Jazz Articles about David Sills

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David Sills Double Guitar Quintet: Natural Lines

by Mark Sullivan
October 8, 2020

Los Angeles-based reed player David Sills has usually led a quintet with guitar, piano, bass and drums. Most of his recent performances have taken place in venues lacking a piano, so he began adding a second guitar. The change in instrumentation had a side benefit, opening up new musical possibilities and colors. Having two guitars in the rhythm section is common in rock music, but unusual in jazz, so it offers a novel listening experience (especially for jazz guitar fans). ...

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David Sills: Blue's the New Green

by Dan McClenaghan
October 27, 2013

Saxophonist David Sills opens his Blue's the New Green with tenor sax titan Sonny Rollins' tune, “No Moe." But Sills doesn't use Rollins' musculature or his burly tone. He rolls more in the mode of sax men Joe Henderson or Stan Getz--or, to take it back further, Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster, with a smooth, vibrato-less delivery. Sills is steeped in the tradition of those who came before him, without being mired there. As in previous outings, Eastern ...

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David Sills: Green

by Dan McClenaghan
July 21, 2007

With tenor saxophonist David Sills, three big “s" words come to mind: Swinging, soulful, and...surfing?"Check out the cover photo on his Green CD. You might think it a re-release of a forgotten Chantays--of “Pipeline" fame--album from 1963. The guy on the surfboard--David Sills himself--is cutting into a bottom turn on a clean, overhead steel blue wave, with, it appears, a tube in his immediate future.Surfing aside, Sills proves himself a saxophonist/composer riding deep in the jazz ...

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David Sills: Down the Line

by Jack Bowers
April 12, 2006

One of the great things about jazz is that there's always room for persuasive new voices, especially those who've mastered the vocabulary and know how to swing. Saxophonist David Sills, now in his mid-thirties, qualifies easily on both counts, as he shows consistently on Down the Line, evidently his second album as a leader of his own group, although Sills has recorded with a number of other first-rank musicians.

Sills has enlisted a clever and congenial front-line partner in alto ...

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David Sills: Eastern View

by Dan McClenaghan
December 12, 2004

With a solid organ trio backing him, tenor saxophonist David Sills grabs your attention with his very first solo on Eastern View 's opener, the Sills-penned (as are all the songs here) “New Break." The tune opens with an organ-supplied bass groove backed by shimmering cymbals; then the guitar and sax enter, peeling off some tangy mid-tempo lines, until the accompaniment pulls back and Sills steps out front, with a somewhat restrained (nicely so) and articulate, straightforward monolgue in front ...

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David Sills: Bigs

by Jack Bowers
September 1, 2002

Naxos' press release calls tenor saxophonist David Sills “a unique composite of Stan Getz, Joe Henderson and Warne Marsh." Not much pressure on that young man's shoulders, is there? Well, if Sills is feeling any pressure on Bigs, his second album for Naxos, it's never apparent; in fact, he's as loose and unflappable as Steve Irwin, television's zealous crocodile hunter, who never flinches no matter how imminent the danger. While the ghosts of Getz and Henderson are always close at ...

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David Sills: Bigs

by Dave Nathan
May 1, 2002

Tenor sax man David Sills when he came to the stylistic crossroads, obviously took the fork marked Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Stan Getz instead of the one marked Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. This decision is reflected on his second release for the Naxos label. He is joined by a quartet of jazz veterans, Alan Broadbent, Larry Koonse, Darek Oles and Joe LaBarbera. Sills hasn't ignored all forms of modern jazz. Not in the least. “Waiting for ...