Tony Dudley-Evans — Dave Douglas: My gig of the festival

1 year
3 months ago

Tony Dudley-Evans
Artistic Director, Budvar Cheltenham Jazz Festival

I have always been a great fan of Dave Douglas (Dave Douglas Quintet, Sunday 3 May), having heard him on a trip to New York back in the early 90s and having been the first jazz promoter to bring him over to UK in the late 90s. I particularly admire the breadth of his music and his willingness to engage with other styles of music. But it is first of all as a trumpeter that he commands our respect; he has a wonderfully expressive tone on the instrument and a technique that means he can accomplish anything that his great imagination leads him to. But this does not mean that he is just a great technician blowing lots of notes; just the opposite, he is a warm, reflective player who combines the creativity of Miles Davis with the technical ability and range of the finest players. But my liking of his music comes even more from his qualities as a jazz composer and, above all, as a visionary force within the music.

He writes great material for the large number of ensembles that he has led over the years: jazz influenced by Balkan music for the Tiny Bell Trio, classical music for his string ensembles and the Charms of the Night Sky group and the jazz tradition in his quintet.

Dave Douglas is in his way a revolutionary force in jazz, and loves to play in free jazz contexts, often just with a drummer such as Han Bennink, but he also has great respect for the jazz tradition. He first came to the attention of jazz people playing in a late version of Horace Silver’s quintet and has always paid his respects to established players with album tributes to Wayne Shorter and Mary Lou Williams.

The quintet that he brings to Cheltenham is probably the group of his that is closest to the jazz mainstream. It features Donny McCaslin on saxophones, Orrin Evans on keys, Scott Colley on bass and Clarence Penn on drums. Dave has written some wonderfully varied material for the group and has managed to create music that is always interesting and in a sense challenging, but is at the same time completely accessible, even to a person who claims not to like jazz.

We’ve tagged this post with jazz, Tony Dudley-Evans on Thursday 9 April 2009.