On Saturday, April 21, 2018, ALL welcomes back Caroline Davis (alto sax), with Rob Clearfield (keyboards) and John Tate (bass). Minneapolis-based pianist Matt Blair opens with a solo set. Advance tickets $12 at https://carolinedavis.bpt.me or $15 at the door. Online ticket sales end one hour before the show. Doors open at 7:30pm. Show at 8pm.
For the past four years, saxophonist/composer Caroline Davis has been tied up in matters of the heart. Her focus is multi-tiered, however. There are the metaphorical facets, including her feelings about her recent relocation to New York from her longtime home in Chicago and the emotional rigors of navigating the path of an itinerant musician within the City’s bustling jazz scene. There is also a more physiological aspect, as Davis has actively researched the life giving organ and its properties in dealing with her father’s own heart ailment. All of these forces come to bear on her new recording, Heart Tonic.
Born in Singapore to a Swedish mother and British father, Davis grew up in the United States from the age of six, settling first in Atlanta, then Texas and ending up in Chicago, where she attended Northwestern University and received a Ph.D in Music Cognition. It was in Chicago that Davis became engrained within the local jazz and improvisatory music community, one that is tight knit, diverse and particularly open to each player’s musical inclinations.
Davis’s Chicago experience was instrumental in her development as a player. Regularly hearing local greats, like saxophonist Von Freeman, guitarist Bobby Broom, and pianist Ron Perrillo, playing in wide ranging musical contexts and interdisciplinary collaborations helped to shape her into a well balanced and genre defying artist. Davis was also privy to a range of artists, including one of her biggest influences, the iconoclastic composer/conceptualist Steve Coleman.
Upon her move to New York City in 2013, Davis found herself as an outsider looking in. It was difficult to come from a place where she was established to an entirely different community, especially one as fractious as New York’s. Though, Davis soon showed that she was equal to its demands.
The roller coaster lifestyle of working as a professional musician in New York was challenging. Davis quickly saw that her days would have some career highpoints alongside humbling lows of everyday musician life. Friends like drummer Jay Sawyer helped her overcome her blues by coming along to sessions and gigs, thus helping establishing herself in the scene. Soon, Davisbegan to play more regularly with a diverse group of musicians, including Matt Mitchell, Greg Saunier, Billy Kaye, and Curt Sydnor.
It was about this time that Davis found out that her father had heart arrhythmia. The news prompted her to do detailed research on the physical aspects of the human heart.
It was with all of this in mind that Davis decided to compose this music, using the heart for its emotional connotation or utilizing ventricular rhythms as metrical devices. Composing helped not only in her emotional transition but also focused her study on biological aspects of the body. Heart Tonic finds Davis employing more standard jazz elements than in the music of her previous work, including formal harmonic changes and shifting meters.
Thanks to our Spring Jazz Series sponsors: Dane Arts with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation; HotelRED, Dobhan Restaurant; and Alchemy.
