(Dave Burrell at the piano on 3/13/2026 at Loove Labs Annex, Brooklyn; photo by James Koblin)
On March 13th, I had the pleasure of seeing the pianist Dave Burrell in a solo set, and I’ve been thinking about what makes Dave Burrell so special ever since. Burrell is an unforgettable stylist, but he’s not alone. There’s a whole school of playing that draws on multiple streams and styles from the vast piano literature, synthesizing history into a kaleidoscope at the keys. A summary of this school of musicians could fill a book; I’ll mention players like Jaki Byard, who brought a modernist approach to older styles like stride, or Don Pullen, who came to this synthesis from the outside, combining percussive technique and abstract clusters with the ability to summon Duke or Monk. Many other players can (and do) channel this history, but nobody does it with more authenticity than Dave Burrell. For the most stark example from Burrell’s discography, consider that on August 13, 1969, Burrell recorded Echo (Actuel 20), a free jazz noise fest which Burrell said was based on an “unstable interval of an augmented fourth” that he heard in police car sirens. Four months later, he was back in the studio recording his version of Puccini’s La bohème (Actuel 30, La Vie de Bohème). Setting these recordings side by side is a wild snapshot of extremes in tonality. Unquestionably, Burrell’s music has mellowed, but to my ears, what I hear now is even better — he combines the mindset of an avant-gardist with a love of tonality that makes his music authentic in a way that many mix-and-match stylists don’t achieve.
I’ve loved Burrell’s playing for years, but I’ve never seen him perform, so finally catching Burrell live was a must. The March 13th show that included Burrell’s set was part of Out Fest, a three-day festival of creative music ideally poised between the June’s Vision Festival (also hosted by Arts for Art) and January’s NYC Winter JazzFest. With the fierce winter we’ve had in NYC, we need more nights of jazz to hasten Spring! You can check the lineups here. The show took place at Loove Lab Annex in Brooklyn, which has a wonderful cozy vibe and every seat in the house is right up near the music. On March 13th, I was able to also catch a set of spoken word and poetry from Arts for Art leader Patricia Nicholson Parker (with turntablist Val Jeanty) and to close out the evening, Blue Reality, which featured Poughkeepsie jazz legend Joe McPhee and the wonderful trumpet player Ted Daniel (I missed the opener XXE, which is pianist Mara Rosenbloom, drummer Tcheser Holmes, and violinist gabby fluke-mogul). But I was there to see Dave Burrell, and was so happy to appreciate the worlds of sound he can still create.
Burrell started his set with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”; maybe that sounds cloying, but Burrell balanced the melody with spiky dissonance and didn’t play it long. After a couple minutes, he abruptly stopped mid tune and spoke to the audience, talking about bassist Jimmy Garrison, who Burrell has eulogized in his song “Teardrops for Jimmy,” first recorded in 1977 and included in his jazz legendary opera, Windward Passages. Using that song as a springboard, Burrell played for a seemingly stream-of-consciousness and uninterrupted 50 minutes, one idea progressing into another. Burrell explored familiar melodies from the American songbook – he introduced and then deconstructed “April in Paris,” returning to the first 8 bars (the “A” section of the tune) multiple times, but each time varying the tempo and harmonies, and breaking the melody up with percussive piano interludes. Gradually, he incorporated the melody of “Body and Soul,” but again slowing the tempo and suspending the song in a disembodied form that felt like an investigation of sound as much as melody. Several times, Burrell seemed to reach a suitable end point, but then kept on going, returning to the bridge of “April in Paris,” and then back to those first 8 bars, playing its repeated notes with chromatic overtones. The performance was meditative, cerebral, and quite beautiful. It also was another glimpse into the aesthetic throughline of Burrell’s music, where the rendering of melody is closely connected to interrogating song structures, and in virtually every Burrell performance, you’ll hear both of those modes presented, really two faces of the same coin. He’s an avant-garde romantic, in whose music you can hear attractive melody along with noise, catch echoes of opera and free jazz, but all without any irony or synthetic postmodernism. Instead, Burrell uses both dissonance and harmony to advance the pursuit of catharsis and beauty, something achieved through the cauldron of in-the-moment creation. He is an original, and at the age of 85, I can’t recommend highly enough that when you can go see him play, go.
To celebrate Dave Burrell’s music, on my radio show “Where Is Brooklyn,” I’ve put together a two-part, four-hour radio program of Dave Burrell’s music. Part One will air this Sunday morning, March 22, at 2 a.m., and Part Two next Sunday, March 29, at 2 a.m. Tune into Vassar College radio, wvkr.rog or if you’re near Poughkeepsie, New York, listen at 91.3 FM.
Try and tune in, and if you can’t, make sure keep listening to the great Dave Burrell!