Trumpet player Dave Douglas is a phenomenon - not so much part of a new wave as an entire movement by himself. You could programme a long weekend festival with all his different bands (eight at the last count) and multifarious collaborations and there would still be plenty left unheard by Monday evening. Music tumbles out constantly, in group improvisations, compositions and long solos -he has incredible physical stamina as well.
You could never describe him as someone who transcends his technical limitations - he has none. He has soulful, swinging technique, classical technique, contemporary, avant-garde technique. You get the impression of a big musical mind that has absorbed the entire canon and it's both exhausting and exhilarating.
Douglas opened with the Charms of the Night Sky quartet and closed with the more unbuttoned Tiny Bell Trio, an intense, storming performance with two encores. The trio is built around drummer Jim Black and hard-working guitarist Brad Shepik, playing clean jazz chords, keyboard-like arpeggios and fast ensemble lines in quick succession.
They play numbers such as Prolix, that recall Ornette Coleman's group with Don Cherry, plus jazz standards, odd marches, ballads and even a chunk of Schumann (Nicht so schnell, mit viel Ton zu spielen). Sometimes they just impro- vise, searching, surprising themselves with aural glimpses of show tunes, stop-start grooves and rapid changes of timbre and harmony. Black is a star, a hyper-aware presence poised over his tightly tuned kit, adding splashes of tone colour from a tray of percussion toys.
Charms of the Night Sky features legendary accordionist Guy Klucevsek, bassist Greg Cohen, violinist Mark Feldman and Douglas, who has created some of his best compositions for this little chamber ensemble. Their opening "signature tune", the title track from the Winter & Winter album, encapsulates their qualities - a supple bass riff, flowing, dynamic ensemble work and a beguiling, elliptical melody that could be a timestretched fragment from a Douglas solo.
A strength of the Charms band (whose album A Thousand Evenings has just been released on RCA Victor) is that it is entirely new, yet in a kind of parallel universe. You can imagine a non-wired, 1940s vision of Europe in the year 2000, with steam-powered cars, monorails and atrium chess cafes where you might listen to a charming, "longhair" band play strange and beguiling music like this.
Dave Douglas is at the Jacqueline du Pre building, Oxford (01865 798 600), tonight, then tours.
