2011 · Album
United Front: Brass Ecstasy at Newport
Recorded 2011, Newport · Greenleaf Music · Produced by Not specified
Chancey's Horn Anchors Douglas's Brass Parade
A marching band sound meets chamber music, held together by French horn and a turbocharged drum kit.
Vincent Chancey's French horn is the spine of this record. While Dave Douglas leads the Brass Ecstasy through a live set at Newport, it's Chancey who mediates between the parade—the direct, brassy march of trumpet, trombone, and tuba—and something more intricate happening underneath. The lineup pairs three players in the street-jazz tradition with Chancey's chamber sensibility, and the tension between those worlds is what makes the album work.
Nasheet Waits on drums is the other crucial piece. He's not keeping time; he's driving the whole engine forward with a fullness and urgency that makes these five players sound like a much larger group. The tuba and trombone occupy the low end, the trumpet cuts through, but Waits' full kit and Chancey's horn create the architecture that holds it all together. The interplay between them—one modern and explosive, one classical and patient—gives the music its texture.
This is a live recording, which matters. These are people playing together in real time, not overdubbed in a studio. You hear the room, the energy. It's not Douglas's most influential work, and it's not meant to be. It's a specific collaboration at a specific moment, captured well enough that you can hear exactly what each player brought to the stand.
Who's playing
Dave Douglastrumpet
Luis Bonillatrombone
Vincent ChanceyFrench horn
Marcus Rojastuba
Nasheet Waitsmembranophone
Where next?
More by Dave Douglas
All 38 albums →
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
