<\/p>\n
I am a frenetic guy. I don\u2019t nap much, and I prefer my days to be packed with projects, friends, and work. That\u2019s why I was in the Knoxville Airport at 5:00 am on the Monday after the Big Ears Festival had ended. I wanted to get home to start my day after hearing so much great music \u2014 including seeing trumpeter Dave Douglas with his latest band playing refractions of the music of Duke Ellington<\/a>, as well as Douglas playing in a reunion of John Zorn\u2019s first Masada Quartet.<\/p>\n Dave Douglas<\/a> is another man of frenetic action. When I feel someone tapping me on the shoulder at 5.00 am in the airport and asking, jokingly, why I wasn\u2019t at work to meet my next deadline, can it have been a surprise that it was Dave Douglas himself? We had conducted the interview (see below<\/em>) a week or so earlier. Dave, just like me, was on the go, as he always seems to be.<\/p>\n A recitation of Douglas\u2019 credits and roles is absurd. He has averaged an album as a leader every year since 1993. As a bandleader he has put together and molded bands too numerous to count in styles from Balkan jazz to electronic experimentation \u2014 the range is vast. He composes the great majority of his music and tours often, including Europe every summer. He runs a record label (Greenleaf Music<\/a>), hosts the Greenleaf podcast, helms an annual festival of trumpet music in New York, and teaches jazz at the New School<\/a>.<\/p>\n At Big Ears<\/a>, Douglas was everywhere, playing music and tending to business. His new band, which releases Transcend<\/a><\/em> on 24th April, played one of the festival\u2019s last shows at Bijou Theater. He performed twice with Zorn\u2019s Masada (once to open a day of performances, then again in a late-night show the next day). I bumped into him at the Greenleaf Music table in one of the venues, where he was chatting up recordings by other artists for sale.<\/p>\n Transcend<\/em> is an extension of Douglas\u2019 2024 album Gifts<\/em><\/a>. Gifts<\/em> featured a quartet including tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis<\/a> and the rhythm section from the band Son Lux<\/a>: guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang (also known for composing the Oscar-nominated soundtrack to Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/em>). Douglas formed the ensemble to tackle four novel rearrangements of compositions by Billy Strayhorn in addition to complementary original material \u2014 and Gifts <\/em>was an artistic success, giving Douglas a worthy foil to his tart trumpet sound in the front line and demonstrating (yet again) that Dave Douglas\u2019s music naturally blends with electronic sonorities and different ways to swing.<\/p>\n