Jazz Articles about Dan Blake

About Dan Blake

Album Review

Alex Weiss: Most Don't Have Enough

Read "Most Don't Have Enough" reviewed by Robert Middleton

by Robert Middleton
May 3, 2023

This album is really special. It doesn't sound like anything else and every song is engaging and interesting. The titles of the songs are also fascinating. Even the collage cover is great and seems to reflect the music. Tenor saxophonist Alex Weiss started writing Most Don't Have Enough during the pandemic and went deep into writing and practicing. Much of the inspiration came from Chris Speed, as Weiss is a big fan of his writing and his tone. ...

Album Review

Dan Blake: Da Fé

by Jerome Wilson
May 10, 2021

A lot of personal factors go into saxophonist Dan Blake's music on this CD, such as his concerns about the environment, his Buddhist teachings and his social activism. What comes out of this is a style of electro-acoustic jazz which is alternately meditative and fiery. The basic music here was performed in the studio by a quartet of Blake on saxophone, Carmen Staaf on piano, Dmitry Ishenko on bass and Jeff Williams on drums. The tunes were then ...

Album Review

Dan Blake: Da Fé

by Mike Jurkovic
April 17, 2021

It's comforting to know that saxophonist Dan Blake hasn't taken Thoreau's inconvenient truth that “most men lead lives of quiet desperation" to heart. Instead, as his Da Fé (translated: of faith) and his apprenticeships with Anthony Braxton} and {{Julian Lage prove succinctly, Blake intends to bring the music, and the consciousness of our fragility within it, to the fore, in hopes the listener can shake the malaise too and pick up the call for action. Blake escorts his ...

Album Review

Dan Blake: Da Fé

by Mark Corroto
March 2, 2021

Saxophonist-composer Dan Blake's Da Fé ("of faith"), a meditation on our world in crisis, may have taken, as a starting point, the lyrics to Lou Reed's “Busload Of Faith" from the über-cynical New York (Sire, 1989) recording, “You can depend on cruelty / crudity of thought and sound / You can depend on the worst always happening / you need a busload of faith to get by." What with global warming, income disparity, hunger, and homelessness, the gentle folk of ...