Dave Holland Quintet in New York

[LWayne]

Last Wednesday while in the Big Apple on business, I decided to treat myself and my colleagues to the early show of the Dave Holland Quintet at Birdland. The DHQ are my favorite working group, so I was eagerly awaiting the performance which marked the first time that I have caught this group live in a year-in-a-half.

The five day festival, spanning from Wednesday Jan 18th through Sunday, Jan 22nd spotlighted Dave Holland performing with different lineups which represent his various projects-Big Band (Wed), Quintet (Thurs), Sextet (Fri, Sat) and his Standards Duo-Dave Holland and Steve Nelson-(Sun). While I have seen the excellent Big Band twice before, we were fortunate to catch this longstanding all-star quintet of Chris Potter-Sax, Robin Eubanks-Trombone, Steve Nelson-Vibes, Nate Smith-Drums and Dave Holland on Bass.

The set opened with the band performing "Prime Directive" featured on the album of the same name, as well as their live Quintet CD from Birdland. The driving bass and rhythmic counterpoint between Eubanks on trombone and Potter on sax has always made this one of my favorite tunes. After this song, Dave announced that the band would focus this first set on previewing new tunes. He added that the Quintet will have a new studio CD, recorded last December, released later this year on his Dare2 Records label.

The next song, "Easy Does It" (or "Easy Did It") was performed as a tribute to New Orleans. This song boasts some beautiful sax work from Chris Potter on soprano sax, showing that he is becoming just as proficient on this axe as he is on tenor sax. The third tune was a newly-penned song from drummer Nate Smith, provisionally titled "Nate's Tune" for now. The song featured a funky back-beat groove laid down by Smith and Holland on bass, which provided the opportune platform for both vibes and horns to trade licks.

The fourth song of the set, a new tune titled "Secret Garden", proved to be the highlight of the evening for me. The song began with a beautiful bass intro by Holland that had a distinctive middle-Eastern theme. The tune was somewhat evocative of another DHQ song called "Shifting Sands". Nate Smith embellished his tune with some deft handwork on the drums, foregoing the brushes, and Steve Nelson added to the middle-eastern feel with some provocative tambourine and marimba flourishes.

The fifth song of the first set was yet another new tune, this one composed by Chris Potter entitled "Vicissitude". This song was a perfect vehicle for some tremendous soloing by both Robin Eubanks and Potter, who both absolutely shined on this up-tempo burner. It was a great tune to close the set.

All told, one of the most memorable evenings from a group at the top of their game. I have heard a lot of music over the last several years, and cannot recall a tighter, more musically entwined group as the Dave Holland Quintet. This evening certainly proved an early contender for gig of the year!

LWayne

Edited January 24, 2006 by LWayne