Douglas and Caine Find 'Present Joys' In The Sacred Harp Songbook

August 07, 2014 4:37 PM ET
Virtuoso jazz musicians Dave Douglas and Uri Caine perform from their new album of duets. It features hymns based on a tradition called shape-note singing, which dates to the early 1800s.

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TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Two virtuoso jazz musicians, Dave Douglas and Uri Caine, perform songs known for their simplicity on their new album of duets called "Present Joys." The album features several hymns from the Sacred Harp songbook, a collection of songs notated for congregations and other gatherings of people who don't read music. The songs are meant to be sung in harmony a cappella. This tradition, also known as shape note singing, dates back to the early 1800s. The new album also features several original compositions by Dave Douglas. Caine and Douglas are also known for their versatility, playing jazz that ranges from the avante-garde to music derived from folk traditions. Caine has also reinterpreted the works of several classical composers. He composed a piece for orchestra and gospel choir that was given its world premiere earlier this summer by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Let's start with the opening track of the duet album "Present Joys." This is the hymn "Soar Away."

(SOUNDBITE OF DAVE DOUGLAS AND URI CAINE SONG, "SOAR AWAY")

GROSS: That's "Soar Away" from the new Dave Douglas and Uri Caine album, "Present Joys." Dave Douglas, Uri Caine, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

DAVE DOUGLAS: Thank you. It's great to be here.

URI CAINE: Thank you. Thank you for having us, yeah.

GROSS: Dave, several of the songs on this album, including the one we just heard, come from the shape note singing tradition. What is that tradition?

DOUGLAS: It's a collected thousands of songs, some of them come from folk traditions and some of them were written along the way and re-harmonized. And they're arranged for groups of untrained singers for communal singing. So the reason it's called shape note is that someone devised a system of every note in the scale having a different shape on the staff. So that somebody who didn't necessarily know how to read music could just see the shapes and know which note it would be in the scale.

GROSS: So do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do each have a different shape?

DOUGLAS: Like that, yeah.

GROSS: I see this, in ways, a follow-up album to the album that you did right before this, which is called "Be Still." That actually featured several hymns on it. And, as you say in the liner notes, this was connected to the fact that your mother asked you to perform hymns at her funeral. She died of cancer?

DOUGLAS: Yes.
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