David R. Adler
David R.’s Contributions
May 2008 • Albums
Season of Changes
Brian Blade Fellowship
Hugely celebrated as a drummer, Brian Blade has never really received his due as a composer and bandleader. If Season of Changes changes anything, let it be that. The new album arrives 10 years after the Fellowship’s eponymous debut and ends an eight-year...
May 2008 • Albums
The Classical Variations
Uri Caine
Although it highlights Uri Caine’s offbeat projects dating back to 1997, The Classical Variations is not a best-of. Eleven of the 20 tracks are previously unreleased, and the disc has its own sequential integrity. If the pianist’s deconstructions of Mahler...
May 2008 • Albums
The Quincy Jones ABC/Mercury Big Band Jazz Sessions
Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones, a 2008 NEA Jazz Master, stood out from his fellow honorees when they gathered in Toronto at this year’s IAJE conference. For unlike trumpeter Joe Wilder and the rest, “Q” traveled with a security detail. He is among the hugest of pop-music...
May 2008 • Albums
Affairs of State
Andrew Rathbun
“Fiction could not create more colorful, ridiculous characters,” writes Andrew Rathbun in the liner notes to Affairs of State. He’s speaking of the Bush administration. A native of Canada based in Brooklyn, Rathbun is upset, like many, by political realities...
March 2008 • Albums
Day Trip
Pat Metheny w/ Christian Mcbride & Antonio Sanchez
Pat Metheny is best known for his 30 years and running with the Pat Metheny Group. Among his widely varied projects, however, the trio holds a special place, beginning in 1976 with his debut album, Bright Size Life, featuring Jaco Pastorius and Bob Moses...
January/February 2008 • Features
Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette & Gary Peacock: Standard Bearers
“There’s width and depth in a player’s ability,” says bassist Gary Peacock, reflecting on 25 years spent exploring standards with Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette. “Width involves technique, sense of time, all the objective aspects of a person’s playing...
11/26/07 • Concerts
Tigran Hamasyan Trio
By the time Tigran Hamasyan won the prestigious Monk piano competition in 2006, he had already dominated similar face-offs in Monaco and Montreux. In Moscow, nearer his native Armenia, he placed third. It’s an enviable track record for any rising musician...
November 2007 • Artist Profiles
Happy Apple: Hometown Homeboys
It’s hard to picture a band more grassroots than Happy Apple. Drummer David King, electric bassist Erik Fratzke and saxophonist Michael Lewis hail from Minneapolis, in the verdant northern Midwest, far from the concrete jungles where hard-hitting jazz musicians...
November 2007 • Albums
Follow the Red Line: Live at the Village Vanguard
Chris Potter Underground
These two albums do more than highlight different facets of Chris Potter’s musicianship. They also present his take on two idiomatic choices that are highly popular in current jazz. Follow the Red Line: Live at the Village Vanguard is the second outing by...
October 2007 • Solo
Jazzing Iraq
Hard to believe, but Iraq was once seen as “an island in a sea of instability.” In Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, Penny M. Von Eschen discusses how Iraq changed, and how American jazz musicians practically witnessed it. Dave...
September 2007 • Albums
Inamorata
Bill Laswell’s Method of Defiance
It’s hard to overstate bassist/producer Bill Laswell’s influence on contemporary music or, more specifically, the meshing of rock, avant-garde jazz and electronica, which, thanks largely to him, is now commonplace. His latest project, Method of Defiance...
September 2007 • Albums
Sulphur
Steuart Liebig/Minim
Electric bassist Steuart Liebig (a.k.a. “Stig”) is a big fish in Southern California’s avant-garde scene, and Sulphur is the second release by his chamber quartet Minim. The first, Quicksilver (2004), featured a lineup of flute, violin, bass and percussion...
September 2007 • Albums
Nublu Orchestra Conducted by Butch Morris
Nublu Orchestra
The most fascinating thing about Butch Morris’ “conduction”—his spontaneous composition method using coded hand gestures—is not the system itself, but its boundless adaptability. Ideally suited for free-jazz instrumentalists, conduction can be just as compelling...
06/26/07 • Concerts
Vision Festival
The tagline for this year’s Vision Festival was “The Revolution Continues”—a reference to the October Revolution in Jazz, spearheaded by trumpeter/composer Bill Dixon back in 1964. If you walked just two blocks down Norfolk Street, however, you could see...
May 2007 • Features
Anthony Braxton: True Mathematics
Ellen’s Stardust Diner, at the corner of 51st and Broadway in Manhattan, has a wait staff that sings karaoke hits for a tourist clientele. Two doors down at the Winter Garden Theatre, the ABBA-inspired musical Mamma Mia! draws capacity crowds. Sandwiched...
April 2007 • Albums
Russell Gunn Plays Miles
Russell Gunn
It is bold, even potentially off-putting, for a trumpeter to cover Miles Davis’ repertoire—perhaps analogous to Branford Marsalis covering A Love Supreme. And it’s not clear that jazz history needs more versions of “Blue in Green” and “All Blues.” But if...
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ReportAbout David R. Adler
David R. Adler writes on music, politics and culture. His work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, JazzTimes, Down Beat, Jazziz, Slate, The New York Times, Forward, The New Republic Online and many other outlets. He is currently a jazz feature writer for Time Out New York and Philadelphia Weekly, and a "New York @ Night" columnist for All About Jazz-New York. His essays for the British online journal Democratiya have been featured alongside those of Michael Walzer, Todd Gitlin and other leading thinkers of the democratic left. David blogs at lerterland.blogspot.com.