See the list here.
Riverside performing two dates in Canada November 6 & 7
Riverside will be performing at the Yardbird Festival of Canadian Jazz and JazzYYC Jazz Fest on November 6th and 7th. The quartet, co-led by Dave Douglas and Chet Doxas, will feature Jim Doxas on drums and Joe Grass on pedal steel guitar.
Tickets and information here :
"Mountainside" at Italy's I Suoni delle Dolomiti Festival
Photo by Paolo Peviani
The I Suoni delle Dolomiti festival takes place high in the Italian Alps, with both musicians and audience hiking to the concert location. For this year's program, Dave and Chet substituted Steve's bass with the trombone of newcomer Andy Clausen and turned "Riverside" into "Mountainside".
Read a review of the festival here (in Italian).
Riverside makes Peter Hum's list of favorite jazz CDs of 2014 (so far)
Read the whole thing here.
New date added to Riverside Tour: July 4: Bucharest Jazz Festival
Riverside Announces European Tour July 5 - 16
Marc Chénard's review of Riverside in Point of Departure
By Marc Chénard
At the risk of making an oversimplification, all creative minds fall into two categories: craftsmen, who forge some sort of personal identity out of existing styles; and visionaries, who create entirely new lexicons. The latter risk being marginalized as a result, or becoming pariahs, cast off and dismissed. They might earn deserved recognition if they live long enough, but it is often granted to them posthumously, supporting the observation of an American journalist: “All societies praise living conformists and dead trouble makers.”
In his lifetime, Jimmy Giuffre may not have been a trouble maker, or a rabble rouser, as say Albert Ayler was or Ornette Coleman had been, but he wasn’t exactly a living conformist. Giuffre in effect dared to be different from those who were different. In the early ‘60s, when jazz was coasting on tried and true hard bop recipes, and struggling with the nascent free jazz movement, Giuffre simply did not belong to either camp: Though he was from Texas and played tenor saxophone, he did not have the growl or the punch of a “Texas tenor.” Instead, the music of his late ‘50s trios with Jim Hall had a country flavor that was removed from hard bop and hip funky jazz grooves.
Read the rest at Point of Departure.
Dave Douglas quoted in New York Times piece on Jimmy Giuffre
Booed in the ’60s, but Time Will Tell: Jimmy Giuffre’s Music Finds New Appreciation
By Nate Chinen
A rigorous composer, clarinetist and tenor saxophonist, Jimmy Giuffre made a conscientious break from the jazz mainstream in the 1960s; by today’s standards, his music sounds quite modern.
It’s anyone’s guess what Jimmy Giuffre was thinking when he improvised the stark, intriguing solo clarinet pieces intended for his 1962 Columbia album, “Free Fall.” Along with the five that made the cut, there were five others that saw the light of day some 35 years later, as bonus tracks on an overdue reissue. Small gems of oblique investigation, they bear titles that seem to hint at Giuffre’s state of mind; among them is one with a lonesome air, played in shadowy subtones, that he called “Time Will Tell.”
That would have made a decent mantra for Mr. Giuffre (pronounced JOO-free), who died in 2008, of complications of Parkinson’s disease. A rigorous composer, clarinetist and tenor saxophonist, he’d had a few tastes of critical and commercial success before “Free Fall,” which also features the bassist Steve Swallow and the pianist Paul Bley, and belongs to the small category of jazz recordings that truly were ahead of their time. Its dismal reception cost Giuffre his recording contract and his momentum: He didn’t make another album for a decade, missing the peak years of the ’60s avant-garde.
“The Jimmy Giuffre 3 & 4: New York Concerts” (Elemental), due out on Tuesday, is a startling dispatch from that season in exile. Comprising a pair of previously uncirculated live recordings from 1965, it illuminates a murky period in Giuffre’s career. Atypically for him, both sessions feature a drummer, the superbly alert Joe Chambers, who brings a firm rhythmic push without muddying the music’s intent. “They sound great together, just so natural and flowing,” said the trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas. “If they had made a Blue Note record, it would be considered one of the big classics of the period.”
The urge is almost irresistible, when discussing Giuffre, to dwell on what might have been. But the new release also encourages some thoughts of what might yet be. It happens to arrive at a moment of growing admiration for Giuffre among current jazz musicians drawn to his chamberlike counterpoint and thoughtfully abstracted form.
Read the whole article here.
Riverside is a DownBeat Editor's Pick for May!
By Davis Inman
Is the jazz world primed for a Jimmy Giuffre revival? The clarinetist-saxophonist-composer—who died in 2008 at age 86—is the focus of two new albums: a tribute disc by Dave Douglas’ Riverside quartet and a two-disc archival set of previously unreleased Giuffre recordings from 1965 titled New York Concerts, out June 10 on Elemental Music.
Read the rest here.
O imprevisível Dave Douglas lança agora o quarteto Riverside
By Luiz Orlando Carneiro
Os mais luminosos e influentes trompetistas do jazz destas duas últimas décadas foram – e continuam sendo – Wynton Marsalis e Dave Douglas, recém-chegados à casa dos 50 anos. O primeiro é o guardião do “fogo sagrado” da mainstream na evolução – e não na revolução - do modo de expressão musical nascido, como ele, em Nova Orleans. O segundo não rejeita o legado dos fundadores do jazz moderno, mas sua música se encaixa, perfeitamente, naquela definição do saudoso Whitney Balliett do jazz como o “som da surpresa”.
Dave Douglas é um “escultor” da massa sonora dotrompete, com aquela arte que consagrou o eminente octogenário Kenny Wheeler, cujo arquivo musical foi adquirido pela Academy of Music de Londres, e aberto ao público, no ano passado, numa exposição intitulada “Kenny Wheeler: Master of melancholy and chaos”.
O primeiro grande álbum de Douglas foi A thousand evenings (RCA, 2000), marco do jazz “composicional”, livre dos grilhões da tonalidade convencional, e de temática tão variada que vai de uma versão muito original de Goldfinger a uma suíte inspirada na música klezmer judaico-balcânica. Seguiram-se a este CD registros sempre surpreendentes do trompetista-compositor, à frente de grupos tão diversos como o elétrico sexteto Keystone; o metálico quinteto com trombone, trompa e tuba de Spirit moves (Greenleaf, 2009); o combo com Jon Irabagon (sax) e Linda Oh (baixo) que gravou o lírico Be still e o harmonicamente denso Time travel (Greenleaf, ambos de 2012). Sem falar no quinteto Sound Prints, com o não menos magistral saxofonista Joe Lovano, que paulistas e cariocas puderam ouvir ao vivo, no BMW Jazz Festival do ano passado.
Novo grupo do trompetista inspira-se no interplay do Jimmy Giuffre 3 dos anos 50/60
Pois bem. O irrequieto Dave Douglas está lançando (sempre no seu selo Greenleaf) o quarteto Riverside, em parceria com os irmãos canadenses Chet (saxofone, clarinete) e Jim (bateria) Doxas, mais o baixista Steve Swallow.
Read the rest here (in Portuguese).