American master trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Dave Douglas (and the head of the Greenleaf Music label) wants us to remember the four freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of worship. Freedom from want, and freedom from fear, as articulated by the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in January 1941. These essential human rights continue to resound as a guiding light for humanity, but are now challenged by Trump’s fascist-authoritarian, chaotic regime.
Douglas composed nine pieces with freedom in mind, and with the right musicians to perform these inspiring pieces – Polish, Amsterdam-based pianist Marta Warelis (who has played in Douglas’ Secular Psalms, Greenleaf Music, 2022), double bass player Nick Dunbston (who has played in Douglas, Engage, Greenleaf Music, 2019), and drummer Joey Baron, who continues to collaborate with douglas since they have played together in John Zorn’s Masada in the early nineties. The quartet was recorded live, and without an audience, at the Getxo Kultura Jazz Festival in the Basque Country of Spain in July 2025.
Douglas’ compositions play with concepts of freedom in music – freedom within structure, and structure within freedom. Douglas used a graphic score in the title piece to stress the idea of freedom and to encourage the four musicians to go their own way and pursue their own freedoms. This brilliant quartet created an inspiring, non-hierarchical equilibrium of free, strong-minded voices, who keep conversing, challenging and supporting each other, and creating through individual and collective improvisations. After all, improvisation, like freedom, is a necessary, life-affirming skill that we all need to continuously practice.
But beyond the quartet’s passionate commitment and the emphatic dynamics, there is also deep wisdom in the playing. The economic yet poetic playing of Warelis, who expands Douglas’ themes in a precise, unpredictable manner, especially when she plays the prepared piano, and explores otherworldly timbres and childlike melodies, and sound as if she has developed a telepathic interplay with Douglas; or the inventive, driving rhythm section of Dunston and Baron that never subscribes to fixed rhythmic patterns and always opens and stretches these patterns. Douglas’ commanding, warm trumpet sound steers this compelling series of thoughtful, deeply emotional, and powerful pieces that, hopefully, will inspire many of us to act and bring light and liberty.
Eyal Hareuveni
Dave Douglas (trumpet), Marta Warelis (piano), Nick Dunston (double bass), Joey Baron (drums)
