Dylan van der Schyff

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Peggy Lee, Julien Wilson, Theo Carbo, Dylan van der Schyff: Waiting Music

by Nenad Georgievski
June 16, 2026

Improvised music operates through a productive tension: collective intuition on one side, and the constant risk of collapse into formlessness on the other. When a group sustains that balance without resolving it into comfort, the results tend to resist easy classification. Waiting Music, the second release by the Australo-Canadian quartet Open Thread, belongs firmly in that space--an album shaped by real-time decision-making, where continuity is always provisional. Open Thread brings together cellist Peggy Lee, saxophonist Julien Wilson, guitarist Theo Carbo, and ...

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Dylan van der Schyff: The Definition of A Toy

by Jerry D'Souza
August 13, 2005

The title tune for The Definition of A Toy was written specifically for the album by reed multi-instrumentalist Michael Moore, who was inspired by an ad for a toy. The words that grabbed his attention were specifications that it be “open-ended, “interactive, and “encourage creativity. The members of this group inject those descriptives into every tune in the way they fashion a song, giving it a specific parameter within one body, then changing course and diameter as they go from ...

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Dave Douglas: Mountain Passages

by Brandt Reiter
February 23, 2005

A chunky stew of countless cultural influences and myriad musical forms, jazz has always stolen freely from just about anything it could get its hands on. This unfettered kleptomania has always been key to music's vibrant nature, yet at the same time has made the music itself increasingly difficult to define. Case in point: pathologically restless trumpeter/composer Dave Douglas' Mountain Passages , the first release by his newly minted Greenleaf label. The 41-year-old Douglas, who seems intent on ...

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Dave Douglas: Mountain Passages

by Jim Santella
January 31, 2005

Dave Douglas wrote the music for Mountain Passages at the request of the festival at The Sound of the Dolomites. The band hiked up to Rifugio Boe in Valle di Fassa and to Rifugio Brentei, near Madonna di Campliglio in the Alps of northern Italy, and played the music for hundreds of fans who had hiked up to hear them. Later, they put the music together again in a studio.Douglas' modern mainstream jazz offers various moods. The band ...

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Dave Douglas/Nomad: Mountain Passages

by John Kelman
January 20, 2005

With trumpeter Dave Douglas the only clear thing to expect is the unexpected. His work has ranged from tribute albums to Wayne Shorter and Booker Little to Eastern European explorations with his Tiny Bell Trio; from the electronica of Freak In to post-Miles excursions on The Infinite. While developing a personal vernacular that blends staggeringly through-composed music with flights of pure improvisation, Douglas has steadfastly stuck to a philosophy asserting that everything is permitted.

The only rule is: there are ...