Tenor saxophonist Dan White will perform a very rare trio show with bassist Adam DeAscentis and drummer John Suntken at Brothers Drake on Wednesday, July 23rd, at 8pm. Though the horn-playing nucleus of the Dan White Sextet (Dan, Jon Lampley, and Chris Ott) moved to Brooklyn in February, they have thankfully maintained a busy schedule in Central Ohio this summer. Their Columbus summer activities wrap up this week, but not before the horns lead the DIY With DW6 Jazz Arts Group Summer Camp, DW6 makes an appearance at the Lancaster Festival Monday night, and this special show on Wednesday. This Jazz Wednesday performance will be your last chance to see Dan perform in Columbus until the DW6 premiere of their new album Your Song on September 12th (more details to come). Dan was nice enough to have a brief chat with me last week to fill me in on a few details about the show.
The idea to play a trio show came out of the fact that Dan, Jon and Chris are all busy these days with outside projects. Dan was happy to have the opportunity to try out some new songs in a different setting, because he’s “been playing with the Sextet pretty exclusively for the past two and a half years.” Some of the music performed Wednesday will be similar to the Sextet material but revamped so that it works for the trio setting, including a couple of tunes from Your Song. There will be some reworked material from Dan’s first album, a quartet project entitled Between The Lines. The trio will also play some brand new songs that the Sextet hasn’t been able to play yet, along with a handful of standards and covers.
As Dan said, “I always like playing in trios because it’s a different challenge. There’s a lot more freedom because there’s no harmonic instrument. It’s a lot like when Chris beatboxes and Jon plays sousaphone, we’ve been doing that on almost all of our shows now. I’ve kinda gotten used to that sort of texture, where there’s a bass instrument, me, and a percussive instrument. There’s a lot of space to fill, and I like it.”
Dan also told me that Your Song is basically complete, as mixing just finished and the mastering process has begun. The album’s first single will be coming out very soon. Leading up to the album release, DW6 will be doing interviews with Dan Mushalko at WCBE about the inspiration and stories behind Your Song. This looks to be another exciting year for Dan and the DW6, and Wednesday’s show will provide a unique look at the band’s material.