracks like the ominously textured "Let's Get One Thing Straight" and the frenetic, techno beat-infused "Ridge Hill" find the band diving into multi-mirrored landscapes where Douglas' fuzztone trumpet is looped back upon itself like a message sent to and then returned from a distant satellite. Ultimately, it's that visual and physical tangibility of Douglas and Shigeto's collaborations that makes Dark Territory such a heightened listening experience.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Be Still is dedicated to the memory of Dave Douglas' mother, Emily, who passed in 2011 after an extended battle with cancer. Of the nine tunes here, six are hymns and folks songs that she asked him to perform at her funeral. Douglas originally arranged them for his brass group, then reimagined them for his new quintet and this recording, which he calls "aspirational." His new quintet includes saxophonist Jon Irabagon, pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Linda Oh, and drummer Rudy Royston. Guest vocalist and guitarist Aoife O'Donovan of the contemporary bluegrass group Crooked Still joins the band on five tunes. The Jean Sibelius hymn "Be Still My Soul" opens the set. It's obvious from the start that Douglas is trying to move this recording beyond the boundaries of song. He looks inward, not only inside the arrangements but inside music to articulate what lies beyond the artificial boundaries of language and imposed structures. O'Donovan's voice, in its plaintive yet expressive grain, takes the gentle melody and expresses it subtly, with unaffected emotional depth. Douglas is almost a duet partner. He finds the lilt in her voice, twins it, and echoes it with short phrases. Mitchell and the rhythm section make the tune sway and shimmer underneath them. "High On a Mountain," a nugget from the bluegrass fakebook, features O'Donovan's best high lonesome and flatpicking guitar skills. Douglas plays the part of the mandolin in the ensemble, he solos around inside of the verses as Oh's bass walks it all out. Irabagon's big soulful saxophone break is arresting. When O'Donovan's voice and the harmonizing horns re-enter, the tune becomes something other: it exists not so much in a place beyond genres, but in one where they no longer matter in getting a great song across. "Barbara Allen" offers hints of "Shenandoah" in its intro, but as the horns carve room for O'Donovan, the entire number hovers in the ether, like a poem sung across a mountain valley. The usual solemnity of "This Is My Father's World" is elevated to something far brighter. Elements of early jazz, traditional English folk music, and gospel harmony pour like water between the horns and are given wings by the rhythm section. O'Donovan sings the lyric as if she needn't convince anyone of its truth because she knows it intimately and the band's intuitive accompaniment only adds to that perception. Of Douglas' own tunes here, "Going Somewhere with You," with its reaching crescendos in the choruses, beautifully underplayed solos, and interconnected dialogue, not only complements, but highlights his intent for this album. The closing reading of Vaughan Williams' "Whither Must I Wander" underscores the simple intimacy of the composer's melody in order to reveal its true elegance. Be Still is brimming with poetic elegance; but it is also adventurous in its graceful articulation of folk forms (jazz is one of them, after all), and possesses a creativity and musical sophistication that is above all, revelatory.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Although trumpeter Dave Douglas and pianist Uri Caine have performed and recorded numerous times together in the past, 2014's Present Joys marks the first time they've recorded as a duo. An intimate, lyrical, yet still adventurous album, Present Joys finds the longtime creative friends exploring songs culled from the Sacred Harp songbook, along with their own original compositions. A historical vocal music style that originated in the American South in the 1700s, Sacred Harp music combines elements of Protestant hymns and early American folk music. While many Sacred Harp songs do have lyrics, the genre was largely an a cappella style of music built around shape-note syllables such as fa, sol, la, and mi. Subsequently, it translates nicely to Douglas and Caine's instrumental, classical, and jazz-influenced approach they take here. In fact, fans of Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio's interpretations of Eastern European folk songs, as well as Caine's various jazz reworkings of Mahler and Mozart compositions, will definitely find much to enjoy on Present Joys. Whether it's the lyrical album opener "Soar Away" or the rambling, blues-infused "Ham Fist," the duo seems to perform with an almost preternatural sense of interplay. Similarly, the swinging, New Orleans-inflected title track, the languid "Confidence," and the fractured, impressionistic "End to End" are intimately rendered, endlessly inventive cuts. Ultimately, as the title implies, Present Joys showcases Douglas and Caine interacting in the moment with a thoughtful, creative joy.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Dave Douglas was nominated for a Grammy Award following the release of 2005's Keystone, an album inspired by Fatty Arbuckle and recorded as a soundtrack to Arbuckle short films. Initially inspired by and set to accompany the films of Buster Keaton, that group -- Douglas, DJ Olive, Gene Lake, Brad Jones, Marcus Strickland, and Jamie Saft -- created an altogether modern sound that reflected the humor, drama, and tension in Keaton's films. It differed in form and content from his other electric recordings -- and from the music made by his standard quintet that used a Fender Rhodes instead of an acoustic piano. The Keystone band was very successful creatively. Its lineup offered a new series of possibilities for Douglas to explore an ever-evolving sense of harmony, color, and -- most importantly -- the post-production work that began with Freak In in 2003. This time out, the band is called Keystone, and there is only one personnel change: Saft, who played Wurlitzer, has been replaced with Adam Benjamin on the Rhodes piano. The music on Moonshine, like Keystone, was inspired by a Fatty Arbuckle film from 1917 of the same name and other silent movies from the late comic actor's catalog. But Douglas is careful to point out in his liner notes that these are not merely soundtracks as the music on the previous offering had been. He says that after playing the music from Keystone with the films, he wanted to shut off the projector and let the band's music go its own way; that it was begging for release from the images. Keystone became a working unit with a different aesthetic than Douglas' regular quintet. Moonshine was recorded live in front of an invited studio audience. The gathering offered all the possibilities that shifting and interacting energies in a live setting could offer and a sound booth could not. The differences between the albums Keystone and Moonshine are subtle yet profound. The continuity between them is there, but this music also evolves from the quintet's more vanguard investigations, too, while remaining very accessible and rhythmically centered. There are two reasons for this: the looseness of the grooves on the one hand, and the rather elaborate post-production work on the other. Most noticeable are the varying textures that DJ Olive brings to the rhythm section. He no longer has a fixed role in the ensemble: he is free to move into and out of the rhythmic palette as well as textural and melodic ones, and the kind of editing Douglas did in the studio no doubt enhances this. Olive offers sounds, samples, beats, and ambiences that would have seemed out of place on the earlier album. The other difference is the central role of the Fender Rhodes. Benjamin's playing is filled with dissonances, distortion, dirty, funky sounds, and sustained reverb that are a world away from Uri Caine's use of the instrument in the quintet. Some of the album's standouts include the future funk of the title track that has its roots -- one suspects -- in Weather Report's Sweetnighter album and the J.B.'s' instrumental workouts, the former, by the way the Rhodes bubbles and roils, creating an evolving groove cave, distorting and crackling in the speakers. Jones' rocking dubby bassline holds it down on the opposite end, as breakbeats, scratches, beats, and samples add heft to that bottom end. The solo by Douglas is actually quite melodic and elegant, to lighten it up, but it's followed by Strickland's more insistent, punchy, near honking one right after, with rhythm & blues phrasing as well as tenor genius David Murray's sense of knotty soul. "Married Life" begins slowly, with the Rhodes sounding like a guitar with some floating sample of a female singing that moves along a scarred, mutant jazz line. It invokes the kind of lyric interplay Douglas is known for, but it becomes a downright kind of avant funk. Tempos change rapidly and the established textures give way to new ones in a blink. The dynamics shift so often it feels more like a suite than a single tune. "Kitten" is just pure rhythm -- but with the Rhodes so utterly distorted as it plays a five-note riff repeatedly, it sounds like a death metal guitar; add blastbeats that alternate with nasty breaks by Lake, and it's like sci-fi future funk. When the melody on the horns does come bursting in, it's more to underscore the mutant riffing than to counter it -- too bad this cut is only four and a half minutes long. The set ends with the ten-minute "Tough," with DJ Olive getting the nod to lay out the scratching, and synthetic beats that strut between popping old-school hip-hop, Washington, D.C.-styled go-go drumming, and sampled chanted choruses. The horns adopt a fragment and turn into an exploratory, labyrinthine melody for a few minutes before it all comes falling out on the groove side like drunks from a party when Douglas interacts with the piano and bassline in his killer solo. He pushes his trumpet right into the soul-jazz groove of '60s Blue Note. Strickland plays off bop and M-Base freakiness and pops it all to the outside for a bit before he too succumbs to the manic percussion jump and bump. DJ Olive's work on this set, along with Benjamin's, creates a wild, expansive palette for this band to explore in the future. The music is hip and in your face, but it's strange, too -- funny and completely dark often simultaneously. But it is never morose or depressing. This is not "jazz" in the conventional (read: conservative) sense, but without the jazz heritage, this creative tour de force of 21st century jazz-funk wouldn't -- and probably couldn't -- exist. Moonshine is a(nother) monster outing by Douglas.© Thom Jurek /TiVo