Jazz Articles about Dave Liebman

Dave Liebman & Bobby Avey: Vienna Dialogues

by Victor Verney
October 3, 2006

Prominent jazz musicians from Bill Evans to Christian Howes have begun their musical careers with formal training in classical music. Others, like Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck, have explored classical compositional form during the latter part of their careers. But few have taken on the challenge with the passion and commitment shown by Dave Liebman, as demonstrated on Vienna Dialogues, a recording he made in tandem with pianist Bobby Avey.

Here, Liebman--who began his musical studies on classical piano at ...

David Liebman: The Distance Runner

by AAJ Italy Staff
July 17, 2006

Primo disco dal vivo da Dave Liebman in solo, questo The Distance Runner è stato registrato, probabilmente non per caso, poche settimane dopo la morte di Steve Lacy, al quale Liebman succede simbolicamente nel ruolo di massimo sopranista in attività. E allo stesso Lacy è dedicato il brano di apertura, “The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner: Mind and Body”, interamente al soprano. Certo, Liebman rimane fedele alla propria poetica, com’è giusto che sia, non solo imbracciando a più riprese ...

The Distance Runner; World Sonic

by Abe Pollack
April 16, 2006

Dave Liebman The Distance Runner Hatology 2005

The Distance Runner is a record of expectations, or rather lack thereof. If you're familiar with Liebman's approach to composition and improvisation, you would think that 55 minutes of saxophone solos would sound like a re-recording of late-Coltrane works mixed with early 21st Century classical motifs. Instead we have the surprise of a child-like spontaneity. With every note bend and tone alteration, we can hear Liebman experimenting ...

David Liebman: The Distance Runner

by Chris May
February 24, 2006

A tour de force of spontaneous musicmaking and an object lesson in how to put prodigious technical facility at the service of the music, rather than something to be admired for its own mechanical and ultimately barren sake, master saxophonist Dave Liebman's The Distance Runner is from a solo concert recorded at the Willisau festival in '04. An entire album of solo saxophone music (with a brief flute interlude) might sound like hard work for the listener (and sometimes it ...

David Liebmam: The Distance Runner

by John Kelman
December 2, 2005

The Distance Runner is not saxophonist Dave Liebman's first solo recording--he's released a handful of them over his forty year career, including the exceptional The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner (CMP, 1985). But his latest release is something special, as it documents his first-ever live solo performance, at Switzerland's 2004 Willisau Jazz Festival--an entirely different beast. As anyone who has performed live will attest, it's one thing to get on stage with a group--no matter how ...

Dave Liebman & Phil Markowitz: Manhattan Dialogues

by Andrew Velez
October 14, 2005

The opener on Manhattan Dialogues, most of which is composed by David Liebman, is his own “Teacher of Our Child. It's a comfortably melancholy rumination, yet more suggestive of the early hours of a morning after than of a kindergarten. By contrast, “7 only fleetingly lands on traditional melodic structure. Here Liebman (soprano and tenor saxophone) and Phil Markowitz (piano), who have been collaborating in various settings since the early '90s, trade musical fragments. Markowitz jumps around on the keys, ...

Dave Liebman: Picture Show / Different but the Same

by Donald Elfman
October 8, 2005

Dave Liebman, on two very different recordings, shows himself to be both a master of his instruments and a sonic explorer of the deepest intensity. Of course, this is no new revelation--from his work with Miles Davis and Elvin Jones to his own often brilliant recordings, he has played with expanding the role of the reed instruments in jazz by caring an awful lot about sound. “Different but the same might be said of all his playing--it's in and out ...