{"title":"David Friesen","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eDavid Friesen grew up in Tacoma, became a professional musician at sixteen without yet knowing how to play bass, learned the instrument at nineteen during army service in Germany, and settled in Portland in the early 1970s, where he opened a coffeehouse and started working regularly with Joe Henderson, Stan Getz, Sam Rivers and Dexter Gordon when they passed through. That's an unusual career path even by jazz standards, and the music Friesen made from it was equally hard to categorise: acoustic, textural, rooted in the Pacific Northwest in the same way Oregon were rooted there, meaning it drew from classical chamber music, folk and world music as readily as from post-bop without feeling divided between them. His debut \"Color Pool\" (Muse, 1975) established that sensibility immediately, featuring bamboo flute, double-tracked bass parts and meditative passages on an album that sounded unlike anything being made in New York at the same time. The run of Inner City albums that followed, particularly \"Star Dance\" (1976) and \"Waterfall Rainbow\" (1977), both recorded with guitarist John Stowell and Oregon reed player Paul McCandless, brought him wider attention. \"Waterfall Rainbow\" added Ralph Towner on classical and twelve-string guitar alongside drummer Bob Moses, pulling the record into the same orbit as the early ECM catalogues without directly imitating them. He won Most Valuable Musician at the 1977 Monterey Jazz Festival. Later work with Hozan Yamamoto and Masahiko Sato took him to Japan, and a long collaboration with pianist Mal Waldron extended his reach into European jazz circles. He is still active and based in Portland, aged 83.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"david-friesen-star-dance-1976-us-inner-city-vinyl-lp","title":"David Friesen - Star Dance (1976 US Inner City Vinyl LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDavid Friesen - \u003cem\u003eStar Dance\u003c\/em\u003e | Vinyl LP - 1976 US Inner City (IC 1019, purple labels)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eStar Dance\u003c\/em\u003e is a bass player's record that never once feels like a bass showcase. David Friesen wrote all ten pieces and holds the centre of every one, but the album belongs just as much to the sound of Paul McCandless's oboe and English horn, instruments you almost never hear carrying a jazz lead, drifting over John Stowell's guitar and Friesen's enormous acoustic tone. The whole thing was cut in one day, 8 November 1976 at Downtown Sound in New York. Steve Gadd is the surprise. A year on from the session work that made him the most in-demand drummer in the city, he plays here with real restraint, colouring \"Winter's Fall\" and \"Duet And Dialogue\" rather than driving them, and sitting out entirely where the music wants only bass and reeds. Titles like \"Dolphin In The Sky\", \"Fields Of Joy\" and \"Children Of The Kingdom\" point at the openly spiritual streak that runs through Friesen's writing, closer in spirit to the pastoral end of ECM than to anything hard-bop. It is quiet, unhurried music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFriesen came to it late and from the margins. He was a Pacific Northwest player with one solo-bass album behind him, \u003cem\u003eColor Pool\u003c\/em\u003e on Muse in 1975, and \u003cem\u003eStar Dance\u003c\/em\u003e was the record that got him noticed, warmly reviewed and enough of a success to set the shape of what followed. The partnership with John Stowell was the real find. The two had met by chance in a Village piano bar the winter before the session, and they went on to tour Europe and Australia together and record as a duo across the next eight years. McCandless and Stowell both came back for the follow-up, \u003cem\u003eWaterfall Rainbow\u003c\/em\u003e, in 1977, this time with Ralph Towner in the guitar chair alongside Stowell, which makes the two Inner City albums a natural pair. Gadd, characteristically, moved on.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the original 1976 US pressing on Inner City with the purple labels, catalogue number IC 1019.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Inner City","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43863029088315,"sku":null,"price":40.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/3203\/3339\/files\/IMG_7928.jpg?v=1784981156"}],"url":"https:\/\/lushliferecords.com.au\/collections\/david-friesen.oembed","provider":"Lush Life Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}