After a strong showing on 2010’s acclaimed Spiral, saxophonist, bandleader, composer, and educator Dave Wilson goes into even deeper waters on There Was Never. With the exciting young pianist Bobby Avey (a 2011 Thelonious Monk Competition winner) elevating the proceedings alongside Alex Ritz on drums and Wilson’s frequent collaborator Tony Marino on bass, Wilson leaps to a new level on his superb ZOHO debut. “This is my fourth CD and I feel each one has gotten better,” says the Bronxville native and longtime resident of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “I feel I keep evolving in my own playing, my improvising, my sound, my writing. And this record represents where I’m at right now.”
Avey, Ritz and Marino, who have been playing together in saxophonist and NEA Jazz Master Dave Liebman’s band for the past three years, brought a ready-made chemistry to the session at Red Rock Studio in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. But what most impressed Wilson was some of the chances they took on this highly intuitive session. “We did some playing together beforehand at the Somethin' Jazz club and The Garage in Manhattan and also at the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap,” says Wilson.
Avey, Ritz and Marino, who have been playing together in saxophonist and NEA Jazz Master Dave Liebman’s band for the past three years, brought a ready-made chemistry to the session at Red Rock Studio in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. But what most impressed Wilson was some of the chances they took on this highly intuitive session. “We did some playing together beforehand at the Somethin' Jazz club and The Garage in Manhattan and also at the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap,” says Wilson.
“I always like to take these tunes that I’m going to record and play them out with the band and really internalize them before going into the studio. So there was that cohesiveness going with the rhythm section before the session. But what Bobby came up with in the studio, especially some of the rhythmic type comping ideas he brought to the table, I hadn’t necessarily heard on some of these gigs we played. And his solos were also very rhythmically creative rather than just a lot of fast runs, which really helped make the thing happen. And Tony and Alex also brought a lot of magic to the sessions, to say the least.”
You can hear that kind of spontaneous energy on the super-charged, Afro-Cuban flavored opener The Time Has Come, which introduces Wilson’s bold, authoritative tenor tones and formidable improvisations. Ritz fuels the churning 12/8 groove while Avey’s spiky piano solo and urgent comping on the rubato section has Wilson tapping into some Trane energy. “I started playing the clarinet in grade school and John Coltrane was the guy that got me into playing the saxophone,” he says. “He was really one of the first jazz musicians I heard and the most influential person I listened to. That kind of melodic and emotional approach that you can hear in his playing is something that inspired me, and has so to this day. And I try and tap into that whenever I play.”
Wilson next switches to soprano for bracing interpretations of two pop tunes -- the Grateful Dead’s Cassidy (a Bob Weir-John Barlow song that appeared on the Dead’s 1981album Reckoning) and Brian Wilson’s God Only Knows (an emotive number that appeared on the Beach Boys’ landmark 1966 album Pet Sounds). “There was a period of my life, in the late ‘70s-early ‘80s, when I really dug the Grateful Dead, especially Jerry Garcia” says Wilson, who covered the Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” on Spiral.
You can hear that kind of spontaneous energy on the super-charged, Afro-Cuban flavored opener The Time Has Come, which introduces Wilson’s bold, authoritative tenor tones and formidable improvisations. Ritz fuels the churning 12/8 groove while Avey’s spiky piano solo and urgent comping on the rubato section has Wilson tapping into some Trane energy. “I started playing the clarinet in grade school and John Coltrane was the guy that got me into playing the saxophone,” he says. “He was really one of the first jazz musicians I heard and the most influential person I listened to. That kind of melodic and emotional approach that you can hear in his playing is something that inspired me, and has so to this day. And I try and tap into that whenever I play.”
Wilson next switches to soprano for bracing interpretations of two pop tunes -- the Grateful Dead’s Cassidy (a Bob Weir-John Barlow song that appeared on the Dead’s 1981album Reckoning) and Brian Wilson’s God Only Knows (an emotive number that appeared on the Beach Boys’ landmark 1966 album Pet Sounds). “There was a period of my life, in the late ‘70s-early ‘80s, when I really dug the Grateful Dead, especially Jerry Garcia” says Wilson, who covered the Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” on Spiral.
”I saw them about 30 times back then and had friends who saw them 70-100 times. The deal with them, they had this collective improvisation thing happening on stage and those jams always appealed to me. They really started that whole phenomenon of jam bands and I wanted to capture some of that energy here. With ‘Cassidy,’ I really took the song and re-arranged it. On the soloing there is some consonant playing but we are going in and out of that inside-outside thing on our interpretation and trying to create a collective/Jam type of improvisation.”
Dave Wilson
Label Website: www.zohomusic.com
ZOHO ® is distributed by Allegro Media Group, Portland, OR.
from: Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677
E-Mail: jim@jazzpromoservices.com
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