Jazz
Edition Records releases “Freedom Call” on 2 October, the first retrospective box set of Dave Holland’s career. It runs to six LPs or three CDs of unreleased live recordings, and arrives the day after the bassist turns eighty, on 1 October.
The material is split between three groups, two LPs or one CD each. The Sextet appears with Antonio Hart on alto sax, Alex Sipiagin on trumpet and flugelhorn, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Mulgrew Miller on piano and Eric Harland on drums, in concerts from the “Pass It On” period (2007). The Quintet, with Chris Potter on soprano and tenor saxophones, Eubanks, Steve Nelson on vibes and marimba and Nate Smith on drums, dates from 2010. Prism, the quartet with Kevin Eubanks on guitar, Craig Taborn on keyboards and Harland, is from 2014.
Holland says the archive had been sitting there for years and that he had no plans to open it: “I’m usually looking forwards rather than backwards and I hadn’t really had any desire to revisit things already documented.” In the early 2000s he bought recording equipment and built up some seven terabytes of material. The idea of releasing it came from his daughter and manager, Louise, with the birthday approaching. He listened through about thirty hours before whittling it down.
The Sextet tracks are dedicated to Mulgrew Miller, who died in 2013 at fifty-seven and whom Holland credits with the decision to add piano to his groups. The bassist wrote liner notes for each project and for the set as a whole, and places the selection criterion in the live setting: “the live performances capture something special, the energy of the audience”.
Holland has recorded for Edition since 2019, with “Good Hope”, alongside Zakir Hussain and Chris Potter. The box set comes in three formats: six numbered LPs at 120 pounds, three CDs at 35 and the digital download at 24.
Text by Aina Torrents