Dave Douglas | |
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Dave Douglas at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2007
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Background information | |
Born |
East Orange, New Jersey, U.S. |
March 24, 1963
Genres | Jazz, free jazz, electronic music |
Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, bandleader |
Instruments | Trumpet, cornet |
Years active | 1984–present |
Labels | Greenleaf, RCA, Winter & Winter, Arabesque, Soul Note |
Associated acts | Masada, Brass Ecstasy, Keystone, Soundprints, SFJAZZ Collective, Riverside |
Website | davedouglas |
Dave Douglas (born March 24, 1963) is an American jazz trumpeter and composer whose music derives from jazz, classical music, folk music, electronica, and klezmer.
Since 1993, Douglas has recorded more than forty albums as a bandleader. He has produced more than fifty, including all albums released by his independent label, Greenleaf Music. He has performed and recorded with dozens of musicians in jazz and popular genres and has been a member of the SFJAZZ Collective and various John Zorn ensembles. With his own groups, Douglas has pioneered new settings for the trumpet in jazz. He has collaborated on projects involving modern dance, spoken word, poetry, and film.
From 2002–2012, he was artistic director of the Banff Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. He is a co-founder of the Festival of New Trumpet Music, a non-profit charity that supports innovations on the trumpet.
Douglas grew up in the New York City area and attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a private high school in New Hampshire. He discovered jazz while on an abroad program in Spain. After graduating from high school in 1981, he studied at the Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory, both located in Boston, Massachusetts.
In 1984, Douglas moved to New York to study at New York University and finished a degree in music. Meanwhile, he played with a variety of ensembles and came to the attention of the jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader, Horace Silver, with whom he toured Europe in 1987.
In 1993, Douglas began performing with John Zorn in his Masada quartet, which blended the influences of saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman with Jewish folk musics. The band became one of Zorn's most long-standing and popular ensembles, and brought Douglas wider attention.