Collection: Dave Liebman

Dave Liebman grew up in Brooklyn, studied American history at New York University, and spent his teenage years watching John Coltrane play at the Village Vanguard, the Half Note and Birdland. He took saxophone lessons from Joe Allard and later from Lennie Tristano and Charles Lloyd, and graduated from NYU in the late 1960s with a teaching certificate and a serious jazz practice running alongside it. After a year with the jazz-rock group Ten Wheel Drive, he joined Elvin Jones's band, and in 1973 Miles Davis hired him for the electric ensemble that recorded "On the Corner," "Dark Magus" and "Get Up with It." The two musicians who had shaped his entire understanding of the saxophone were Coltrane, who had played with Jones, and Davis. He had now been inside the rhythm section of both. He left Davis in 1974 and formed Lookout Farm with pianist Richie Beirach and guitarist John Abercrombie, recording the group's ECM debut at Generation Sound Studios in New York in October 1973, a month before leaving the Davis band. The group toured India, Japan, Europe and the United States and was awarded the number one position in DownBeat's 1976 International Critics' Poll for Group Most Deserving of Wider Recognition. Liebman has recorded on over 200 albums as a leader or co-leader in every context from free jazz to standards, taught extensively across every continent, and co-founded Free Life Communication, one of the organising collectives of the New York loft jazz scene. He was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2011. He remains active, aged 79.