Praise for High Risk

PopMatters

HIGH RISK is officially one week old. We appreciate everyone’s support and are shipping out orders as fast as we can. Buy your copy here. Plenty of folks have great things to say about HIGH RISK the album and live performances alike:

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I’ve seen Dave Douglas three times in the last few years in Ottawa, each time at the helm of a different band. But only on Friday night did I see Douglas at the beginning of his show, literally jumping on the spot as the music pulsed, seemingly extra excited to get busy and join in with the sounds around him. read more >>>

 

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Among brand-name contemporary jazz musicians, few have embraced change and experimentation like trumpeter Dave Douglas. For years he seemed to form a new group every few months, each with a particular mission or focus—though lately he’s settled down. On this year’s Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival (Blue Note) he flexes the mainstream chops at his core during an excellent set with tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and the collective Sound Prints (the recording is the latest in a series celebrating the music of saxophonist Wayne Shorter). His most recent project, however, finds him pushing boundaries again. read more >>>

 

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Play it safe? Dave Douglas wouldn’t dream of it.

Artistically, that is. The 52-year-old New Yorker might well be one of those drivers who never lets his gas drop below a quarter-tank, or a diner who always reserves. But with a trumpet in his hands, and a project in his head, Douglas is definitely a risk-taker.

To start somewhere, let’s take his new band and its debut album, to be released next week. Both are called — what else — High Risk. read more >>>

 

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Dave Douglas is a well-established jazz player who has been an active performer since the mid-’80s and who has recorded with a number of influential ensembles, including John Zorn‘s Masada Quartet and his own Balkan music group, Tiny Bell Trio. Zach Saginaw—who records under his middle name, Shigeto—composes lightly psychedelic instrumental hip-hop and has released a number of records via the label Ghostly International. The pair first met last year, via a Red Bull Music Academy event that paired musicians—Nels Cline, Wadada Leo Smith, Petra Haden, among others—in a series of solo and duet improvisations. And while they aren’t necessarily obvious collaborators, the two hit it off. read more >>>

 

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Nels Cline knows a thing or two. Whether the Wilco guitarist and master improviser had any sort of larger plan in mind when he hooked trumpeter Dave Douglas up with electronic musician Zachary Saginaw is up for debate, but what was initially an impromptu pairing has become a full-blown band—and you can hear that band, High Risk, at the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival this weekend. read more >>>

 

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Music via electrodes is nothing new to trumpeter Dave Douglas. He’s blended jazz with electronic music before and the results were about as consistently good as anything else he had recorded. Freak In was especially caustic mix, one that rewarded those who took the plunge and punished those who had not kept up on contemporary jazz (my boss, hearing it come out of my work computer, told me that it wasn’t music). High Risk, Douglas’ collaboration with bassist Jonathan Maron, drummer Mark Guiliana, and electronic musician Shigeto, walks closer to the heels of Douglas’s Keystone project.  read more >>>