Trumpet player and bandleader Dave Douglas used to record and perform for long stretches with bands like his Tiny Bell Trio and his quintet. Recently, he has been generating fresh bands and collaborating with new musicians at a quick pace, giving his distinctive, mysterious compositions many different voices and casts.
His latest band, as represented on Four Freedoms, includes pianist Marta Warelis, bassist Nick Dunston, and longtime compatriot drummer Joey Baron. The set was recorded live on the stage of the Getxo Kultura Jazz Festival in Spain in July 2025. The result is an exceptionally loose and — indeed — free set from a band that I sincerely hope remains a part of Douglas‘ sound for some years.
Douglas has always been one of our most mature and burnished brass artists. His sound has 50 shades of feeling — bright, puckish and funny, fast and fleet, haunted, dark, mutable and free, and so many options in between. He always plays to serve the ideas of the composition, improvising within the tune’s mood and manner and listening to his bandmates with care. He is underrated as a technician because he doesn’t play for technique’s sake. His music is better than ever.
Take “Ruminants”, the longest track on Four Freedoms, a ballad that slowly blossoms above an exquisite introduction from the piano trio supporting him. Douglas is quiet and patient, etching the melody with his open horn, then handing the space over to Warelis. When he returns, he builds his improvisation gradually, prodding at the harmony and lifting his lines in pitch and energy, suggesting to the band how to join him as they well up with more feeling. The tune is a quiet wonder.
In Warelis, Douglas has something great. She appeared on his 2022 album Secular Psalms, but she comes into her own here. Originally from Poland, she moved to Amsterdam in 2014 and has been a free improviser in different settings and collaborations. In collaboration with Douglas, she covers a lot of stylistic ground: a traditional, structured jazz pianist when Douglas needs to be prodded by harmony and a fiery rhythm section, but then a probing, loose improviser who can push Douglas to be more imaginative as well.
Her sound is never chaotic but very often surprising and slant. In “Sandhog”, she is the best part of a groove song built on Baron’s busy patterns and a Dunston bass part that is James Jamerson-funky. While the rest of the band thumps and rocks, she is the sly colorist, playing single-line squiggles or dark chords, then taking a solo that is much closer to Cecil Taylor or Don Pullen than Horace Silver. None of which keeps her from playing the theme along with Douglas with perfect clarity when that is the right move.
The title track, “Four Freedoms”, puts Warelis and Douglas on the same playful plane. He is sly and witty, altering his tone by putting his hand inside the bell of his horn, growling, then using a mute. She is, similarly, putting her hands inside the piano to play or mute the strings directly with her fingers. That invites Dunston into the fun, and she and the bassist engage in tonally free dialogue while Baron uses his brushes to nudge them along. Soon, it is a collective improvisation by the whole quartet without a set tempo or chord pattern but plenty of developing structure — “free” playing the way it ought to be.
The theme of this album comes from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 speech about freedoms (of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear). The metaphor is reflected in the musicianship across all nine tracks. For example, “Dreams We Hold” is based on a brief melodic theme that Douglas plays at different tempos and in different phrasings. The rhythm section rolls and tumbles in sympathetic accompaniment before Warelis enters with mysterious chords that support an interlude section, after which she solos with sensitive echoes and chatter from Dunston and Baron. From a small bit of melody, the band allows something surprising to emerge, flicker, and delight.
Dunston is seductively featured at the start of “Fire in the Firewood”, the bassist playing his instrument like a thumb piano before trumpet and piano enter to build the flame in minimal tremolos. The performance gets increasingly urgent across six minutes as Warelis rumbles and Douglas holds the center. Baron gets the spotlight on “My First Rodeo”, essentially playing the melody in duet with the piano before Douglas joins. In short order, he whips the band into and out of a walking swing. He is also a delight on the playful theme “Grits”, a Thelonious Monk-ish tune that has a childlike joy. Douglas emphasizes the feeling by slipping in a reference to Miles Davis‘ funky lullaby, “Jean Pierre”.
My favorite track is “Militias”, which begins with a short, off-kilter theme that sets the tone for a ruminative improvisation across a couple of minutes. A moment of silence resets the performance for a second theme. Each written section cycles back at different times, but the interplay among the band as they improvise is so seamless that the track fools your ears, as if it were all written or all improvised, which is an apt description of so much of Four Freedoms.
This release is an additional reminder that Dave Douglas has range where it really matters — not just in how he approaches the trumpet but in how he constructs his music for performance. He is a precise and exacting composer, but he also values freedom. Four Freedoms offers this elastic band the opportunity to take chances and improvise outside the lines. The return on that freedom is a wonderful session that liberates your ears.