2023-07-19 09:29:13
Double bassist Dave Holland on stage at the Nice Jazz Festival, July 18. DAVID NOUY
On one side, in the heart of the Albert-Ier garden, in the setting of the Théâtre de verdure, with its low bleachers, is the New Quartet of British double bass player Dave Holland. On the other, on the big stage called Masséna, named after the place of which it occupies part, the variety singer Juliette Armanet. This Tuesday, July 18, the first of the four days of the Nice Jazz Festival, the present edition of which is scheduled to run until Friday, July 21, these two “headliners” in their respective genres, played at around the same time, at the end of evening. And the stages may well be quite distant, with an adequate orientation to avoid that the sound does not overlap, listening to the acoustic jazz of Dave Holland and his comrades mixed, on a few occasions, a background, especially of drums and bass, from the pop-disco of Juliette Armanet’s formation, which could have been sounded with less power without losing impact.
If Dave Holland, saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, pianist (acoustic and electric) Kris Davis and drummer Nasheet Waits were bothered by it, they and she didn’t show it. Radiant, smiling, warm, listening to each other at all times, playing from the clearest to the most complex (the rhythmic leaps and breaks, the melodic curves of inventive writing), in a dynamic that owes as much to rigor, that of the statement of the themes, of the construction of the compositions, than to the crazy freedom of the solo parts. For the public, perhaps the need for a little more attention, but to be attentive to the poetry, to the expressive power of the music of the present formation of Holland did not require much effort.
Playing in “walking bass”
Dave Holland was born on October 1, 1946, in Wolverhampton, West Midlands county in England. He was in his twenties when he began to play in clubs in London, both with experimenters in “improvised music”, including his compatriots Evan Parker and John Stevens, and with “classical” American jazz. . From the electric bass, learned as an autodidact, in adolescence, he went, thanks to a scholarship, to the serious study of the double bass. He has become one of its masters, a title that would make him blush, but which is perfectly appropriate.
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His encounters – he played with Miles Davis, first on double bass, then on electric bass, with Anthony Braxton, Chick Corea, Sam Rivers, with Stan Getz, Pat Metheny, Hank Jones… – his constant attention to newcomers who will make a career – Steve Coleman, Chris Potter, Steve Nelson… –, his practice as much of the swing tradition as of the free, of the blues and of the search for atmospheres, all of this is to be found this evening.
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