Dan Weiss Trio's "Dedication"

Back in February, drummer Dan Weiss was one of the performers at the Nasher Sculpture Center's "Sculpting Sound: Twelve Musicians Encounter Bertoia." His duet with Marcus Gilmore was a master class in trap and tabla drumming, as well as an opportunity for the drummers to interact with Harry Bertoia's sounding sculptures. 

Besides backing leaders like Lee Konitz, Chris Potter, and Rudresh Mahanthappa, Weiss leads his own 16-piece ensemble (including several musicians who are leaders in their own right) and the jazz-metal hybrid Starebaby. Since 2000, he's led a trio with bassist Thomas Morgan (a fixture of Bill Frisell's pandemic livestreams who's recently worked with Tennessee sax wunderkind Zoh Amba) and pianist Jacob Sacks (a collaborator since 1995 who also performs in a duo with vocalist Yoon Sun Choi). Dedication, out November 11 on Cygnus, the label Weiss runs with guitarist Miles Okazaki, is the trio's fourth album. The trio has also performed under Sacks' name, served as a rhythm section for fusion altoist David Binney, and was part of the quintet on trombonist Jacob Garchik's album Assembly, released on Yestereve in May.

The nine Weiss compositions on Dedication pay tribute to his inspirations, from family members (his daughter and grandmother) to musical collaborators and influences (Tim Smith of madcap British post-punk band the Cardiacs, composer Conlon Nancarrow, trio pianist Sacks, pop songsmith Burt Bacharach, master drummer Elvin Jones), filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, and George Floyd, whose murder by police early in the pandemic galvanized the world. 

Some of the tributes draw on specific impressions of their subjects: the angularity that characterizes Sacks' lines, Nancarrow's rhythmic complexity, Bacharach's unusual melodic phrasing, an eight-measure phrase Jones played on a Coltrane recording, to which Weiss applies lessons from his 25-year study of tabla. Others deal with more abstract and universal emotions: the wonder of a child's discovery in "For Vivienne," the human condition of grief and loss in "For Grandma May," the spirituality in Tarkovsky's Soviet-era films. The somber, elegiac "For George Floyd" carries a political theme that is new to Weiss' work, but here and throughout Dedication, he and his bandmates blend their distinctive, searching instrumental voices with great empathy.