The Aquila Theatre's 2014-15 National Tour kicks off tonight in Lexington, VA with a production of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, followed on September 25 by William Shakespeare's The Tempest in Aurora, NY. Work on The Tempest marks the second collaboration between Aquila and composer Ralph Farris, who composed incidental music for last year's production of A Female Philoctetes at BAM.
See the company's entire tour schedule here.
“In the Ivory” is bassist and composer Matt Ulery’s follow-up to his 2012 record “Wake An Echo”, named by NPR Music as one of the Top 50 Albums of the Year. This double-CD features pianist Rob Clearfield, drummer Jon Deitemeyer, violinist Zach Brock, vocalist Grazyna Auguscik and three-time GRAMMY®-winning new music ensemble eighth blackbird in a lush chamber setting.
Also, with every purchase of “In the Ivory” made before September 30th fans will receive a free one-month subscription to Greenleaf Music's innovative Cloud Player. This proprietary streaming player allows listeners access to the label's entire catalog on their desktop, phone or tablet.
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.
Founded by Dave Douglas and now in it's twelfth year, the Festival of New Trumpet Music takes place September 17th - 28th at venues throughout New York City. This year's festival highlights include:
The Dave Douglas Quintet takes up a rare week-long residency at famed New York club Birdland starting tomorrow, August 19, and running through Saturday, August 23. Sets at 8:30 & 11:00 PM.
Dave's quintet reunites for two dates this week: Jazz Middleheim Festival in Antwerp on August 14th and the Jihočeský Jazzový Festival in Česke Budějovice on August 15th. See you there!
“4 stars “Alluring … a 2014 jazz highlight.””
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
Virtuoso jazz musicians Dave Douglas and Uri Caine perform from their new album of duets. It features hymns based on a tradition called shape-note singing, which dates to the early 1800s.
Read the entire transcript here.
Photo by Geoff Countryman
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.
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).
