Trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas discusses his album Transcend, the Jack Whitten retrospective that reshaped his thinking about raw material, and why Booker Little gave an entire generation of players permission to keep scrambling.
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This week, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas.
Douglas’s latest album, Transcend, came out in April. It's the second record from GIFTS, his band with Rafiq Bhatia, James Brandon Lewis, Tomeka Reid, and Ian Chang. His last several records were openly political. This one turns toward the sacred, though we explore where that either/or framing falls short.
We also talk about painter and sculptor Jack Whitten, why Dave stayed with this band instead of moving on (his usual m.o,), and whether, at 63, he's summing anything up.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Dave Douglas's Transcend )
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00:00 Introduction
01:12 Spirituality, politics, and the Ellington sacred concerts
04:57 The Village Vanguard week with Gifts
07:00 Summing up at 63 — what Transcend means and what comes next
08:41 The Cassie Chadwick song cycle and writing a book
12:48 Uncertainty vs. ambivalence / the trumpet player's paradox
16:14 Lawrence's experience of Dave as a leader, not a dominant sound
18:05 Jack Whitten, the MoMA retrospective, and the slab paintings
22:40 "Slabs" and "Curious Species" — bringing Whitten into the studio
26:54 Process, composition, and what Donna Lee teaches us
28:15 Minimalism, time, and Steve Reich
29:08 Booker Little and the dam breaking
32:41 Writing without a bass player / the GIFTS quintet
34:41 The composer as instrumentalist — seeing through your own bullshit
36:19 Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook and the Creating Music Workshop
40:26 Why Dave teaches / the Advanced Ear Training course
42:41 Singing Bach chorales and Monk tunes as ear training
45:55 On process, uncertainty, and the artist who was against having a process
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Visit Dave Douglas at https://davedouglas.com
and explore his catalog at Greenleaf Music → https://greenleafmusic.com
Follow Dave Douglas on Bluesky → https://bsky.app/profile/dave-douglas.bsky.social
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/davedouglas
and Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/davedouglasmusic
Purchase 'Transcend' from Greenleaf Music → https://greenleafmusic.com/transcend-out-now
Bandcamp → https://davedouglas.bandcamp.com/album/transcend
or Qobuz → https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/transcend-dave-douglas/tk3u5uzowrti0
and listen on your streaming platform of choice → https://lnk.to/dd-transcend
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