Jazz Articles about Donny McCaslin

Dave Douglas Quintet: Live at the Jazz Standard

by John Kelman
December 13, 2007

Trumpeter Dave Douglas' a six-night run at New York's Jazz Standard in December, 2006, was relatively revolutionary in the jazz world. Every set, featuring his longstanding quintet, was recorded and made available the following morning in downloadable MP3 format. The twelve sets included nearly everything from The Infinite (RCA, 2002), Strange Liberation (RCA, 2003) and Meaning and Mystery (Greenleaf, 2006), as well as fourteen new pieces. Live at the Jazz Standard collects the best performances of this new material into ...

Donny McCaslin at The Jazz Standard

by Budd Kopman
October 1, 2007

Donny McCaslin at the Jazz StandardThe Jazz StandardNew York, NYTuesday, September 18, 2007 There has always existed in jazz a tension between the unprepared or spontaneous and the written or the composed. The recording process is part of this tension and crystallizes the immediate present moment for posterity, paradoxically helping to spread the jazz aesthetic while freezing it. The CD release tour is another paradoxical part of the jazz scene, in ...

Donny McCaslin: Pursuer

by Jason Crane
September 29, 2007

On the new episode of The Jazz Session, Jason Crane interviews saxophonist Donny McCaslin. One of the busiest saxophonists in the business, McCaslin plays with Maria Schneider, Dave Douglas and many others. He also fronts his own groups, including the band on his new CD, In Pursuit (Sunnyside, 2007). A follow-up to his critically acclaimed record Soar (Sunnyside, 2006), In Pursuit features compositions commissioned for a Chamber Music America grant. McCaslin talks about his father's influence, playing with ...

Donny McCaslin: In Pursuit

by Troy Collins
August 26, 2007

From his early forays with Steps Ahead and Ken Schaphorst's Big Band to Maria Schneider's Orchestra and his recent membership in Dave Douglas' Quintet, saxophonist/composer Donny McCaslin is finally beginning to receive the critical accolades he deserves.

His second album for Sunnyside and sixth as a leader, In Pursuit, follows a conceptual thread begun on Soar (Sunnyside, 2006). Seamlessly weaving advanced jazz harmony, lyrical melodies and Latin American polyrhythms into an organic whole, McCaslin proves his mettle as ...

Donny McCaslin: In Pursuit

by Laurel Gross
July 23, 2007

If creating challenging music that is also thoroughly entertaining were a crime, then Donny McCaslin ought to be in jail. Some jazz players/composers today can seem so preoccupied with producing art that they make it very difficult for listeners to get in on the fun. Not so with McCaslin, who proves with In Pursuit's nine originals that art doesn't have to be hard to digest. It's brain food that also offers sensual pleasures. A ...

Donny McCaslin: In Pursuit

by John Kelman
July 22, 2007

In the follow-up to his critically acclaimed Soar (Sunnyside, 2006), saxophonist Donny McCaslin continues to evolve his interest in blending advanced jazz harmony and improvisation with world music in general, and the rhythms of Latin and South America in particular. But while Soar's core quintet expanded to a nine-piece at times, here it remains intact, with the addition of producer/altoist David Binney creating a consistent sextet that forges an even stronger group identity.

It's also an album composed entirely by ...

Donny McCaslin: Give & Go

by Tom Greenland
August 11, 2006

Proust, Faulkner and Joyce: all wrote in protracted sentences that challenge the reader's mettle. Donny McCaslin is one such improviser, creating melodic lines that seem to stretch out and out and out, yet, through rigorous internal logic, never lose the thread of the narrative nor rankle the listener with overblown verbosity. Give and Go is McCaslin's fourth album as a leader and his first on Criss Cross, coming hot on the high-heels of his Grammy-nominated work on ...