Dave Kline At Blues Alley

Dave Kline
Blues Alley
Washington, DC
June 20, 2025

Keyboard, guitar, bass and drums: a standard jazz quartet, no doubt, no argument. But add electric violin, trombone and the Chinese dulcimer and you've got something entirely different. Dave Kline and friends brought that unique line-up and a passel of original tunes to Blues Alley in DC's Georgetown district. The result?—as tasty and exotic as the jambalaya and shrimp and grits we enjoyed while Kline and company performed their musical magic.

And then there was vocalist Abena Koomson-Davis, a veteran of Natalie Merchant sessions, among other gigs. Wife of Grammy-winning trombonist Steve Davis—an alum of Chick Corea groups and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers—Koomson-Davis lit up the room with a soulful "God Bless the Child" and a couple of unexpected pop hits: Steve Miler's "Fly Like An Eagle" and Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground." Trading verses with her virtuoso husband's horn, she brought the room to its feet all night long.

Things got started with the first of seven Kline originals, appropriately titled "Act 1." Kline's electric violin soared above and around the impressive guitar work of Buddy Speir, barking back and forth with the fiddle and Davis' trombone solos. Chao Tan brought an otherworldly feel to the piece with her penetrating Chinese dulcimer interludes. Call it World Music if you like; or as Kline put it "east, west, north and south"

Koomson-Davis took the stage early in the set on "Cuban Minuet," a plaintive, yearning vocal punctuated by drummer Olaolu Caleb Ajibade's tasty drum breaks joined by big, bold chords from TJ Turqman on electric bass. Kline turned up the temperature, trading fours with Speir's handsome 335 in an intense display of improvisational rapport. "Rhum baba" next up on the set list, kept the beat going, this time with a smooth trombone solo and pianist David Palmer plying his trade with Fender Rhodes cool.

"I Got the Blues in Africa" found Speir bending notes up the neck as far as he could while Tian laid down a funky groove with the rhythm section, joining the violin and a bluesy trombone solo to maximize the impact. Switching to an amplified acoustic guitar, Kline led the band thru "The Muse," duetting with Davis and then Tian and, once again, that rocking Speirs guitar.

Perhaps the loveliest sound of the evening belonged to Kline's composition "Journey," based on a story of determination in the face of adversity. Violin and dulcimer began the piece, trading themes as the song meandered through progressions, building in force until the dulcimer broke like a waterfall, circling round and round the others. Out of thin air, the drums commenced a martial cadence which transmogrified into a hard samba with a striking trombone solo out front. You had to be there (hopefully, this and the other tunes will appear on Kline's forthcoming album).

An impromptu improvisation with dulcimer, violin and trombone was admired, after which the evening came to an end with Fela Kuti's hit "UpSide Down," rendered here impeccably thanks to Nigerian drummer Ajibade's confident beat. That is about as political as it got at Blues Alley. World music, jazz or sounds from all directions—whatever you want to call it, David Kline and company were masterful tour guides on the road to some very special music.

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