Remembering All About Jazz's Dave Binder / John Kelman

"John" and I finally got together and spent hours exchanging stories about our favourite musicians and various shows we'd seen. At one point, I told him how impressed I was by this guitarist—Dave Binder—who I'd first heard in high school and now was on an album by local singer/songwriter Lynn Miles. We ended the night and head off in separate directions. When I got home, there was an email waiting for me from him. He told me that he had to fess up that he was actually Dave Binder. We laughed about that everytime we saw each other again.

He shared a lot of information with me about his medical issues and the reason for the Dave / John thing, and I was constantly amazed by how much he could write about the music that moved him, and how fast he could crank it out.

Despite my ongoing encouragement, he resisted approaching other media. He was all in for AAJ.

We lost touch over the past few years—COVID and all that—but he was never far from my thoughts. I knew he was in failing health, but his death still came as a shock.

RIP, brother, and thanks for sharing the music with me over many years.

Bill Milkowski

I met John Kelman at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2015, the year that I received the Bruce Lundvall Award. John was in the audience at the ceremony where festival founder Andre Menard presented me with the Bruce Lundvall Award and his praise meant a lot to me. We hung out in the press room that week and stayed in touch via email since, following each other's work. My last correspondence with him came in October of 2021, just after my Michael Brecker book had come out. As always, he was full of praise and mentioned that he was beginning one himself, based on stories he had written about King Crimson that appeared on AAJ. I know it will be great.

Marc Copland

The first time I played Ottawa under my own name was the first time I met John Kelman—who'd already written about my work—in person. Journalists often make it a point not to be chummy, which I completely understand—they want to keep enough distance to be able judge an artist's work dispassionately.

Not John. He came to the Ottawa gig, stayed both sets, and invited me to hang out afterwards. I still have a vivid image of this tall guy, with an effervescent smile, clearly in love with the music and excited to discuss anything musically related. His was a passion infused with a delight, and over the years it was hard not to be infected with this delight every time we met.

We were scheduled to have one of our periodic phone conversations this month. I miss it already.

Bill Bruford

Beginning around 2004, his association with the ever-evolving All About Jazz proved to be the perfect medium for John's long-form studies of his chosen music. His ability to link the recorded works of one artist with another, passing through a connective maze of casual dalliances, firm (or infirm) employment and sessioneering, in a fertile and predominantly European scene, was legendary. I was very much in touch with him in the last months of his life as I, for a change, interviewed him on his work process. The results were to serve as an introduction to his forthcoming book, almost complete when he passed away. Ever stoic and uncomplaining about his health issues, he remained forensic in his music analysis, sharp as ever to the end. I'll miss him very much, as will many others on this European side of the pond.

Jan Bang

It must have been in 2004 or 2005 the first time I met Dave Binder (aka John Kelman). I was touring Northern America with Nils Petter Molvaer and Dave came backstage after a concert in his hometown of Ottawa. Erik Honoré and I was starting a new festival we had called Punkt. I immediately invited Dave to come to Norway covering the festival for All About Jazz. Dave came and returned to Punkt the following years. The extensive coverage came with minute detail and proved a man with acute ears and with the ability to communicate to an international audience what he had witnessed in Norway: three hectic days with hardly any sleep, filled with concerts and this new form of concerts—Live Remixes was what we called them—taking samples of the previous concert and reconstructing this sound material through improvisations with electronics alongside more acoustic or electric based performers. Dave immediately understood the concept and was Punkt´s ambassador to an international jazz audience and beyond. His writing also included liner notes to a vast number of releases including Arve Henriksen's 2012 box-set Solidification.

Dave came to London covering a three-day Punkt festival at Kings Place as part of the London Jazz Festival. Some of the Jon Hassell album Last Night the Moon Came came from those sessions. Now both Jon, Peter, Dino and Dave are gone. The last time I saw him was during a Punkt night at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2016. By that time, he had cut down on his writing due to health issues. Dave was a generous man with appreciation of Norwegian music. I am forever grateful for getting to know some of the man. My thoughts go to Dave´s family.

Declan Colgan, Panegyric Recordings

John was the best sort of writer about music, a writer who made the reader want to hear the music he was writing about immediately. His love for, and unending fascination with, the power of music was evident in all of his writing. This was even more pronounced in our—sadly, too infrequent—phone conversations, after which I'd wind up playing albums we'd discussed that we both liked/loved, invariably hearing them afresh and usually heard while looking up a list of other albums/artists to investigate that he had recommended. That combination of enthusiasm and a deep knowledge of music and musicians served all of his readers well and will, in his extensive writings, continue to inform and entertain many more.

Michael Ricci

All About Jazz not only lost one of its stars but we lost a global ambassador and I lost a friend.

Dave Binder (aka John Kelman) was a brilliant writer, a keen observer, a champion of both musicians and the people who wrote about them. He was prolific as a writer and an editor at All About Jazz. His insight drove discovery and proved invaluable to both our readers and our staff. His tireless dedication to his craft was peerless—at one point, he was averaging an album review a day and they weren't of the 250-word minimum variety. Dave went deep, always. His music knowledge was staggering and his passion and depth were apparent in every review. He was a walking encyclopedia when it came to all things ECM Records, progressive rock and fusion.

Dave was also particularly adept at conflict resolution which came in handy with the sometimes cantankerous members of the All About Jazz forum that he helped moderate for ten years.

I had the good fortune to hang with him on more than a few occasions over our 20 year friendship: at the Montreal Jazz Festival (see photo above), the Ottawa Jazz Festival (where he lived), the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway—he even drove his Prius down from Ottawa to AAJ HQ and stayed with Rosemary and me. We all had a great time.

One of my fondest memories was when we teamed to cover the Montreal Audio Festival in 2019. We definitely ventured outside our comfort zones, made stuff up on the fly and had a blast in the process. Though Dave had never done anything like that before (or since), he was all in and did a fantastic job.

Rio, Dave's wife, said I gave him his big break in jazz journalism and the festivals I greenlit were some of the highlights of his life. With much respect, Dave made his own breaks, but knowing his jazz travels were some of his life's highlights, well, that is something I'll hold dear.

Thanks for everything, Dave.

Deena McNichol

Dave Binder a.k.a. John Kelman was my cousin. My father was Harry Kelman and he was Dave's uncle. Harry Kelman was a Canadian artist and Dave proudly displayed his art in his home. It wasn't known that Harry was also an unpublished poet in his younger days. Dave used to tell me how much my father's creativity was an inspiration to him. It was no surprise to me that he chose his surname. Dave and I were more than cousins. We were best friends. At a very young age, we had so much in common and shared a bond that continued into our adulthood.

My love of jazz began with the discovery of Thelonious Monk and Dave's passion for jazz opened my ears to so much more.

I have my friendship with the love of his life Rio which I will cherish and my recent memories to keep him alive in my heart, but what I would give to see the smile in his eyes and hear him laugh again.

I love you cuz... I always will.

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