In a jazz climate that rewards neo-conservative tributes and far-flung exercises in deconstruction, David Weiss has distinguished himself another way: through finding flexibility and innovation in music that has it’s roots in the mainstream.
The trumpeter, composer, and arranger has had the opportunity to learn from some of the music’s quintessential figures by touring and/or recording with the likes of Freddie Hubbard, Charles Tolliver, Billy Harper, Bobby Hutcherson, Slide Hampton, James Moody, Tom Harrell, Louis Hayes and Billy Hart among many others. Weiss was born in New York City, but began his musical studies in earnest by attending North Texas State University. He graduated in 1986 and returned to New York. He soon found work with Jaki Byard, Frank Foster and Jimmy Heath and began to study with fellow trumpeters Tommy Turrentine and Bill Hardman.
In 1996, recognizing a lack of serious new jazz writing, Weiss recruited some young, first-call New York musicians and composers to form the New Jazz Composers Octet. With their passionate rendering of thoughtful arrangements and firm rooting in tradition, the collective quickly established itself as the “sound of the new jazz mainstream” (NYTimes) and was praised for their ability to “stretch hard bops kind- of-unstretchable formula (Village Voice). The Octet’s debut recording, First Steps Into Reality was also lauded as a “gem” and was listed as one of the JazzTimes Magazine’s Top 5 Albums of the Year. The octet recently released their third CD The Turning Gate, which featured music composed by Weiss and pianist Xavier Davis commissioned by the prestigious Chamber Music America Doris Duke Jazz Ensembles Project: New Works Creation and Presentation grant features. With compositions from this album, Weiss also won a grant from the American Composers Forum’s Jerome Composers Commissioning Program.
In 2000, Weiss formed a second group, the David Weiss Sextet to explore new compositional concepts and styles he was developing that did not fit the sound of the octet. The group’s second CD entitled The Mirror was hailed as a masterpiece by AllAboutJazz.com and was voted #2 CD of 2004 by Tony Hall in JazzWise.
Weiss began dabbling with the idea of the Point of Departure band as early as 2004 but began the group in earnest in 2006 when he was offered a regular Thursday night residency at the Greenwich Village club Fat Cat. The regular gig gave Weiss the opportunity to try out many up-and-coming musicians on the scene in various combinations until the personnel became solidified. By the end of the six month run, Weiss felt he had a fully realized new band with a unique sound and approach; a harmonically adventurous band with more of a free approach to the music that could switch grooves from swing to funk to rock in different time signatures on a dime.
The group he formed represents some of the most promising talent the city has to offer. Saxophonist J.D. Allen is now a rising star on the scene leading his own trio and releasing two critically acclaimed CDs on the Sunnyside label. Weiss gave Nir Felder, a recent Berklee grad his first gig in New York working with a seasoned bandleader. The bass chair has rotated between the capable hands of Australian bassist Matt Clohesy and Luques Curtis, two now-well-established sidemen who work in too many other high-profile settings to list here. For the drum chair, Weiss found the enormously talented Jamire Williams (who, not surprisingly, is from that great wellspring of young jazz drummers, Houston, Texas). Williams has also recently been touring with Kenny Garrett, Jacky Terrasson and Dr. Lonnie Smith.
The group draws it’s inspiration and approach to music from a period in jazz that seems to have not yet been clearly defined, the late 1960’s, a turbulent but exciting time for jazz when music seemed to simultaneously get more complex and simpler at the same time as a variety of influences infused the music. Some were experimenting with soul, rock and exotic rhythms from the India and the Far East. Others were carrying on the innovations of the second great Miles Davis Quintet, using the group’s ever-shifting rhythms and harmonic complexities as a springboard to new compositional ideas. Some somehow combined both to create some new, exciting music.
Point of Departure is re-examining some of the most innovative music of the period, some of it neglected, some, perhaps, never quite as developed as it could have been as things seemed to move at a pace during that period that left some music from being fully realized as they quickly moved on to the next new thing. All three of Weiss’ ensembles (Point of Departure, New Jazz Composers Octet and David Weiss Sextet), are quite different, each with its own unique sound.
Personnel:
David Weiss – trumpet
J.D. Allen – tenor sax
Nir Felder – guitar
Matt Clohesy – bass
Jamire Williams – drums