DD-&-BE @ Jazz Standard

Tonight, Dave and Brass Ecstasy will be playing their first of four nights at the Jazz Standard in NYC. These are celebrating the latest Greenleaf release, Spirit Moves. Hope to see you out.

Spirit Moves // Record Release
Jazz Standard, NY // June 18th – 21st
Dave Douglas, Vincent Chancey, Luis Bonilla, Marcus Rojas, & Nasheet Waits
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Click to view the TimeOut NY listing
(view below)

In 2003, trumpeter Dave Douglas celebrated his 40th birthday with a week of shows at the Jazz Standard, each night with a different band: Balkan-influenced trio, string ensemble, acoustic-jazz combos, abstract electrojazz septet and more. This sort of multitasking isn’t unheard of, but Douglas has managed to weave all those threads into a unified body of work, in the process inspiring a new generation of players and provoking much comment about jazz aesthetics in the new millennium.

Spirit Moves, recently issued by Douglas’s Greenleaf label, brings a new band for his roster, and thus a reason to return to the Standard. Brass Ecstasy—its name a nod to the late Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy—is an offbeat unit in which Douglas is joined by Vincent Chancey on French horn, Luis Bonilla on trombone, Marcus Rojas on tuba and Nasheet Waits on drums. These are top-shelf players who share Douglas’s view of jazz as infinitely mobile. Thus we get Rufus Wainwright, Hank Williams and Otis Redding covers; tributes to trumpet greats Bowie, Enrico Rava and Fats Navarro; and a stirring, melodic middle-finger farewell to George W. Bush (“Twilight of the Dogs”).

Brass Ecstasy grew out of Douglas’s work as cocurator of the annual Festival of New Trumpet Music (taking place June 26–28 at Cornelia Street Café). Drawing on New Orleans brass-band tradition, soul and funk, modern jazz, chamber music and things not quite nameable, the group will ride in, literally, on a breath of fresh air.—David R. Adler