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Dave Douglas
Dave Douglas is a prolific trumpeter, composer, and educator from New York City known for the stylistic breadth of his work, the lyricism and wide-ranging curiosity of his music, and for keeping a diverse set of ensembles and projects active simultaneously.
His unique contributions to improvised music have garnered distinguished recognition, including a Doris Duke Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Copland award, and two Grammy Award nominations. Douglas’ career spans more than 60 unique original recordings as a leader and more than 500 published works. His current ensembles include the Dave Douglas Quintet; Sound Prints, a band co-led with saxophonist Joe Lovano; Gifts Trio, with guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang; Gifts Quintet, adding saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and cellist Tomeka Reid to the trio; OVERCOME, with vocalists Fay Victor and Camila Meza and instrumentalists Ryan Keberle, Jorge Roeder, and Rudy Royston; and If There Are Mountains, a sextet with pianist & co-leader Elan Mehler featuring haiku and poetry from vocalist Dominique Eade. Douglas is often engaged in special projects which include big bands, tributes, and multi-trumpet ensembles, such as Dizzy Atmosphere: Dizzy Gillespie at Zero Gravity.
As a composer, Douglas has received commissions from a variety of organizations including the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Essen Philharmonie, The Library of Congress, Stanford University, and Monash Art Ensemble. The American chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound recently premiered his piece Facts and Fictions.
Douglas has held several posts as an educator and programmer. From 2002 to 2012, he served as artistic director of the Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music at the Banff Centre in Canada. He is a co-founder and president of the Festival of New Trumpet Music, which celebrated its 17th anniversary in 2020. He is currently on the faculty at Mannes School of Music and The New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music. He was the Artistic Director of the Bergamo Jazz Festival for four years ending in 2019.
In 2005 Douglas founded Greenleaf Music, an umbrella company for his recordings, sheet music, podcast, as well as the music of other artists in the modern jazz idiom. Greenleaf Music has produced over 80 releases and celebrated its fifteenth year in 2020. In addition to hosting a podcast featuring engaging interviews with more than 100 creative artists, Greenleaf Music recently joined Bandcamp for Labels and is a pioneering independent music platform with a strong subscription model featuring hours of exclusive content.
Awards
His unique contributions to improvised music have garnered distinguished recognition, including: a Doris Duke Artist Award (2016), an Aaron Copland award (2010), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005), and two Grammy Award nominations for Best Instrumental Jazz Album by an Individual or Group (The Infinite, 2002) and Best Contemporary Jazz Album (Keystone, 2005). He has received fellowships supporting his compositional work from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, Mid Atlantic Arts, Meet the Composer, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Arts International, the Vooruit Culture Center, Stanford University and the Library of Congress. Additional Awards (Selected): Jazz Artist of the year, DownBeat Critics Poll, 2000 Composer of the Year, DownBeat Critics Poll - 2000, 2001, 2002 Trumpet Player of the Year, DownBeat Critics Poll - 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013 Composer of the Year, DownBeat Critics Poll - 2001, 2002 Trumpet Player of the Year, Jazz Journalists Association Awards - 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Rising Star-Producer, DownBeat Critics Poll, 2015 Musician of the Year, Italian Jazz Critics Society, 2001 Personality of the Festival, International Cork Jazz Festival, Guinness Jazz Festival, 2001
Tags
Dave Douglas, Bévort 3, Willy Rodriguez, Jake Long & More
![Read "Dave Douglas, Bévort 3, Willy Rodriguez, Jake Long & More" reviewed by Ludovico Granvassu](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/8bb5d0174719971c15788e4b28c08c4b.jpg)
by Ludovico Granvassu
An mix of United Statesian and European projects showcase a fascinating set of creative new jazz.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Bévort 3 Strolling in June" Northbound (Gateway) 0:16 Host talks 5:52 Willy Rodríguez Roy's Masterplan" Seeing Sounds (Coucs) 7:13 Host talks 9:47 Dave Douglas Kind of Teal" Gifts (Greenleaf) 11:58 Cotonete Odyssée" Victoire de la musique (Heavenly Sweetness) 19:18 Host talks 24:26 Jake Long Silhouette" City Swamp ...
read moreDave Douglas: Gifts
![Read "Gifts" reviewed by Glenn Astarita](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/7398cad0c5e949f3ef6f4c22cc30125a.jpg)
by Glenn Astarita
Dave Douglas' Gifts emerges not merely as a collection of tracks but as an opulent gala in honor of the eternal essence of music, welcoming audiences across the spectrum of generations to partake in its celebration. This project is akin to a masterfully blended concoction of shared human emotions and experiences, articulated through the universal dialect of melodies that defy time constraints. It is a sonic tour de force, intricately weaving together the threads of history, the present and what ...
read moreMareike Wiening: Reveal
![Read "Reveal" reviewed by Mark Sullivan](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/44944be46161719a10f8ef4a2bf9852f.jpg)
by Mark Sullivan
Mareike Wiening is a German drummer/composer who began her career in New York, and now divides her time between there and Köln, Germany. On her third album, she continues making music with her New York-based working band, an increasingly rare situation in contemporary jazz. It provides her an opportunity for more compositional experimentation with each release. Time for Priorities" begins abstractly, a duet between drums and guitarist Alex Goodman's spacey electronics, before introducing the swinging theme and the rest of ...
read moreDan Costa: Beams
![Read "Beams" reviewed by Craig Arthur](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/21494d491a647933044f72e50b898263.jpg)
by Craig Arthur
UK-born pianist Dan Costa plays and composes in the impressionistic tradition of Bill Evans, acoustic Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea or Marcin Wasilewski. It is a style that lends itself well to the alchemy of turning light into music, music into light. And his subject matter of choice on Beams, like that of an impressionist painter, is indeed light. He describes the album as a celebration of light in some key physical and metaphysical forms." Light is like water, ...
read moreJanuary 2023
![Read "January 2023" reviewed by Pat Youngspiel](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/fa91076bd21b8944ad92705d5c1300f6.jpg)
by Pat Youngspiel
Masaki Hayashi Group Blur The Border S/N Alliance 2023 In contrast to its sister-label Nagalu Records, Shinya Fukumori's S/N alliance is devoted to music and musicians outside of Japan, bringing idioms from classical music and improvised streams under one roof, to be shared across borders. And pianist Masaki Hayashi's Blur The Border fits right on the cusp of those idioms--too through-composed and arranged, with traits from European classical music, to simply be considered ...
read moreDave Douglas: Songs Of Ascent Book 1 — Degrees
![Read "Songs Of Ascent Book 1 — Degrees" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/fa91076bd21b8944ad92705d5c1300f6.jpg)
by Giuseppe Segala
La curiosità di Dave Douglas verso l'esplorazione, la scoperta, lo stimolo intellettivo, non si placa. Si focalizza, con inesauribile attenzione, su progetti sempre diversi. Così la sua musica, che poggia sempre su un motivo di ispirazione forte: di carattere musicale, poetico, artistico e spirituale in senso ampio. Tra gli altri, Mary Lou Williams, Wayne Shorter, Booker Little, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, hanno fornito negli anni passati al trombettista materiali, ma soprattutto motivi di riflessione dai quali partire con le proprie ...
read moreDave Douglas Quintet: Songs Of Ascent Book 1Degrees
![Read "Songs Of Ascent Book 1Degrees" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/fa91076bd21b8944ad92705d5c1300f6.jpg)
by Dan McClenaghan
Devotion is not a singular expression. I wanted to come at this from as many directions as the psalms do." Dave Douglas. Trumpeter Dave Douglas released one of the finest recordings of his career in 2010, Spark Of Being (Greenleaf Records), a musical immersion into Mary Shelley's pioneering horror & science fiction novel Frankenstein. Douglas is at his best when he bites into themes--Frankenstein, the films of Fatty Arbuckle, the music of pianist & composer Mary Lou Williams, ...
read moreJazz Musician of the Day: Dave Douglas
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Douglas](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/8bb5d0174719971c15788e4b28c08c4b.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Douglas' birthday today!
Dave Douglas is a prolific trumpeter, composer, educator and entrepreneur from New York City known for the stylistic breadth of his work and for keeping a diverse set of ensembles and projects active simultaneously. His unique contributions to improvised music have garnered distinguished recognition, including a Doris Duke Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Copland award, and two Grammy Award nominations. Douglas' career spans more than 60 unique original recordings ...
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Festival Of New Trumpet Music Celebrates 20th Season, September 7-14, 2022
![Festival Of New Trumpet Music Celebrates 20th Season, September 7-14, 2022](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/8bb5d0174719971c15788e4b28c08c4b.jpg)
Source:
Lukas Frei
FONT was conceived out of humble beginnings: a post-gig conversation, a sketch on a cocktail napkin, and an ambition to spotlight the full expressive range of the trumpet through the voices of its manifold practitioners. What started on that cocktail napkin twenty years ago has grown into something we never could have dreamed of: featuring over fifty artists from around the globe and nine different events, this year’s festival is the most ambitious edition of FONT to date, and we ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Douglas
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Douglas](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/8bb5d0174719971c15788e4b28c08c4b.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Douglas' birthday today!
Dave Douglas is a prolific trumpeter, composer, educator and entrepreneur from New York City known for the stylistic breadth of his work and for keeping a diverse set of ensembles and projects active simultaneously. His unique contributions to improvised music have garnered distinguished recognition, including a Doris Duke Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Copland award, and two Grammy Award nominations. Douglas' career spans more than 60 unique original recordings ...
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Festival Of New Trumpet Music 2021 announces Brass Without Borders, September 8-15, 2021
![Festival Of New Trumpet Music 2021 announces Brass Without Borders, September 8-15, 2021](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/8bb5d0174719971c15788e4b28c08c4b.jpg)
Source:
Lukas Frei
A GLOBAL CELEBRATION OF THE EXTRAORDINARY DIVERSITY IN CURRENT MUSIC FOR THE TRUMPET For almost 20 years, the Festival Of New Trumpet Music has embraced innovation and the unheard. Led by Dave Douglas, this small festival defies stylistic categories and presents exciting music centered around the trumpet each year, in previous years at clubs and stages around New York City. The pandemic-related all-digital version of 2020 was the occasion to be able to present trumpeters from all over the world ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Douglas
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Douglas](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/8bb5d0174719971c15788e4b28c08c4b.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Douglas' birthday today!
Dave Douglas is a prolific trumpeter, composer, educator and entrepreneur from New York City known for the stylistic breadth of his work and for keeping a diverse set of ensembles and projects active simultaneously. His unique contributions to improvised music have garnered distinguished recognition, including a Doris Duke Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Copland award, and two Grammy Award nominations. Douglas' career spans more than 60 unique original recordings ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Douglas
![Jazz Musician of the Day: Dave Douglas](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/8bb5d0174719971c15788e4b28c08c4b.jpg)
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dave Douglas' birthday today!
Dave Douglas is a prolific trumpeter, composer, educator and entrepreneur from New York City known for the stylistic breadth of his work and for keeping a diverse set of ensembles and projects active simultaneously. His unique contributions to improvised music have garnered distinguished recognition, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Copland award, and two GRAMMY nominations. While his career spans more than 40 recordings as a leader, his active projects include ...
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Dave Douglas w/ Caine & Cyrille + Mary Lou Wiliams
![Dave Douglas w/ Caine & Cyrille + Mary Lou Wiliams](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/c20a6ff0f7f7567ecc80aa583c5fb26f.jpg)
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Dave Douglas is a trumpeter whose adherence to basic jazz values justifies the title of the new album that he shares with pianist Uri Caine and drummer Andrew Cyrille in their unusual trio. How unusual? First of all, there is no bassist to help with harmonic and rhythmic responsibilities. At the piano, Caine takes care of business in both departments, abetted by Cyrille, a drummer whose strength and drive have seemed to intensify as he built on the qualities that ...
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Talk Mode with Eamonn Lenihan—New Podcast Series Offers Three Jazz Interviews A Week
![Talk Mode with Eamonn Lenihan—New Podcast Series Offers Three Jazz Interviews A Week](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/news/815f2dda9d0756c25d6d6343ce7743e9.jpg)
Source:
All About Jazz
“Duke Ellington reckoned ‘Too much talk stinks up the place’. And of course it must be about the music. But sincere, intelligent conversation can lead to enlightenment. My role, as podcast host, is to steer guests away from bland, chat show patter into areas of genuine interest…” —Eamonn Lenihan Talk Mode, the very first podcast by broadcaster Eamonn Lenihan, launched on November 2nd. It’s a series he feels will appeal to seasoned jazz lovers and newcomers alike. Exclusive interviews will ...
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"Dave Douglas is the unassuming king of independent jazz, a model of do-it-yourself moxie, initiative and artistic freedom." Frank Alkyer, Publisher, Down Beat
Alon Farber
saxophoneLynn Ligammari
saxophoneAaron Bahr
trumpetWaxwing
band / ensemble / orchestraPaul Giess
trumpetEllen Kirkwood
trumpetLex French
trumpetDaniel Borgegård Älgå
woodwindsCODE Quartet
band / ensemble / orchestraDaniel Tamayo
guitar, electricTomos Williams
trumpetPhotos
Music
Encaminho
From: BeamsBy Dave Douglas
Persistence of Memory
From: The Magician: Live in JerusalemBy Dave Douglas
Garden State
From: Time TravelBy Dave Douglas
Bad Mango
From: Bad MangoBy Dave Douglas
The Gulf
From: Orange AfternoonsBy Dave Douglas
Safeway
From: Rare MetalsBy Dave Douglas