A couple of years ago, I posed the question: is the Dave Holland Quintet the best jazz group working today? Today, the Dave Holland Quintet has been supplanted by the Dave Holland Sextet, and with last week's unfurling of the Sextet's first record Pass It On, we get to assess how good Holland's latest incarnation is.
Holland, in case you're not familiar from my prior references, is an exceptional double-bass player who also happens to be exceptional as a composer, bandleader and sideman alike. The man who replaced Ron Carter in Miles Davis' band and ably anchored Miles' fast-evolving music for three years happened to do so at a critical time in the morphing of advanced bop to jazz fusion. Holland's own solo career started with the astounding Conference Of The Birds in 1973 and his recordings throughout his long stint with ECM records rarely dipped below the level of "very good."
Starting in the mid-nineties, Holland's primary vehicle had been a quintet consisting of vibes, sax, trombone, drums and his bass. The cast of this quintet changed somewhat over the years, but the configuration remained the same, as well as it's distinctively joyous, energetic and intricate sound.
Pass It On is Holland's third album under his own Dare2 imprint, but the first by Holland's new Sextet, a combo he unveiled live back in January, 2006. Holland's longtime trombone player Robin Eubanks is held over from the last version of the Quintet. Alto saxophonist Antonio Hart and Alex "Sasha" Sipiagin, both who have appeared in Holland's big band excursion (Overtime, 2005), are also back.
Rounding out the six-man group are two new faces: ace drummer Eric Harland (the fourth album I've covered this year where he's been the drummer) and a longtime major talent at piano in Mulgrew Miller.
For Pass It On, all but one of the nine selections presented are Holland originals. However, six of these eight compositions are old songs Holland had previously recorded on earlier albums. Holland's idea was to "fill out these old compositions and expand on them a little bit where something new could happen. And, of course, this group of people brings some new creative ideas to the pieces."
"Rivers Run" is perhaps the most fascinating re-imagining of Holland's old pieces; in Triplicate (1988), Holland's used a couple of dark, bass riffs around which he, drummer Jack deJohnette and altoist Steve Coleman improvised. In the expanded lineup, those riffs are exploited further and Eubanks takes on much of the improvising role, but the larger ensemble approach is done at the expense of the looser-limbed attack that made the original so appealing to begin with.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
nice review pico. man, Holland seems to have an endless pool of interesting ideas to draw from. he never disappoints me.