Jazz Articles

David Schnitter at The Turning Point Cafe

by David A. Orthmann
July 13, 2008

David Schnitter The Turning Point Cafe Piermont, New York June 2, 2008

David Schnitter ended a bracing, sixty-minute set at The Turning Point Cafe with a quote from “Auld Lang Syne." This brief digression was a jocular reminder that, for a jazz musician, “times gone by" aren't as important as the present. Though the tenor saxophonist has recently played with distinction in an Art Blakey tribute band led by fellow Blakey alumnus Valery ...

Dave Schnitter: Sketch

by Samuel Chell
August 27, 2004

Dave Schnitter Sketch Sunnyside Records 2004

Not only did David Schnitter have the longest tenure of any tenor saxophonist in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers but he was always present on the most exciting and memorable of Bu's sets that I was privileged to catch. His return to music and recording after a sabbatical of over 20 years is at once cheering and disturbing. There may have been more schooled and disciplined players preceding and ...

Dave Schnitter: Penpals

by Samuel Chell
February 25, 2004

In the late 1970's the Newport Jazz Festival programmed a Carnegie Hall concert featuring the groups of both Art Blakey and Horace Silver along with some all-star alumni guests. The impression of that concert that lingers with me to this day is the passionate and fiery if not show-stopping performance of Blakey's tenor man, David Schnitter. Had the title “Little Giant" not already been bestowed upon Johnny Griffin to distinguish him from “long, tall" Dexter Gordon, it might just as ...

Saxophonist Dave Schnitter

by Russ Musto
November 11, 2003

David Schnitter is the jazz world's forgotten messenger, a marvelous musician who just happened to be in the right place right before the right time. The 55 year old tenor saxophonist has yet to receive the recognition he deserves as a central figure in the reorganization and resurgence Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers underwent during the '70s, paving the way for the astonishing ascendancy into popular culture the venerable institution later experienced with the introduction of Wynton Marsalis into the band. ...