Dave Salvator

Dave is a multi-instrumentalist (reeds, keys) who has been making music for over 40 years who makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Today, Dave’s musical endeavors are focused on two groups. The Grease Traps is a hard-groovin’ funk band based in Oakland. And his own new Brazilian jazz quartet, Saravá, which combines the Brazilian songbook with an American jazz sensibility. This group visits different corners of Brazilian music, including bossa nova and samba, as well as styles from the Brazilian Northeast.

In the Bay Area, Dave has played with Mark Levine, John Wiitala, Bruce Foreman, Vince Lataeno, the R&B band Soul Patrol, and Brazilian cats like Carlinhos Oliveira and Claudio Bebbiano. He also studied at the Berkeley Jazzschool (now California Jazz Conservatory) with Marcos Silva.

Before the Bay Area, Dave helped start and played on Big Dave and the Ultrasonics, a six-piece Jump Blues band out of Ann Arbor, MI, with performances including the Detroit Blues Festival and several open-air Ann Arbor festivals. In the fall of 1991, the Ultrasonics recorded a live album, “Shake It While You Got It,” which has received critical acclaim in the United States as well as in Europe.

Dave grew up in Cleveland, and played on both Motown/R&B and Straight-Ahead Jazz groups, including gigs with the Willie Smith Little Big Band, as well as appearances with the Jazz Revival Orchestra, including a concert featuring Snooky Young. While playing the Lead Alto book with the Cleveland State University Jazz Ensemble, he made appearances with Art Farmer and (Young) Bill Evans at the Tri-C Jazz Festival,and did a performance with pianist Jim McNeely. While there, he studied with saxophonists Howie Smith and Mike Lee.

Like many musicians, his influences through four decades of playing are too many to name, and are kind of all over the place. Bird’s lines, Cannonball’s fire, Sinatra’s phrasing, Evans’ structure, Getz’s wistfulness, Miles’ space, James Brown’s groove, Coltrane’s mission, Ray Charles’ preaching, with the blues just under the surface of it all. There are hundreds more to add to this list, but you get the idea.

In more recent years, his attention has turned to Brazil, whose musical soul holds a vast wealth of styles, grooves. Giberto Gil’s energy, Ivan Lins’ melancholy, Tom Jobim’s musical poetry, Joyce’s pure musicality, Caetano Veloso’s meditations, the jingas of Bahia, the samba, and of course the bossa nova.

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