Dave Holland Quintet, 'Extended Play: Live at Birdland' (2003)

At the end of Playing Changes is a list: The 129 Essential Albums of the Twenty-First Century (So Far). I organized these by year, and then alphabetically by artist name. I'll be running them down here, in that order. (No one appears more than once as a leader, though there’s ample overlap in personnel.)


Bassist Dave Holland came of age, more or less, in the loose-fitting Miles Davis bands of the late ’60s and early ’70s, so he has long understood Miles’ modus operandi as a bandleader: corral the finest, most open-minded musicians into a cohesive unit and let the juices flow. Listening to the music from that franchise, you could hear the distinctive imprint of Wayne Shorter or John McLaughlin or Keith Jarrett, but you always knew, unequivocally, that what you were getting was Miles.

The same has held true with Holland’s own bands — none more clearly than the dynamic band he led from the late '90s into the 2000s. The Dave Holland Quintet, as it was simply known, featured Chris Potter on saxophones, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Steve Nelson on vibraphone and either Billy Kilson or Nate Smith on drums. In a certain sense it recalled earlier Holland ensembles, like a late-'80s quintet that included saxophonist Steve Coleman. 

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But the turn-of-the-century quintet had its own stride and metabolism, and for a handful of years it loomed as one of the most reliable thrill rides in small-group jazz. The instrumentation allowed Holland to draw on all of his trademarks as a composer-bandleader: sinewy athleticism, jostling counterpoint, high contrast in color and timbre. Eubanks and Potter contributed tunes as well, mostly hewing to this style. And while the band released several studio albums worth hearing, beginning in 1998 with Points of View, I don't think there's a substitute for how it sounded on the bandstand. Which means, almost by definition, that the double album Live at Birdland is the essential document, a chronicle of fierce ignition and extravagant intuition. 

Among other things, the album reveals just how much trust Holland places in his bandmates. Listen here to "Prime Directive," which was the title track for a previous studio release. It's the sort of airtight, aerodynamic postbop composition that makes you think of good industrial design. But in this live version, it also features a long stretch where the rhythm section drops out, leaving Potter and Eubanks to improvise in tandem, with all the intricate dialogic entanglement of an argument in a Robert Altman film. Later there comes an excellent Nelson solo, and a groove-centric drum display by Kilson. As the kids say, "So killin', man."

Purchase Extended Play: Live at Birdland at Amazon, or stream it on Spotify or Apple Music.

David Binney, 'South' (2003)

At the end of Playing Changes is a list: The 129 Essential Albums of the Twenty-First Century (So Far). I organized these by year, and then alphabetically by artist name. I'll be running them down here, in that order. (No one appears more than once as a leader, though there’s ample overlap in personnel.)


My earliest recollection of seeing alto saxophonist David Binney is from 1998 or so, just after I moved to New York. He was playing at The Internet Café, a narrow, sweaty room in the East Village that had about as much cachet and charm as the name would suggest.

Binney was there with a band called Lan Xang, which he formed with tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Jeff Hirschfield. I'd admired the group's self-titled debut, released in 1997 on Binney's own label, Mythology Records. The sound of the band in close quarters — by which I mean McCaslin had the bell of his tenor in my face — was a visceral thrill, even if some others in the room were obviously there to check their email.

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I came to understand that self-determinacy is a hallmark of Binney's artistic profile, along with the compulsion to hybridize. By the early 2000s I was seeing him regularly at the 55 Bar and Cornelia Street Café, always with a terrific band combining volatile heat and a sleek feeling of lift.

One such group featured Chris Potter on tenor saxophone, Uri Caine on piano, Adam Rogers on guitar, Scott Colley on bass and Brian Blade on drums. They recorded an album called South for ACT Records in 2000, though it took a few more years to see release in the United States.

The album is a hyper-articulate postbop sprint, with every member of the group functioning at his peak — and pointing in the general direction of future bands like Chris Potter's Underground and the Donny McCaslin Quartet (more on those later). Listen here for the braided, dark-hued saxophone lines, for the tidal swell of rhythm, for an inexorable forward pull at every moment, with every move. 

South is available for purchase at Amazon, or can be streamed on Spotify.