Bass meets tabla Dave Holland joins Zakir Hussain’s Crosscurrents
Dave Holland joins Zakir Hussain’s Crosscurrents
Since being plucked from a London bandstand by Miles Davis in 1968, bassist Dave Holland has performed just about every style of jazz — and beyond — you can list. Holland became a central figure in Davis’ electric Bitches’ Brew revolution, then went on to play free jazz with pianist Chick Corea, saxophonists Anthony Braxton and Sam Rivers, and drummer Barry Altschul. Holland’s first recording, the influential and revered Conference of the Birds from 1972, was followed by solo bass and cello recordings, numerous innovative quintet and octet recordings under his leadership, a celebrated big band, and work with other influential jazz musicians including keyboardist Herbie Hancock, guitarist Pat Metheny, and saxophonist Joe Henderson. More recently, he’s been heard on recordings from his thoroughly modern quartet Prism, with drums, electric keyboards, and guitar. Since the release of Prisim’s self-titled recording in 2013, Holland’s been heard on The Art of Conversation ,aduo with pianist and longtime associate Kenny Barron, and another duo recording, Hands, with flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela. When he visits the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Friday, Oct. 9, he’ll be part of Zakir Hussain’s Crosscurrents combo, a group with roots in both classical and contemporary Indian music.
The English-born Holland doesn’t disagree that the breadth of his experience makes him appear a bit restless. “For me, it’s always about the integrity of the music and the opportunity to learn something in a new musical language,” he told Pasatiempo ina phone call from his home in New York. “All these experiences going back to my beginnings in music have been an influence. What I’ve done, all my work, reflects that background. It’s a continuing search for new experiences, to find musicians and music that will expand my own music.” Holland, who picked up the string bass as a teenager and later studied at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, has been known since his days playing London clubs for both rhythmic fleetness and spot-on intonation. “I’m fundamentally coming from a jazz tradition,” he explained. “That’s a huge umbrella that encompasses a lot of different styles and influences. It’s focused on developing this ongoing language of the kind of music I’m interested in and improvisation in particular.” Holland said he spent three years studying flamenco with Habichuela before they recorded Hands. “It took that long under his tutelage to learn enough until I really felt ready to make that music.”
Holland has worked with tabla player Hussain before, notably at the Hollywood Bowl in 2012 as part of Herbie Hancock’s Concert For Peace ensemble that included Wayne Shorter and Santana, among others. “I’m in awe of what Zakir can do. He’s an amazing musician,” he said of the percussionist who’s recorded with a wide array of jazz, pop, and classical Indian musicians. Hussain has similar admiration for Holland. “Having Mr. Holland on the tour is not only a blessing for us but also a great opportunity to learn from him,” Hussain wrote in an email exchange from Mumbai. “He is a most distinguished member of the jazz fraternity and he would be the perfect link to connect the crosscurrents of Indian and jazz traditions.” The Crosscurrents project, with sitarist Amit Chatterjee, keyboardist Louiz Banks, and vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, promises to be something different than what’s expected from traditional classical Indian music. At the time of his conversation with Pasatiempo, Holland couldn’t say what listeners would hear from the Indian musicians and the English band. “We still haven’t rehearsed yet. We’ve put aside two days in San Francisco before our concert there with [saxophonist] Chris Potter and [drummer] Eric Harland before the core group goes out on tour.” While Holland claims a certain familiarity with the Indian tradition, he said he had no formal education in the music. “My experience with it is kind of as a listener. There was a big community of Indian musicians in London in the ’60s and the great Indian masters came through to perform. I loved the music and had several recordings. As far as actually learning or getting training in the music, which is very rigorous, I’ve never been through that. Most of what I’ve learned came from talking to Indian musicians, picking up books, discussing the approaches to rhythms and the rags and scales. What we’ll be doing isn’t strictly classical, but there will be a lot of the flavors of that in it. Zakir is developing some kind of meeting point there for all of us to develop.”
Holland has always shown interest in a wide array of styles. But he was labeled for much of his career as an avant-gardist based on his early appearances with Corea’s free jazz combo Circle, his teaming with saxophonist Sam Rivers, and work in the U.K. with such free-thinking musicians as saxophonist John Surman and the late trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. An experience working with young musicians at a summer jazz camp gave him pause. “We had an opening jam session playing standard themes and these young musicians came up to me afterward and said, ‘We didn’t know you could play on the [chord] changes.’ This took me
aback because of course I’d come through that whole straight-ahead school of music in London. I realized that there was a perception out there that my approach to music was being defined only by the music I’d done with Miles and Sam [Rivers] and Anthony [Braxton]. But that was only part of my experience. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of different things that have helped me express all the different experiences I’ve had with the music. People do try to pigeonhole you and find a category that they can drop you in. But I don’t feel that’s the case any longer with me.”
Holland’s reputation as strictly an avant-gardist has long since been replaced by one that sees him as an astute bandleader. This began in the 1980s with a string of quintet and septet recordings — Jumpin’ In, Seeds of Time, The Razor’s Edge — on the European ECM label. These dates and those that followed in the 1990s, including 1995’s magnificent Dream of the Elders, proved the bassist adept at bringing together superlative instrumentalists to play music that ranged between tightly arranged passages and bursts of improvisational freedom. Other projects included his tour with drummer Jack DeJohnette — another musician sometimes unfairly labeled as a free jazz practitioner — guitarist Pat Metheny, and keyboardist Hancock, as well as appearances on Hancock’s recording The New Standard (which covered tunes from Prince, Peter Gabriel, and Kurt Cobain, among others) and saxophonist Michael Brecker’s Tales From the Hudson. Since 2000, Holland has assembled a big band that has brought innovation to that grand jazz tradition. “I’ve had to put the big band on hold,” Holland said, referring to the economic and scheduling difficulties such a project requires. “But in my mind, it’s a big part of my life, even if it’s not active. There have been some discussions and I’m just waiting for the right moment.” Part of the band’s challenge, he said, is writing the music. “I’ve always admired what [big band leader and composer] Thad Jones and [Duke Ellington Orchestra composer] Billy Strayhorn did so easily and wonderfully, the kind of thing I do by trial and error. But I love to do it.”
Maybe the most important recording Holland’s been heard on recently is one that calls back to his days with trumpeter Davis. While the bassist is heard on a handful of Davis’ recordings, including In A Silent Way and Filles de Kilimanjaro, the group with Shorter, Corea, DeJohnette, and Holland, often called The Lost Quintet, wasn’t captured live, a fact that Davis himself bemoaned in his autobiography with a strong expletive. In 2013, Columbia released a three-CD set Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2 that documents the period just before Davis went into the studio to record the groundbreaking Bitches’ Brew. Holland, who’s frequently asked about his tenure with Davis, says that hearing the recordings hasn’t changed how he feels about his experience. “It was an extraordinary period and I was honored to be a part of it. And it’s great to have a document of that period. It’s been absolutely formative to what I’ve done since. It’s not that I’m repeating those days or recreating the music. But it has affected the way I create. It’s about how Miles conducted himself and put the music together. It was a great example.”