Dave Douglas Music

The avant-gardeness of Dave Douglas takes a back seat this time around. And although I love the spark of a good avant-garde jazz ensemble, The Infinite is still an enjoyable listen simply because Dave Douglas, Chris Potter, and Uri Craine have not forgotten how to play simple melodies and do them well.

The first song, the Rufus Wainwright composition Poses, illustrates this perfectly. Douglas' understanding of lyricism (if anyone even knows what that word truly means) makes you believe that the melody line was written for jazz trumpet rather than vocal pop. You can almost see the light bounce off of Douglas' polished trumpet as the notes move up and down with such ease.

The remaining eight songs continue this subtle trend. Taking a cue from Miles In The Sky, Douglas and company cruise down easy street. The Infinite is not an innovative album, but it proves that Dave Douglas can be just as effective when he's calm as when he's pulling out all the stops.

I can't argue with the reviewers below who note the Stylistic similarities to Miles 2nd Quintet sound but I hesitate to emphasise that aspect of this fine recording because it would not do justice to the excellent musicianship on display here. Dave Douglas and his group have produced a very fine collection that stands on it's own merit. The electric piano does give the set an overall retro feel but it is used to great effect and the music sounds fresh and very energetic to my ear. I'd highly recommend this CD and I would love to catch this group perform live.

as another reviewer has mentioned, one of Dave Douglas's goals on this album was to pay homage to Miles Davis.

track #3 'Penelope' employs the melody line from 'Boplicity' (a Davis/Gil Evans co-composition, on which he took the pseudo-credit Cleo Henry - after the trumpeter's mother - first recorded by Miles on Birth Of The Cool) played s l o w l y - in contrast to the original's rapid bop pace - while Douglas' band/rhythm section chugs along funkily behind him with the 'Miles Runs The Voodoo Down' (recorded in 1969 on Bitches Brew) backbeat.

there are other coded and explicit nods to Miles' music within the collage of this beautifully recorded album . . . listen closely and enjoy.

I bought this CD after hearing Dave Douglas live in NYC. Douglas is at the forefront of jazz creativity today, always paying respect to the past yet forging a style of his own. INFINITE shows off his patient improvisation and arranging skills. Particularly impressive is Douglas' supporting cast, esp. Chris Potter, a under-recognized saxaphonist who adds a great deal to this album. Uri Caine is also very enjoyable on Fender Rhodes piano. Some of the tunes will be abrasive to the softer-skinned jazz enthusiast, but are worth exploring. For a more soothing tune try "Poses", one of Douglas' arrangements that is sure to create a melodic experience you will not soon forget. I've listened to it dozens of times. Overall, great album.

Douglas's avowed purpose here was to create a straightforwardly "beautiful" album that paid homage to Miles Davis. He's achieved that goal, but somehow the results don't grab me as much as his spikier or more idiosyncratic work. It's as always with Douglas a classy band. The excellent Uri Caine is on Fender Rhodes, & Chris Potter contributes saxophone plus a little bass clarinet. The material is mostly originals, plus three contemporary pop tunes--nothing from Davis's repertoire, but the music is full of less explicit references to Davis--snippets of his past compositions, favourite riffs & licks, &c. It's entertaining to simply follow along & admire the skill with which Douglas has fit these references in, & yet I find the album a bit precious--not an adjective I'd use of any Miles Davis album, & therein lies its main failing. I'm also not a big fan of Chris Potter--I can't quite put my finger on the reason, but there's something odd about his playing: on the one hand he plays confident, brash in-the-tradition tenor (no surprise that he cranked out the obligatory album of homages, _Gratitude_, when he got picked up by Verve)--& yet there's something a bit exaggerated--even caricatured--about his playing. As with James Carter, it's hard to decide whether his playing represents a youthful invigoration of the tenor-sax tradition or a kind of decadence. Anyway, I'm being too curmudgeonly about both Potter & about this album--it's in many ways quite satisfying & pleasing. Yet I find that I turn to Douglas's most abrasive work--albums like _Witness_ or _In Our Lifetime_ or _Constellations_--far more than _The Infinite_. It's probably a good "crossover" album, which will convince jazz fans suspicious of Douglas's farther-out recordings. But it doesn't in the end seem to me Douglas's best work. The tracks I like most are actually the pop-tune covers, & this would be an interesting avenue for Douglas to explore further.

It's really hard to think of anything bad to say about this cd, it's jazz and it sounds pretty darn good. John Zorn plays alto sax on this cd along with Dave Douglas on trumpet, Greg Cohen on bass, and Joey Baron on drums. There's definitely a very good vibe to this cd that carries through all 10 tracks.

If you're into jazz or avante garde music and haven't heard of Zorn, you have alot to look forward to. This cd could be considered one good place to begin that exploration.

I delayed in buying this CD for a long time because I thought it was going to be 1920's style music to go along with the Fatty Arbuckle Theme. This is not the case. This is some of Dave Douglas' most modern work (perhaps his most modern work). The group features DJ olive on turn tables, Jamie Saft on Wurlitzer, Brad Jones, on bass and Mark Strickland, on sax. The sound is a little bit Miles Davis 70's era, a little bit Herbie Hancock Headhunters, with a twist of modern electronica. Most of the songs a catchy tunes and the group takes turns ripping solos over the funky grooves. The CD also comes with a Fatty Arbuckle DVD with an edited version of the album that is "timed-up" to the movie. Personally I don't think the music really fits very well w/ Fatty Arbuckle. I think Dave just wanted to pay a tribute to Fatty. Regardless I like the music, and I think anyone following Dave's recent work will enjoy this CD. I don't think the songs are quite the compositional masterpieces that you'll find on Strange Liberation, Meaning & Mystery, and Live at the Jazz Standard. These songs are a bit simpler and more jammed out. Nonetheless its great music and I love it.

jazz artists like joe lovano and james carter have persona, the late lester bowie, with and without the art ensemble of chicago, was theatric, and more than a few jazz artists are arrayed in sartorial splendor, whether wearing hip threads or wearing their audience, all this lends to live performance and lends visual memory to recordings, if you've seen the live performances-and if not, then you should just like what you hear, which is why i listen to music anyway, and come away with favorite artists and favorite recordings.

in the case of dave douglas, when he's using the late 60s and later music of miles davis as a springboard, i like his quintet work. or if he includes instruments not usually associated with jazz to comprise a quintet.

keystone is made a sextet by including dj olive on turntables. otherwise, it's a quintet. the cd was nothing spectacular, which didn't surprise me.

i watched the fatty arbuckle movie and was drawn into the film from the opening notes of the music. for me this proved to be dave douglas' theatre and clothes. after watching the movie, i have listened to the cd several times, each time with the visual memory of the fatty arbuckle movie and soundtrack. i've listened to a couple of other dave douglas quintet cds, and with keystone in mind i find them more enjoyable than in the past.

i'm not a fan of silent film, and chances are i would not had enjoyed this one without douglas' music. there's a wedding night turns disastrous sequence that makes fun brilliantly of society's mores and cinematic prudery of the day involving the stricture against a man and woman being in the same bed together for any reason. watch the film, listen to the music, they go together, hand in glove.

Dit is voor mij een zeer goede CD, in het al zeer rijke oeuvre van Dave Douglas. Prachtig uitgegeven CD en DVD, de muziek past perfect bij de stille zwartwitfilm. Heb je de kans om dit ook live te zien, doen !

Trumpeter Dave Douglas is one of the hardest working men in the jazz business, so it should come as no surprise that he's added a new record label, Greenleaf Music, to his long list of projects... and it's easy to understand why. The major record labels (there are basically two of them now, right?) really have nothing to offer ambitious, innovative musicians anymore -- no wonder so many others are starting their own labels too (including John Zorn, Philip Glass, Michael Torke, John Eliot Gardiner, and the London Symphony Orchestra, to name just a few...)

Keystone is Dave Douglas' audiovisual tribute to the notorious yet somewhat neglected and underappreciated comedic silent film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. This album presents eleven of Douglas' original Arbuckle "movie scores" (along with the actual films on the DVD) performed by Douglas on trumpet, Jamie Saft on wurlitzer electric piano, drummer Gene Lake, saxophonist Marcus Strickland, Brad Jones on bass, and the apparent go-to guy for avant-jazz turntables, DJ Olive.

Douglas and this band are in a funky, chunky, fusiony, almost grungy mode with tunes that are punchy, dry, and muscular -- no wistful Charms of the Night Sky melodies here. There's plenty of fuzzy, nearly distorted wurlitzer in the texture at times, and DJ Olive weaves weird electronic noisescapes and processing effects under the surface throughout. Gene Lake's drumming is especially aggressive, propulsive, and prominent in the mix -- and yes, it kicks ass.

In fact, Keystone is probably the most successful and enjoyable jazz/rock/electronic fusion album I've heard in a long time (and it seems like there have been plenty of them lately.) Sure, I like Uri Caine's Bedrock, The Bad Plus, and Cinematic Orchestra just fine too, but Douglas' Keystone band is just more exciting and, well, fun. Yes, sometimes the soprano sax soloing goes on a bit too long, and occasionally DJ Olive's contributions are more annoying than interesting, but usually everyone in the band is doing something to contribute to the music and it all comes together remarkably well -- and, unlike so many neo-jazz fusion groups, it sounds like they're actually enjoying themselves.

The DVD included with Keystone is really an essential element of this whole project (unlike most throwaway "bonus DVDs" these days.) I had never seen a Fatty Arbuckle movie before watching this, and I was completely amazed at how bizarre and entertaining a 1916 silent film could actually be and how well Douglas' new music complemented the action on screen. The DVD contains the 34 minute Fatty & Mabel Adrift, an epic tale of love, jealousy, and real estate; and the five minute Just Another Murder "music video" (I guess Dave wants his MTV) which is a wild slapstick collage of scenes from Fatty's Tintype Tangle featuring all kinds of life-threatening situations. It's all fascinating, strange, and even sort of funny now and then.

In short, Keystone (both the CD and the DVD) is a rousing success, and gets Dave Douglas' new Greenleaf Music label off to a winning start. Encore!

a light deft touch and a tinkle mark kenny werner's style. moments he's breaking your heart, other moments he has you laughing out loud with joy. his style is influenced, seems to me, by a feel of keith jarrett's solo recordings and chuck mangione's land of make believe.

and he writes well for dave douglas and chris potter who play exceptionally well together on this cd. new amsterdam has them in tandem blowing like the fabulous flames of james brown segueing into a blues. everyone involved, werner, douglar, potter, brian blade and scott colley, get sufficient playing time on the 13th day. and werner's uncovered heart is, well, heartbreaking.

a really good recording.

This collection of songs is a great journey to a free, peaceful and profound place.
I highly recomend it. (cool cover art too).

This one suprised me over time. I didn't like it at first--it seemed heavy on abstraction and light on substance after two or three listens. But I kept coming back to it. Even when I thought I didn't like it, I found myself eager to listen again. And finally, it made sense. A better way to say it, actually, would be that it "cohered" for me. I'm not sure this recording is meant to "make sense," steeped as it is in a variety of aesthetics. Another reviewer has commented on this being essentially unclassifiable music, and I think he's right. Once I stopped trying to hear it as "jazz" or as some amalgamation of genres, I started to appreciate it.

My favorite songs are, hmmm...all of them! Great listen all the way through, but it is challenging. If you're a fan of Eric Dolphy's "Out to Lunch" and don't mind so-called "electronic" jazz, I'd recommend this. If you want to hear straight up acoustic head-solo-head jazz, this one might be frustrating, especially in light of the fact that that's pretty much been Werner's bag up to this point. Even then, though, there are a couple of excellent more "traditional" tunes--the third track, and "Uncovered Heart," for example.

Oh, and "Inaugural Balls" totally RULES!

Highly recommended.

This is Kenny Werner's first jazz album to feature electronic "sounds". While there are some good tunes on here, it just doesn't have that spark to send it over the edge. The talent is amazing on this album, but the tunes don't really allow for one showcase it. This album just didn't do it for me...at least not how I expected.

There was a buzz about this CD online, in jazz magazines and here on Amazon, long before I finally decided to give it a try. I'd never heard of Kenny Werner before but I took additional heart from the fact that some of my favourite people are on this album - Dave Douglas on trumpet and cornet, Chris Potter on tenor sax and bass clarinet, Scott Colley on bass and most of all, my man Brian Blade on the drums.

I felt like a lot of previous reviewers did when I played it for the first time (I was like, what the..?) and by the time I'd listened to the first two tracks, I actually began to think that I'd made a huge mistake. They just sounded like computer-programmed gobbledegook. But then, "The 13th Day" started and I began to relax. Maybe this won't be so bad after all, I thought to myself.

After the tune finished, I actually went back and listened to "Lo's Garden" and "New Amsterdam" again and it might sound strange but I suddenly heard them in a new light. I found myself playing those two songs again and again and the more I played them, the more they made sense. By the time I finally got to "burble_burble_splerk", another computer-based intriguing number (that at 2mins 29 secs, was over before I could really get my head round it until I'd listened to it at least three or four times), it was as if a light had come on in my head and I finally got where Werner was coming from. This keyboardist (and computer programmer) has a very unique and totally unconventional approach to composition and improvisation but he's incredibly exciting once you get used to him. He seems to use the computer mostly to create sound effects, including voices. Give this a couple of listens and the magic in it becomes crystal clear. Now I know why he's held in such high regard in jazz circles.

It's not all experimental or avant-garde stuff though. There are a couple "traditional" jazz tunes - "The 13th Day" (12mins 25secs of pure rhythmic fun and a real head-nodding, toe-tapper); "Uncovered Heart", a beautiful ballad penned by album producer Lenny Picket; "Inaugural Balls", another joyful kicker of a tune (and the "voices", when they come in, are a really interesting idea); "Lawn Chairs (and Other Foreign Policy)", another beautiful ballad in two movements; "Loss" is as it suggests and "Kothbiro" is also slow and mournful, and like a jam session where all the musicians involved get to say something on the one song. A brilliant album closer.

I'm glad I picked this one up. It totally merits the buzz.

This live album features Dave Douglas's latest quartet (2007). Most of the songs on this album are new songs that are not on Dave's other albums. So unlike most live albums you are not getting a bunch of songs that you already have on other studio albums. The sound quality on the album is fantastic. You would not know it was a live album if it were not for some occasional audience clapping in between songs.

The CD features great soloing by all group members, but really showcases the amazing abilities of Douglas on Trumpet and McCaslin on sax. There are many moments where McClasslin and Douglas battle and/or echo each other in intertwining solos. There is great depth and variety in the material and the more you listen to it the more hidden treasures you discover. Right off the bat you'll notice this was recorded at Christmas time as Douglas cleverly works in the theme to 'frosty the snowman' and 'let is snow' into his solos. Everything Dave is doing these days is amazing and this CD is no exception.

In December of 2006, I passed up the opportunity to check out some of the shows that produced this record-- I was about due for a trip down to Manhattan, but quite honestly, although I'd been looking for an excuse to get to the Jazz Standard (with its superb menu), I didn't really care for Dave Douglas' quintet project-- essentially a traditional jazz quintet but using an electric piano. The studio albums never moved me. Still, I enjoy Dave Douglas' music enough that I pick up his records pretty much without question.

Clearly, as the aural evidence suggests, I made a terrible mistake not heading to New York for these performances.

Douglas assembled his band-- himself on cornet, Donny McCaslin on tenor sax, Uri Caine on the Fender Rhodes keyboard, James Genus on bass (viol, not guitar) and Clarence Penn behind the drum kit-- to air out their entire
songbook, lots of new compositions but also works from the albums, with all the material being released via MP3 download by Douglas' label (Greenleaf Music). Eventually, he decided to release the new compositions as this double, "Live at the Jazz Standard", with a couple of older tracks tacked on the end.

So why the different feelings about this one as opposed to the studio records? I'll use disc 2 opener as a microcosm for the entire disc. The piece is based around a gentle groove, ably laid down by Caine and the rhythm section, capitalizing on the hazy sound of the Rhodes. Add to that a gentle syncopated pause that crops up occasionally and you have one heck of a song. On top of this, we get a downright fierce performance-- it's not that it's over the top or energetic-- quite the contrary, the piece is a downtempo number, it's that there's an intensity to the performance that doesn't require aggression, whether it's Douglas' transcendent soaring solo (one of his best I've ever heard) or the interplay of the band in general (Clarence Penn for example giving Uri Caine a nudge when Caine's solo starts to feel it may drift into unfocused territory).

And the thing that really gets you, it's this way throughout the recording-- the "In a Silent Way" vibe of "Tree and Shrub", with an extraordinarily delicate melody, the unusual tension of near blues groove "Indian Point", the Zorn-like cartoonish blast of "The Cornet is a Fickle Friend" and the fractured swaggering swing of "Seth Thomas" are all real standouts on the first disc, particularly the latter. Douglas' use of space and almost singsong sounds really uplifts the piece. On the second disc, in addition to opener "Meaning and Mystery", Douglas manages perhaps his most emotive and meditative piece on "Redemption", starting gently and building a forceful head of steam and pulls off the most convincing Monk-like swaggering swing perhaps ever put forth on a Rhodes on "Little Penn". Like Monk's work, it's got a catchy, almost singsong melody that deceptively presents it as a simple little piece, but proves to be a great vehicle for the musicians to perform (and a fine feature for namesake drummer Clarence Penn).

The bottom line is I'm pretty much blown away. Suffice to say, I'll be at the band's performance at the Vanguard this December, I'm not missing this opportunity twice. Thankfully, Douglas put this record out for those of us who missed out to see what was going on.