Dave Anderson

Saxophonist and composer Dave Anderson brings a significant musical voice to the New York jazz scene.

Anderson has performed as a saxophonist around North America with notable musicians including Clark Terry, Matt Wilson, Craig Taborn, Chico Pinheiro, Nicholas Payton and Mel Torme. He is currently a member of percussionist Memo Acevedo’s global jazz group, Manhattan Bridges, holding residency at New York’s Zinc Bar. Although he plays in a modern style, Anderson has received accolades from jazz legends including Ray Brown and Rufus Reid.

Increasingly Anderson has focused on composing original music for his bands such as Blue Innuendo, Melting Pot and The Dave Anderson Quartet. He has recorded over 30 of his original compositions while developing a highly personal compositional/instrumental sound – one that is harmonically complex, melodically compelling and rhythmically exciting, yet accessible and appealing to lay listeners.

Dave Anderson was born in 1966 and raised in Cloquet, Minnesota. He signed up for the school band at the age of 11 and chose the saxophone. Soon after he began to play, his older brother began bringing home jazz records. Dave fell under their spell.

Winning awards as an outstanding high school soloist at area jazz festivals, Dave matriculated at the University of Minnesota after graduation from Cloquet High School—earning his degree in psychology rather than music, but spending much of his time in the music department and playing in the university’s jazz bands and symphonic wind ensemble. He won a full scholarship to the Aspen Music Festival, where he performed in a student ensemble that also included Clarence Penn, Ryan Kisor, Scott Whitfield, and Laurence Hobgood.

Anderson then moved to Toronto—but “just as I was starting to play in Toronto, I had the opportunity to move to New York.” However, Anderson settled in the Big Apple not as a musician (he was sidelined by a hernia, though he played sporadically), but as a jack-of-all-trades for Creed Taylor at CTI Records. “I got the opportunity to work with someone who was a legendary producer,” Anderson recalls, “got to associate with prominent musicians who were signed to the label at that time, including Larry Coryell, and Freddie Hubbard and Donald Harrison, and to make contact with people like Rudy Van Gelder and Cedar Walton.”

Once he was able to play again, Anderson woodshedded in a smaller scene than New York. In 2005 he moved to Seattle and began playing regularly. He also formed several working bands as vehicles for his original compositions; one of these, a quartet including Seattle pianist John Hansen and guest trumpeter Thomas Marriott, was featured on his 2010 debut album Clarity, a collection of eight originals and two lesser-known jazz covers.

In 2011 came Trio Real, a session with bassist Devin Lowe and drummer Brad Boal. Already Anderson was making good on his conviction not to repeat himself: “This album was a chance to strip things down, take the chordal instrument out of the group, and also to explore some influences of funk and pop music.”

Just a month after releasing his sophomore album, Anderson moved back to New York. “I wanted the exposure again: to the progressive music, to the different genres and subgenres and specialties, to the intensity of the scene,” he says. “While I was reluctant to give up all the playing I had in Seattle, I felt it would be good to take the challenge.”

Anderson freelanced with the Morgan and Acevedo big bands, building the connections and confidence to get his own projects moving. That opportunity finally came in 2016 with Blue Innuendo, an organ-jazz project featuring such luminaries as organist Pat Bianchi, guitarist Tom Guarna, and drummer Matt Wilson released on Anderson's imprint LABEL1. The album earned a rare 4½-star review from Down Beat, with critic Bill Milkowski praising its “great chemistry, great playing and good vibes.”

Anderson was already deeply immersed in the multiculturalism of New York’s music scene in early 2017, when the new Trump administration announced the first version of its infamous travel ban. It was the spark that lit a creative fire. Anderson assembled an octet to record five of his original compositions at Brooklyn’s Systems Two Recording Studios. The band and its new EP, both called Melting Pot, combine straight-ahead and Afro-Latin jazz with Indian ragas, as well as traditional Jewish and Mongolian influences, to create bewitching music that lives up to the band’s name.

Melting Pot is just one more chapter in a determined, exploratory career—but it’s a chapter with something important to say about America and its peoples. “Here in New York I ride the subway every day; I see the Statue of Liberty from the Q train,” Anderson says. “I think about my ancestors coming to this place from Finland and Scandinavia. I see the great mix of cultures. I wanted to celebrate these different styles, collaborate with these different people I met, and say ‘Hey, let’s take what we’ve all got, bring it together, and maybe we’ll even create something new. But we know we’ll create something musical and something we can share for people to enjoy.’” 

Gear

Yanagisawa 9330 soprano sax, w/ Selmer F mouthpiece, Alexander Superial Reeds
Selmer Mark VI alto sax (serial # 107K), w/ Meyer 6M mouthpiece, Hemke Reeds
Selmer Mark VI tenor sax (serial # 298K), w/ Link 8 mouthpiece (hard rubber), Robertos Winds Reeds