Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Dave Burrell celebrates his birthday in style at Philadelphia Art Alliance

Turning 75, pianist Dave Burrell says, has given him the opportunity to "reflect back and think of all the people that I've met and played with."

Composer-pianist Dave Burrell is an African-American performing artist of singular stature on the international contemporary music scene. 
(Photo courtesy of the artist)
Composer-pianist Dave Burrell is an African-American performing artist of singular stature on the international contemporary music scene. (Photo courtesy of the artist)Read more

Turning 75, pianist Dave Burrell says, has given him the opportunity to "reflect back and think of all the people that I've met and played with."

It's certainly an impressive list, including substantial musical relationships with innovators like saxophonists Archie Shepp, David Murray, and Pharoah Sanders; bassist William Parker; and drummer Sunny Murray.

One of the longest-lasting of those relationships has been with drummer Andrew Cyrille, who will join Burrell as the Full-Blown Duo on Saturday at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, one of two hometown celebrations of Burrell's birthday planned by Ars Nova Workshop.

After his youth in Hawaii and studies at Boston's Berklee College of Music, the pianist arrived in New York City in 1965 as the jazz scene was undergoing a seismic shift. Cyrille was already a key player in those changes through his recordings with piano innovator Cecil Taylor. Burrell says, "I had heard Andrew with Cecil and thought, 'Wow, this is so advanced. I'm going to New York when I graduate, but I don't know if I'll ever meet those guys.' "

It didn't take long. Burrell was living in a duplex loft in the Bowery when Archie Shepp dropped by with John Coltrane (and Shepp's German shepherd, Juba) to scout the pianist's place as a potential rehearsal space for Trane's album Ascension. His loft became a popular haunt for musicians heading to the infamous East Village club Slug's, including Cyrille, who has remained a constant collaborator over the ensuing half-century. "With Cyrille, you feel like anywhere you turn musically, he gets it," Burrell says, "and he's going to be supportive."

In December, Burrell, sax man Bobby Zankel, Parker, and drummer Muhammad Ali will form a first-time quartet with plenty of history. The pianist has played sporadically with Zankel since his move to Philadelphia and has known Parker since the 63-year-old bassist's student days in the Bronx, when Burrell was in charge of a youth music program. "William remembers better than I do that the instruments hadn't arrived yet, and I made them play on pots and pans," Burrell remembers, laughing.

Burrell's playing stretches across the whole of jazz history, incorporating his studies of early pioneers Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson with a violent avant-garde attack that has been known to leave pianos bloody. He has also spent the last several years drawing inspiration from American history as an artist in residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, where he recently concluded a five-year project honoring the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Looking back while moving forward just seem to come naturally to Burrell, no matter what his age.