Jazz Articles about Dave Holland

Dave Holland Octet: Pathways

by John Kelman
March 16, 2010

Dave Holland Octet Pathways Dare2 Records 2010

It's been nearly four years since bassist Dave Holland has delivered an album based around his enduring quintet of over a decade. Since 2006's Critical Mass (Dare2), he's released Pass It On (Dare2, 2008) and The Monterey Quartet: Live at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival (Monterey Jazz Festival Records, 2009), both featuring ensembles where, for the first time in his lengthy career, the bassist collaborated ...

Dave Holland / Gonzalo Rubalcaba / Chris Potter / Eric Harland: The Monterey Quartet: Live at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival

by Mark Corroto
August 23, 2009

Supergroups thrown together for jazz festivals are, as a general rule, a disappointment. The chemistry of a regular working unit is usually missing, and they tend to resort to “theme-solo-theme" weariness. Not so when the supergroup is made up of dedicated composers and listeners such as The Monterey Quartet, assembled on the occasion of Monterey's 50th anniversary celebration concerts in 2007.

Bassist Dave Holland, together with two familiar players--Chris Potter and Eric Harland--are joined by the Cuban pianist ...

Dave Holland / Gonzalo Rubalcaba / Chris Potter / Eric Harland: The Monterey Quartet: Live at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival

by John Kelman
August 19, 2009

A bonus of festival work is the opportunity to recruit musicians for new collaborations. It doesn't always work, but sometimes it does, and when Monterey Jazz Festival Records' General Manager Jason Olaine worked with Vision Arts manager Louise Holland to bring together bass icon Dave Holland, saxophonist Chris Potter, drummer Eric Harland and pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, it seemed like a match made in heaven.

It was. The Monterey Quartet: Live at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival, ...

Dave Holland / Gonzalo Rubalcaba / Chris Potter / Eric Harland: The Monterey Quartet: Live at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival

by Mark F. Turner
August 18, 2009

The Monterey Jazz Festival has an ongoing rich history of great performances: Louis Armstrong (1958), Miles Davis (1963), Tito Puente & His Orchestra (1977), Shirley Horn (1994) and many others. MJF's 50th anniversary celebration in 2007 continued that honored tradition of swing, resulting in Terence Blanchard's Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo with his performance on Dizzy Gillespie's classic “Be-Bop" by the MJF 50th Anniversary All-Stars. At that same festival, another group of all-stars--the quartet extraordinare featuring bassist Dave ...

Dave Holland: Consistently Exceptional

by R.J. DeLuke
July 6, 2009

This interview, originally published on September 29, 2008, is being reprinted to coincide with the summer 2009 tour of The Monterey Quartet featuring bassist Dave Holland, saxophonist Chris Potter, pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and drummer Eric Harland. The group's live album, Live at the 2007 Jazz Festival (Concord, 2009), will be released on August 25. It's been a long time since Dave Holland's small hands strummed a ukulele at about the age of five, an endeavor that eventually led ...

Dave Holland: Pass It On

by Jeff Stockton
October 8, 2008

Following in the bandleading tradition of Charles Mingus and serving as a composing role model for younger players such as Christian McBride and Adam Lane, Dave Holland tinkers with his highly regarded quintet and expands it to a sextet on Pass It On. There’s something about bass players that make them the best jazz composers and Holland applies fresh voices to newly realized arrangements of past compositions, as well as some brand new ones making their debut.

Dave Holland Sextet: Pass It On

by John Kelman
September 29, 2008

Sometimes it's necessary to shake up even a good thing. Dave Holland's decade-old Quintet with vibraphonist Steve Nelson, trombonist Robin Eubanks and saxophonist Chris Potter has garnered multiple awards and significant attention. But while the group has evolved as a standalone unit on albums including Critical Mass (Dare2, 2006), and as the core of Holland's Big Band on Overtime (Dare2, 2005), the overall sonority has become, perhaps, a little too familiar.