Very sad news from Patricia Parker.
Tonight, a giant has fallen. David S. Ware, the great saxophonist, died tonight, October 18, 2012. What an incredible loss! What a great musician and spirit! His tremendous sound, his spirit, his music, is irreplaceable.
Music holds Us
Patricia
when there is more information we will let you know.
It is with great difficulty that I type these words. David's family has informed me that he passed earlier tonight at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ. His physical body failed but his spirit was completely ready to move onward.
There will be news forthcoming on a memorial service and we'll inform you of this when it becomes available.
"A giant" doesn't even begin to describe this man. David had a whole lot more to teach us. I know I had a whole lot more to learn from him, but am elementally and eternally grateful for all that he offered and revealed in his time here on this earth.
wa `alaykumu s-salāmu wa rahmatu l-lāhi wa barakātuh David
I've listened to a lot of his music, but only saw him in concert once, in N. Carolina after Go See The World came out. I've always admired his intensity and his focus.
Saw his quartet at The Blue Note of all places. I sat at the table down in front, his horn was not more than three feet from me. It was certainly memorable. Been a fan of his music from day one. Sorry to hear about this.
Rest in Peace David! What a huge spirit and giant of a musician. Some memorable moments over the years. particularly some late 90's sets at the Knitting Factory with Susie Ibarra. Literally lifting the bandstand off the ground. I had the great opportunity to be a part of hosting concerts with David on two occasions. Last time I heard him was The Stone solo gig June 2011. After a short but powerful set of music, David said he'd take the remaining time to sit and chat with the audience. he did that in Chicago recently as well. At The Stone, David spoke of the struggles with his treatment and the poisons that he had to endure in the process. Funny, the first time I heard him, I had no idea who he was. It was the Ann Arbor Power Center gig of ('76/'77?)with Cecil Taylor, recorded for the independent college radio station WCBN. That was my first time seeing Cecil and to hear Lyons and Ware in tandem was mind blowing. Then I saw him when visiting NY back around 1979 or 80 and heard him play at about 4am at the Soundscape Space. Aha, that was the man, David S. Ware! Such a beautiful soul, we'll miss him.
His approach to his art epitomized the frank, vulnerable, gritty, honest, pure, naked nature of free music.
Those of us who loved his work, really loved his work!
Way too early to split!
Farewell, David S. Ware...
Wow, this is terrible. Saw him live at Alvin's in Detroit in the mid-90s with William Parker and Matthew Shipp. I expected to see Whit Dickey on drums but out comes this petite girl who played the fuck out of the drums and I had no idea who she was. Of course, it was Susie Ibarra and that was my introduction to her. It was an intense, amazing show.
RIP, David.
"I'm just glad it wasn't machete night."
—Bob Froese, goaltender, after Rangers fans threw mugs on the ice during mug night
As I listen to his singular version of "Angel Eyes"--the world of music will miss David S. Ware so much. That he was able to have the career that he did with the medical condition that he had, is phenomenally inspiring.
R.I.P. Mr. Ware and thank you for your music and your spirit.
In jazz, you often hear talk about how there are no more Miles Davises or John Coltranes.
Such talk misses the point, for people who formulate questions like this usually would not recognize the answer if it was in front of them. It would be presumptuous of me to declare anyone the next great player, for only time decides these questions. But this week we are mourning a jazz innovator—tenor saxophonist David S. Ware, who died from complications of a kidney transplant at age 62—and whose provocative body of work will continue to be listed to by those with ears to here for some time to come.
Ware situated himself in the jazz avant-garde tradition, meaning he was influenced by Coltrane and Albert Ayler—but perhaps paradoxically he was a protégé of the great tenor-sax bopmaster Sonny Rollins, who took the then-teenage Ware under his wings.
While he held a solid footing in jazz tradition and technique, Ware charted a course as an iconoclast from the beginning, generating a body of work that is striking in its originality, strength, tenderness, modernity, and inevitability.
Ware is best know for a quartet he assembled in 1989 that included myself on piano, William Parker on bass, and four different drummers during its 16-year run. His sound translated into many worlds, and Ware recorded with the quartet for Sony-Columbia jazz (Miles Davis’s label), blue-chip European and Japanese jazz labels, avant-garde label AUM Fidelity, and alternative-rock labels Homestead Records and Thirsty Ear.
“Let’s be bold: The David S. Ware Quartet is the best small band in jazz today ... Every time I see Ware’s group or return to the records, it flushes the competition from memory.”
David S. Ware performing at Sant'Anna Arresi Jazz Festival in 2007 in Sardinia, Italy. (JazzSign, Lebrecht Music & Arts / Corbis) Strong words from a critic who has a reputation to maintain, especially keeping in mind that David was ignored by lots of people in the jazz world back then. He never even placed in the polls of jazz magazines at his height and only started to gain notice in them after he had a kidney transplant.
But at the height of the Ware quartet, we had generated a whole culture around the quartet and indie-rock youth felt it. We were signed to a slew of alternative-rock labels as a jazz act. The kids felt how the lyricism of the music and the energy related—something that jazz critics and even some players back then had trouble reconciling.
David has left behind a comprehensive body of work that touches on jazz past, present, and future—he understood the whole tenor and jazz tradition, but brought his own voice to it, and to our quartet. Some have compared our unit to the classic Coltrane quartet, but the members of our group all brought something to the table that only someone playing now could bring—resulting in a gestalt that is of its time and does not look back. When free jazz seemed like a spent force, he brought something new—and greatly beautiful—to it.
When free jazz seemed like a spent force, Ware brought something new—and greatly beautiful—to it.
Ware stubbornly stuck to his artistic vision from the beginning to the end, through bad times—he drove a cab for years and turned down many viable commercial opportunities while he was formulating his quartet—good times, and health issues.
“David was a man of tremendous paradox, which added to his mystery: a peace-loving pacifist who had a love for and collection of firearms. He loved cars and speeding in cars. He had a tremendous sense of humor, but was so focused on who he was in the music—what his vision was—one of the most austere artists I've ever known. He never had any doubt about who he was and what he should be doing in the music, and he traveled a straight line with no confusion to his equation. I think of David as a great iconoclast in the tradition of other iconoclasts like Sun Ra, Thelonious Monk or anyone who pursues a personal vision to the end.”
So Ware leaves this earth a victor. In a world where conformity is prevalent and privilege from the beginning is usually what guarantees success, he managed to change the history of jazz through authenticity and substance.
I was very fortunate to see him once. There are certain recordings I can play which friends who are not into anything "out" will enjoy. Godspelized is one of them.
Be Well, Mr. Ware!
"There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind."
- Duke Ellington
“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”
- George Bernard Shaw
"As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion."
and the loss of a literal giant - and it brings out Sisco, Cem, Nagel, Uli, Bivins and all the rest who witnessed the great, the good, the possibly bad or even the ugly of what was a profound, fascinating musician with that fascinating quartet - with William, Matthew and then the drummers that we all used to pine about - from the great Susie to the others - whether it be Dickey or Brown or even Edwards - why didn't Hamid play more with the band....but then the sound - and the show with the trombonist, remember, Gary??
and I will say this - buy Live in theis World - the 3 CD set for the first 30+ minute track - and for a *while* during that track, he is the *greatest* who ever played the horn....his climax to that solo is one of those crwoning achievements that many or most or maybe vene all who play the tenor saxophone will never reach.
David S. Ware, Adventurous Saxophonist, Dies at 62 - NYTimes.com 10/23/12 11:55 AM http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/ar...gewanted=print Page 1 of 3
October 19, 2012
David S. Ware, Adventurous Saxophonist,
Dies at 62
By BEN RATLIFF
David S. Ware, a powerful and contemplative jazz saxophonist whose career began in the early
1970s but who did not make a significant name for himself until 20 years later when he helped lead
a resurgence of free jazz in New York, died on Thursday in New Brunswick, N.J. He was 62.
The cause was complications of a kidney transplant in 2009, said Steven Joerg, Mr. Ware’s
manager and record producer. The musical world in which Mr. Ware traveled has few breakout
stars, but he was one. In 1995 a review of his album “Cryptology” received the lead slot in Rolling
Stone, which rarely reviews jazz albums. In 2001, after the release of his album “Corridors &
Parallels,” Gary Giddins of The Village Voice called Mr. Ware’s quartet “the best small band in jazz
today.”
Mr. Ware was a large man with a big sound. Among his influences were the breadth of tone Sonny
Rollins could invest in a single note and the ferocity John Coltrane could put into a hundred of
them. He wrote his own music, performed some jazz and pop standards (“Yesterdays,” “Angel
Eyes,” even “The Way We Were”) and sometimes improvised within standard harmony. But for the
most part he played less conventionally, planning his strategies and diving in deeply.
“I’m not interested in chord changes,” he said in a recent interview for a short film produced by the
David Lynch Foundation. “I don’t need that. I work on concepts.”
He could roar, and he could unsettle. One landmark of his recording career was “Flight of i,” from
his album of the same name in 1992: the piece is one unbroken, tremulous, nearly five-minute
tenor saxophone cry, a feat of circular breathing. Still, he insisted that his music not be mistaken
for aggression or pain. He practiced yoga and meditation from his early 20s on and said he sought
a state of balance from which he could observe intense emotional states.
David Spencer Ware was born in Plainfield, N.J., on Nov. 7, 1949, and grew up in nearby Scotch
Plains. He started playing alto saxophone at the age of 10, and music soon became his primary
focus. By 14 he was making trips with friends into Manhattan to hear jazz in nightclubs.
After he introduced himself to Mr. Rollins at a gig, the two practiced together in Mr. Rollins’s
Brooklyn apartment. The two developed a bond. Mr. Rollins taught Mr. Ware circular breathing
techniques, and later talked with him about Eastern religion.
“We were close,” Mr. Rollins said in a telephone interview on Friday. “He was a very conscientious
young fellow.”After graduating, Mr. Ware switched to tenor saxophone, his main instrument
thereafter. He studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in the late 1960s, and during that
period met the pianist Cooper-Moore and the drummer Marc Edwards, with whom he performed
through much of the 1970s in the free-jazz group Apogee.
He later looked back on that time and described himself as an “avant-garde purist”; instead of
building solos, he said in 1991: “I’d come out just blasting. I’d come out like I was coming out of a
cannon.”
In 1973 Mr. Rollins invited Apogee to open for him at the Village Vanguard. “I got a lot of mean
looks from my fans in the club,” Mr. Rollins said in on Friday.
By 1973 Mr. Ware had moved to New York, where he became part of the SoHo loft-jazz scene. He
performed and recorded with the pianist and composer Cecil Taylor and also collaborated with
some of the new jazz’s better drummers, including Andrew Cyrille, Beaver Harris and Milford
Graves.
By the late 1980s Mr. Ware was recording as a leader, but he was still not well known outside
certain small circles. Through that period and into the 1990s, while living in Scotch Plains with his
wife, Setsuko S. Ware, who survives him, he drove a cab in New York to make ends meet.
Mr. Ware is also survived by his sister, Corliss Olivia Farrar.
In 1991 Mr. Ware began recording for the Japanese label DIW. Through a temporary licensing
arrangement in the 1990s, his DIW album “Flight of i” was released in the United States by
Columbia Records. In 1997 he was signed outright to Columbia by the saxophonist Branford
Marsalis, then working for the label, for two more records, “Go See the World” and “Surrendered.”
All that, as well as the start of the annual Vision Festival in 1996, brought new attention to the
culture around the free jazz scene in New York and to Mr. Ware’s music. His headlining gigs in
New York became more frequent, and the documentation of his changing bands kept pace.
From 2001 onward he recorded 10 records for Aum Fidelity, the label owned by Mr. Joerg, including an album-length version of Mr. Rollins’s 1958 “Freedom Suite.”
Mr. Ware developed kidney failure in the late 1990s and underwent self-administered dialysis for
almost a decade; by 2009 a transplant was required to save his life. Mr. Joerg made a plea to Mr.
Ware’s fans and friends, and one, Laura Mehr, offered hers.
The operation was that May, and Mr. Ware performed again in October, unaccompanied, at the
Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side. That concert was recorded and quickly released by
Aum Fidelity as “Saturnian (Solo Saxophones, Vol. 1).” Four more albums followed before his
death, ending with “Live at Jazzfestival Saalfelden 2011,” from his final performance, in Austria in
August of last year.
Last edited by Mike Schwartz; October-23rd-2012 at 01:29 PM.
"...he drove a cab in New York to make ends meet." I know, I know, this is what happens to artists who so love the world that they produce beauty even in the face of general indifference. It still seems shameful.
“America’s not a country. It’s just a business. Now pay me my fucking money.”
and I will say this - buy Live in theis World - the 3 CD set for the first 30+ minute track - and for a *while* during that track, he is the *greatest* who ever played the horn....his climax to that solo is one of those crwoning achievements that many or most or maybe vene all who play the tenor saxophone will never reach.
Go See The World, baby
RIP, SIR!!
Track just ended. Amazing performance! Thanks for the tip.
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