Jazz Articles about Dave Douglas

About Dave Douglas

Radio & Podcasts

Dave Douglas: Transcend Is Not The End

by Lawrence Peryer
July 4, 2026

This week, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas. Douglas's latest album, Transcend (Greenleaf Music, 2026), came out in April 2026. It's the second record from GIFTS, his band with Rafiq Bhatia, James Brandon Lewis, Tomeka Reid, and Ian Chang. His last several records were openly political. This one turns toward the sacred, though we explore where that either/or framing falls short. We also talk about painter and sculptor Jack Whitten, why ...

Radio & Podcasts

Dave Douglas, Sun Ra, Frank Zappa And Much More

by Lawrence Peryer
July 2, 2026

This week's Rotations is a parade of restless inventors. A surf-psych single gives way to modern jazz, a score for a 1960 horror film, and the room-sized synthesizer a pair of tinkerers built in 1970. From there it's Seattle indie pop, New Jersey jangle, two saxophones turned into an orchestra, and a New York shapeshifter, before Sun Ra and Frank Zappa close it all out. An hour of people who build their own instruments, their own sounds, their own labels, ...

Album Review

Dave Douglas: Transcend

Read "Transcend" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
May 26, 2026

Dave Douglas has spent a career dodging his own shadow, and that restlessness is precisely what keeps his catalog from ever feeling stagnant. Transcend locates its friction point between two titans who seem unlikely to share the same oxygen: the spiritual grandeur of Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts and the dense, mosaic canvases of painter Jack Whitten.The weight of the album rests on the chemistry of this specific quintet. With James Brandon Lewis on tenor, Tomeka Reid on cello, ...

Play This!

Dave Douglas: Energy Fields

by Ludovico Granvassu
May 21, 2026

Here is a gem by Dave Douglas featuring the latest all-star incarnation of his Gifts band, now expanded with cellist Tomeka Reid and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, joining original members Rafiq Bhatia (guitar) and Ian Chang (drums).Two years after the eponymous album honoring Billy Strayhorn, Douglas continues his exploration of foundational jazz composers. On this new chapter--Transcend (Greenleaf Music)--he turns to Duke Ellington, drawing in particular from Ellington's Sacred Concerts, performed between 1965 and 1973.Alongside inventive ...

Radio & Podcasts

New Music From Douglas, Xangorchestra, Mycio, HøIby And More

by Bob Osborne
April 2, 2026

The continuum of exploration in the world of jazz runs through this set of fourteen releases, twelve of them brand new. Jazz keeps pressing at its own boundaries while drawing structure and ideas from other musical forms, the result is a playlist that moves cleanly between contrasting approaches. The closing track is presented as a tribute to Don Cherry, yet its energy and scale echo electricperiod Miles Davis, a timely reminder of his influence in his centenary year.Playlist ...

Album Review

Dave Douglas: Four Freedoms

Read "Four Freedoms" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
January 30, 2026

Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 “Four Freedoms" speech--articulating freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear--trumpeter Dave Douglas frames Four Freedoms as both political echo and musical proposition. Although the quartet is geographically dispersed--Marta Warelis, Nick Dunston and Joey Baron residing in Europe, Douglas based in New York--the album sounds anything but remote. Distance, instead, sharpens focus. What emerges is a newly formed working band whose cohesion rests on shared vocabulary and ...

Album Review

Aubrey Johnson, Helen Sung, Dave Douglas, David Hajdu: Lives of the Saints: Portraits in Song with Words by David Hajdu

Read "Lives of the Saints: Portraits in Song with Words by David Hajdu" reviewed by Vic Albani

by Vic Albani
January 27, 2026

Chi diavolo è David Hajdu? Ce lo insegna il web: David Hajdu (nato nel 1955 a Phillipsburg, New Jersey con origini ungheresi e italiane) è un editorialista laureato alla New York University, autore e professore statunitense alla Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. È stato critico musicale del New Republic per 12 anni ed è redattore musicale di The Nation. Ha dapprima lavorato come illustratore e poi ha cominciato a scrivere per testate di un certo livello quali il Village ...