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Mike Davis

Mike Davis has lived several distinct musical lives. He has been a student, a serious student of performance and of theory and of composition and of art. He has been a gig warrior, playing multiple shows in multiple styles on different instruments at different venues with different bands on the same day numerous days per week, week after week after week. He has been a record producer, sitting in front of a computer and a rack of mic pres and compressors – recording, editing, mixing, picking on artists until he finally feels they ‘got it’. He has been a recording artist, obsessing over whether the material is right, whether the concept is strong, whether the ensemble gets it. He has been a record label owner, pondering how best to market a project and to whom, begging for reviews and hoping they don’t stink, dealing with logistics that are a world away from the music they serve. He has been a band leader, a sideman, an extrovert, a recluse. What follows is a brief history of those lives, some of which are still being lived.

Mike grew up in a small Texas town not far outside of Houston called Rosenberg. Though a music fanatic from a very early age, Mike didn’t begin seriously playing an instrument until around age 14. His very good friend Roger started showing him how to play bass. Before long Mike was playing bass in his high school big band as well as in the Symphonic band. The flood gates opened. He borrowed other instruments from the school and began to practice and experiment. He tried clarinet, trombone, trumpet, french horn, drums, piano. Turns out bass was a great fit, and an ensemble role that made absolute sense to him. He discovered his first great jazz album – Chick Corea’s ‘Now He Sings-Now He Sobs’. He studied with his first teachers of bass and theory and jazz – Dave Foster, Eric Late, Shelly Berg, Bruce Dudley. He played gigs in Houston with his first influential peers – Todd Harrison, Mike Wheeler, Harry Shepard, Joe LoCascio, Tony Campisi, Woody Witt, Clark Erickson, Ted Wenglisnski. He fell in love with performing, composing, and recording.

In 1993 Mike began studying jazz at the College of Music at the University of North Texas. There he studied classical bass with Ed Rainbow and Jeff Bradetich, jazz arranging and composing with Paris Rutherford, jazz bass with John Adams, jazz improvisation with Dan Haerle, Fred Hamilton, Mike Steinel and Ed Soph, South Indian classical music theory and performance with Poovalur Srinivasan, tabla and North Indian classical music theory with Ganesh Gupta, Aloke Dutta and later in NYC, Samir Chaterjee. During this time Mike performed regularly with Dave Zoller, Pete Peterson and the Collection Jazz Orchestra, Allison Wedding, Pablo Mayor and many others. He was a regular member of the bands Little Jack Melody and his Young Turks, Sol Caribe and The Great Escape. Most importantly however, he began his original avant-garde ensemble Sand with guitarist Niclas Höglind, saxophonist Jacob Duncan and drummer Chris Michael. This group played every Sunday evening for nearly 2 years at the Cosmic Cup (now called Cosmic Cafe). The owner, Praveen, gave Mike and the guys complete artistic freedom, absolutely no restrictions. It was liberating to say the least. This proved to be a very prolific era for Mike. Sand played a lot of original material from each band member as well as free improvisations. This was the first ensemble with which Mike began to form his idea of spontaneous composition instead of free improvisation, a seed planted which blooms years later in NYC.

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1
Album Review

The New Wonders: The New Wonders

Read "The New Wonders" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello


In the vast array of jazz styles, if there is one segment which rises phoenix-like over time, it is the music of the first third of the Twentieth Century, the era which saw Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, and other individuals and bands ignite popularity. With “the New Wonders," NY-based cornetist, vocalist, arranger and ardent student of that early jazz era Mike Davis has pulled together some of New York's finest trad players in a romp and stomp collection ...

36
Album Review

John La Barbera Big Band: Grooveyard

Read "Grooveyard" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Composer/arranger John La Barbera has been at the top of his game for more than half a century, and Grooveyard is simply another example of his undiminished artistry. Besides arranging everything--superbly, as always--La Barbera wrote six of the session's ten charming songs, escorting other treasures by Carl Perkins, Dave Brubeck, Curtis Fuller and Elvin Jones. As he writes his handsome and colorful big-band charts, La Barbera is always careful to observe Rule No. 1: they have to ...

5
Album Review

The John La Barbera Big Band: Grooveyard

Read "Grooveyard" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello


The geometry, if you will, of a terrific big band recording is such that the three major elements--the players, the arrangements, and the performance--balance in every regard. Grooveyard from the John La Barbera Big Band is such an offering. The album features ten masterfully selected, arranged, and performed selections, each containing outstanding section, solo, and ensemble playing. Wes Montgomery's “Grooveyard" launches a hip, swinging first course in which tenor man Pat La Barbera and guitarist Brandon Coleman ...

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Album Review

David Finck: BASSic Instinct

Read "BASSic Instinct" reviewed by Jack Bowers


There's so much variety on BASSic Instinct, bassist David Finck's sixth recording as leader, that it's almost like grooving on half a dozen or more albums for the price of one. Ensembles run the gamut from duo to octet, with vocals added on three of its thirteen engaging numbers. Besides governing the rhythm, composing three of the numbers and arranging all of them, Finck shoulders melodic duties on five tracks and solos effectively throughout. As suits his temperament, every number ...

4
Album Review

Mike Davis: Fortunes and Hat-Tricks, Vol. 2

Read "Fortunes and Hat-Tricks, Vol. 2" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni


Double bassist Mike Davis organizes his spontaneous, immediate improvisations-compositions according to two arbitrary guidelines. The Fortunes group of such compositions draw its inspiration from evocative song titles taken from about 100 fortune cookies, but Davis and his trio co-conspirators--saxophonist Jacob Duncan and drummer Jason Tiemann--never discuss their different interpretations of these titles before playing. The second concept for these compositions, Hat- Tricks, dictates that each musician writes brief, abstract instruction for another musician, and none of the musicians discusses with ...

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Take Five With...

Take Five With Mike Davis

Read "Take Five With Mike Davis" reviewed by Mike Davis


Meet Mike Davis:Mike Davis has lived several distinct musical lives. He has been a student, a serious student of performance and of theory and of composition and of art. He has been a gig warrior, playing multiple shows in multiple styles on different instruments at different venues with different bands on the same day numerous days per week, week after week after week. He has been a record producer, sitting in front of a computer and a rack ...

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Recording

Where The Cerebral And The Visceral Meet... Fortunes And Hat-Tricks, Vol. 2 by Mike Davis

Where The Cerebral And The Visceral Meet... Fortunes And Hat-Tricks, Vol. 2 by Mike Davis

Source: Mike Davis

The latest album from Tmpf Records features Mike Davis on double bass, Jacob Duncan on alto saxophone and Jason Tiemann on drums. All songs were spontaneously composed by the trio utilizing two compositional concepts created by Davis. The first he calls “Fortunes," and the second he calls “Hat-tricks." “Fortunes" is a spontaneous compositional concept based on immediate and undiscussed interpretations of evocative song titles. Mike first explored this idea in his band Conundrum around 1999/2000. This band was comprised of ...

“This is abstract, cerebral music that doesn’t pretend to be even remotely mainstream; Davis, Duncan and Tiemann are savoring the pleasures of the outside and make no bones about it…They made extensive use of space rather than clobbering the listener with nonstop density…” – Alex Henderson

“Mike Davis, like Chuck Norris, has no time or use for the shift key. He will shift your brain into a new dimension.” Ken Youens-Clark

“Davis doesn’t conduct himself like the type of improviser who is trying to dazzle you with his chops or his technique. He comes across as the type of improviser who wants to tell you a story.” Alex Henderson

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Grooveyard

Origin Records
2023

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The New Wonders

Turtle Bay Records
2023

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The New Wonders

Turtle Bay Records
2023

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My Window Faces the...

Turtle Bay Records
2022

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I'm in Love Again

Turtle Bay Records
2021

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I Double Dare You

Turtle Bay Records
2021

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Grooveyard

From: Grooveyard
By Mike Davis

Hat-Trick #8

From: Fortunes and Hat-Tricks, Vol. 2...
By Mike Davis

Good Sense Is the Master of Human Life

From: Fortunes and Hat-tricks, Vol. 1
By Mike Davis

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