Nate Chinen profiles Sharing a Small Planet, the August track from our UPLIFT Subscriber Series:

At the beginning of this year, Dave Douglas began releasing a series of tracks from a special-edition album called UPLIFT: Twelve Pieces for Positive Action in 2018. The project, available only by subscription through Greenleaf Music, puts the trumpeter in excellent company: saxophonist Joe Lovano, guitarists Mary Halvorson and Julian Lage, bassist Bill Laswell and drummer and percussionist Ian Chang. Last week, Douglas and his label posted a free alternate take of “Sharing a Small Planet.”

With a heraldic horn line over a pummeling drone, it’s one answer to a question few have thought to ask: What would it sound like if Dave Douglas decided to make a surf-punk tune? Lage and Halvorson work in a gnarly tandem here, and Laswell brings deep gravity to his role. Along the way, Lovano delivers a smartly garrulous solo, and Douglas brings the fire. This is a song about the conservation of our natural resources, and there’s no question that its urgency is a reflection of activist umbrage. On his website, Douglas notes that this month he and Greenleaf will be supporting the Peace Corps. “We need to educate ourselves so we can coexist on this planet,” he writes. “No single nation can ‘go it alone.'”

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Greenleaf Subscribers can stream and download Sharing a Small Planet on Bandcamp along with all of the tracks from the UPLIFT series.

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