The first time I heard Dave Glasser, he was working with a small combo
of other young musicians in a New York jazz club. His colleages were
already fluent in the jazz language, but Glasser immediately stood out.
He had presence. That is, it was clear that no matter who his influences
had been, Dave was now playing himself. His horn had become an extension
of his own being.
A couple of years later, I heard him at the Blue Note in New York
with the band of Illinois Jacquet. With Glasser on stand were seasoned
jazz players under the firm direction of one of the jazz masters not
only of his own instrument but of the living history of the Jazz ensemble.
Dave was the lead alto and a prominent soloist with the Jacquet band,
and he played with the authority of a musician steeped in the roots
of jazz while also at ease with its comtemporary directions.
Dave Glasser has a rarely diversified list of credits having worked
with the Count Basie Orchestra (under Frank Foster's direction), Barry
Harris, and of course, Clark Terry. Dave is a current member of Clark's
quintet and when he's not playing around the world, Glasser teaches
Bebop Harmony and Saxophone at New York's New School for Social Research,
which has become one of the most influential centers of jazz higher
learning anywhere.
In this recording, which establishes him as a world-class jazz improviser
and composer-arranger, Glasser reveals why he has such a strong, memorable
presence. He plays with remarkable clarity of sound, ideas, and swinging
jazz time. On ballads, he is, to my ear, unequalled on alto these nights
for natural warmth and singing lyricism. As critic Joe Seager wrote
in the Birmingham (England) Evening Mail:
"Glasser became a great hit at the Birmingham International Jazz
Festival with playing that echoes the complexities of Charlie Parker
and the soaring beauty of Johnny Hodges."
While there are many players versed in the rhythmic and harmonic complexities
of modern jazz, very few of them can be at all compared with the sensuous
romanticism of Johnny Hodges.
Also evident here is the deep blues colorations of Dave's playing.
The blues is the common language of jazz throughout all its eras, and
a musician who is not naturally at down home in the blues ought to think
of going into another line of work.
Having heard Glasser primarily in the context of other bands, I was
not prepared for the original quality of his composing and arranging.
His writing is, first of all, like his playing in that it is utterly
without pretentiousness and self-serving display of virtuosity for its
own sake. His work reminds me of something Dizzy Gillespie once told
me: "It's taken me years to know what not to play."
With his horn and as a composer-arranger, Dave doesn't waste notes
or time. Many of the songs here are originals, and all of them are arranged
by Glasser. As in his playing, there is a seamlessness to his writing.
There is a natural flow of ideas and textures - along with an unusual
sense of spontaneity in the interplay between soloists and ensemble
and in conversations among the soloists.
Indeed, listening to the music here underscores what Clark Terry said
of Dave in the Birmingham Post: "Glasser is marvelous to work with
because we have an opportunity to do the thing I've always wanted to
do and I always felt was the real essence of a good group. That is to
extemporaneously arrange things as we go along."
That sense of unusually informal collaborative conversational intimacy
pervades these recordings. I once asked Duke Ellington what he most
looked for in a musician he might want to add to his orchestra, "I
want someone," he said, "who knows how to listen." Dave
Glasser and the other musicians here exemplify what Duke Ellington meant.
Years ago, listening to jazz players talk to each other off the stand,
I'd hear a tribute the paid to musicians they admired. They'd say, "he
knows how to tell a story." And that's another characteristic of
Glasser's stature in jazz. In playing and writing, he tells a whole
story. There are no distracting virtuosic fragments or explosive sounds
meant to startle but conveying little else in the way of organic meaning.
As was clear to me the first time I heard Dave, he had, early on,
the most essential quality of a superior jazz musician - his own story
to tell, and as his life evolves, so does his music.
This is a recording that will last as long as there are listeners
for whom the life force of jazz is essential to their own lives.
- Nat Hentoff
Nat
Hentoff on David Glasser