Joe Lovano/Dave Douglas Soundprints – Bold And Beautiful At Barbican

By Kevin Le Gendre

If ever gravitas was needed to close an event with a profile as high as that of the EFG London Jazz Festival then this was it. Tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd in the second set and trumpeter Dave Douglas and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano in the first was more a case of stellar double bill than headliner and support. Perhaps more importantly the combination provided fascinating food for thought on the way in which key historical figures in improvised music pervade the contemporary scene without stifling the creativity of their genuinely progressive scions.

Read the rest at jazzwisemagazine.com.

El País reviews Sound Prints at the Barcelona Jazz Festival

By Miquel Jurado

La sinergia también existe y tiene swing

Dave Douglas y Joe Lovano protagonizan EL concierto del Festival de Jazz de Barcelona

El Festival de Jazz de Barcelona ha pasado ya su ecuador, pero aún queda mucha música por escuchar. Pero no parece arriesgado aventurar que el concierto del pasado miércoles en el Auditori pasará a ser recordado como EL concierto del certamen. La intensidad y belleza de lo ofrecido por el quinteto de Dave Douglas y Joe Lovano es de las que hacen mella y se quedan clavadas en la historia musical. Un concierto memorable en todos sus aspectos que destiló una de las mejores caras del jazz contemporáneo.

Read the entire review here {in Spanish).

Cuadernos de Jazz reviews Sound Prints

Photo by Lorenzo Duaso

Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas Quintet: Sound Prints

46º Festival Internacional de Jazz de Barcelona
L’Auditori
Barcelona, 12 de noviembre de 2014

By Enrique Turpin y Eduardo Hojman

En uno de los conciertos estilísticamente más audaces hasta ahora del Festival de Jazz de Barcelona, Joe Lovano y Dave Douglas, acompañados de un trío de lujo con un Joey Baron en estado de gracia, ofrecieron su particular homenaje a Wayne Shorter, pletórico en swing y en aperturas de nuevos caminos.

Read the rest here (in Spanish).

Mel Minter's review of Present Joys

The prolific and shape-shifting trumpeter Dave Douglas teams up with longtime friend and collaborator pianist Uri Caine on Present Joys to explore the rude elegance and depth of feeling in the centuries-old shape note tradition, which, with its deceptive simplicity, might be a musical equivalent to woodcut visual arts.

The duo presents five compositions from shape-note tunebooks and five Douglas
originals that hew closely to the vein of that tradition. The very first track, A. M. Cayle’s “Soar Away,” with its stately, bucolic melancholy, sets the stage. Douglas adopts a vivid, rough-hewn tone on his horn that perfectly suits the material, and there’s an almost classical feel to the
lilting counterpoint conversation between the two players.

Read the full review here.

Praise for Present Joys

“4 stars “Alluring … a 2014 jazz highlight.””

— John Fordham, The Guardian/UK

Read what critics are saying about Dave Douglas' new record of duos with Uri Caine that explores the shape-note singing tradition:

“I felt smarter after listening to Present Joys. Along with pianist Uri Caine, Douglas’ approach on this record sounds like Nas on Illmatic or the Grateful Dead at their live shows. He opens a channel into the middle of his musicianship and just lets it all flow out without anything superfluous or presumptuous.” - Alex Marianyi, NextBop

“While Present Joys features a stripped-down instrumentation, the utterly in-sync duo of Douglas and Caine also reaches lofty artistic heights and resonances.” - Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen

4 stars … “Trumpeter Dave Douglas continues his exploration of traditional New England music with this delightful and intimate duet album, featuring pianist Uri Caine.  Though contemporary in scope, each track reflects the sparse harmonies, dignified phrasing and sense of community of a bygone era.” - Mike Hobart, Financial Times

8/10 … “Quite extraordinary. The folk tradition through jazz. I suppose it’s easy to embrace the tendency of adventurous musicians, of any artists with a taste for the edgy, to move back to lyricism and tradition. I’m wary of my affection for this recording and for Be Still for that reason, in the same way that I hesitate to laud Coltrane’s Ballads album. But these records are not retreats of bold playing at all — they are an expansion of a great artist’s sensibility, a way the artist has found to dare himself to focus, to refine, to move in new ways.  Dave Douglas and Uri Caine are good enough to stand up to making ‘pretty’ music, even traditional music. They pass the test and come out still surprising us.” - Will Layman popmatters.com

“Spiritual music, solid as Shaker furniture and often as sober as a Quaker meeting, performed by two attuned virtuosos who have worked together in various configurations for more than 20 years.   In the closing ballad ‘Zero Hour,’ Caine’s gorgeously joyous response to Douglas’s more serious reflections create[s] a brand new world in five minutes and change.” - Richard Gehr, Wonderingsound.com

Present Joys: “Alluring…a 2014 jazz highlight” says John Fordham in The Guardian/UK

Dave Douglas/Uri Caine: Present Joys review – hymns meet jazz on excellent collaboration

by John Fordham

Trumpeter Dave Douglas and pianist Uri Caine share a lot – big techniques, innovative intelligence, multi-genre fluency and connections with John Zorn, for starters – but this melodious balance of old Protestant hymn themes, postbop swing and a little free improv is their first duo project together. On Present Joys, they adapt five pieces from New England's church-song traditions, and five compatible Douglas compositions, furthering the approach the trumpeter pursued on his haunting 2012 valediction to his mother, Be Still.

Read the entire review here.

"Mountainside" at Italy's I Suoni delle Dolomiti Festival

Photo by Paolo Peviani

The I Suoni delle Dolomiti festival takes place high in the Italian Alps, with both musicians and audience hiking to the concert location. For this year's program, Dave and Chet substituted Steve's bass with the trombone of newcomer Andy Clausen and turned "Riverside" into "Mountainside".

Read a review of the festival here (in Italian).

Riverside makes Peter Hum's list of favorite jazz CDs of 2014 (so far)

Read the whole thing here.

Present Joys: A "warmhearted meeting of minds"

By S. Victor Aaron

Dave Douglas and Uri Caine have both done their share of experimentation in the past but in this meeting of the famed trumpeter and famed pianist, it’s not about a certain musical style but a musical fervor framed around a very old way of notating music for amateurs.

Present Joys (out July 22, 2014 via Greenleaf Records) recasts the shape-note singing traditions that first sprung up in 17th century New England and eventually made its way to the dusty, rural churches of the South. Shape-note songs made it possible for groups of people without any formal musical training to sing four-part harmonies with glorious results.

Such an approach might seem far away from what virtuosic non-singer musicians like Douglas and Caine would be care to indulge themselves with, but the approach has long excited Douglas because he saw the possibilities. He describes it this way: “Shape-note and psalm-tune singing come from early American composers and really hinges on non-academic way of thinking about harmony and making multi-part vocal music. That intrigued me because sometimes what we do as improvisers is to go on instinct and intuition, making stuff that may not always be precisely explainable.” Another way of putting it might be that shape-note singers work from minimal cues; so do advanced jazz musicians.

Read the rest at Something Else!

Marc Chénard's review of Riverside in Point of Departure

By Marc Chénard

At the risk of making an oversimplification, all creative minds fall into two categories: craftsmen, who forge some sort of personal identity out of existing styles; and visionaries, who create entirely new lexicons. The latter risk being marginalized as a result, or becoming pariahs, cast off and dismissed. They might earn deserved recognition if they live long enough, but it is often granted to them posthumously, supporting the observation of an American journalist: “All societies praise living conformists and dead trouble makers.”

In his lifetime, Jimmy Giuffre may not have been a trouble maker, or a rabble rouser, as say Albert Ayler was or Ornette Coleman had been, but he wasn’t exactly a living conformist. Giuffre in effect dared to be different from those who were different. In the early ‘60s, when jazz was coasting on tried and true hard bop recipes, and struggling with the nascent free jazz movement, Giuffre simply did not belong to either camp: Though he was from Texas and played tenor saxophone, he did not have the growl or the punch of a “Texas tenor.” Instead, the music of his late ‘50s trios with Jim Hall had a country flavor that was removed from hard bop and hip funky jazz grooves.

Read the rest at Point of Departure.