Preview
DAVE DOUGLAS
Saturday, May 28
Margaret Greenham Theatre
(The Banff Centre)
Whether it’s boundaries, definitions or vocabulary, trumpeter Dave Douglas has pushed music well past the conventional. His career has been a history of challenging projects and collaborations and now he leaves his mark on The Banff Centre. Currently the director of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music – a post he has held since 2002 – Douglas says the program firmly reflects his open perspective.
"I think it (creative music) defines well what we do," says Douglas. "We’re not trying to say that any other kind of music is not creative, certainly, but for me, creative music means a music in which the composer and performer are seeking to enable each musician in the music to have their own voice."
These concepts typify creative or improvisational music and as more and more musicians acknowledge that jazz is really too confining a word for their experiments, they look for this freedom. It’s not a disrespectful position – it acknowledges the legacy of such jazz giants as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus, but it also acknowledges that the genre is not limited to that. Douglas is clearly comfortable with this definition as his regular gig with John Zorn’s Masada Group (not to mention his work with Tom Waits) shows.
Douglas’s beginnings, first with early jazz studies in the Northeastern United States and then during a year in Barcelona, Spain, fuelled his appetite for different music and learning styles. Instead of taking his cues from orthodox sources, Douglas was inspired by his collaborators, such as clarinet-playing conceptualist Don Byron. "He’s fantastic, you know, and he’s taught me a lot," says Douglas. "I played in his klezmer music group years ago and I had never played any of that music before. It was like it was just a crash course in a new vocabulary of how to play."
New vocabulary is a phrase often coined by contemporary musicians, but few are as willing to pursue it as Douglas. "I try to keep an open mind about everything," he says. "So my involvement with music is about always trying to discover new things and keep my projects interesting and go in as many different directions as I’m really inspired to go – directions that I believe in." As a result, his most recent projects include groundbreaking experiments with jazz and Balkan music, and the upcoming CD release of music inspired by the silent films of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.
This determination to try new things drives Douglas, but also it informs his teaching practices. In an academic environment he’s known for his vision and his determination to push his students to their own limits. "I respect and encourage them," says Douglas. "And I challenge them to ask questions that they may not be asking about what they’re doing. I also try to think what kind of questions I would have had at that age, when I was a young musician – what would I have loved to ask that no one ever told me.
"I think that sometimes it’s challenging for students of mine because I believe with creative music you have to ask them to be themselves, you have to ask them to find their own music. I am not looking for disciples."
In addition to scheduled shows, all the participants of the jazz workshops are invited to impromptu weeknight jams at The Club at The Banff Centre. Check www.thebanffcentre.com for schedules. |
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