In early 2012, while arranging an interview through his press agent, I was told David S. Ware needed rest and that we might have to wait to talk until he felt better. A few weeks later, he got back to me. At the time, it seemed like a routine delay from a man who had been plagued by health issues for most of his life, though the kidney transplant he received in 2009 after ten years of dialysis suggested things were finally looking up. Only months later, following his death in October, did those exchanges take on a different significance.
With Ware’s passing, the world lost one of the most accomplished free jazz saxophonists, whose unique approach bridged tradition and forward-thinking through spirituality. He’s perhaps not an unsung hero; his music had a devoted following, but he was certainly gone too soon, with so much still to give. Credit goes to his longtime record label, AUM Fidelity, which has kept his legacy alive through a string of live recordings and reissues over the years.
Our conversation, one of David S. Ware’s final interviews, has never been published in English before and forms the foundation of this article.
On the Sonny Side of the Street
Generally regarded as one of the prominent profiles in the mid-1980s New York-based free jazz resurgence, with other legendary figures like Charles Gayle, William Parker, and William Hooker trying to keep the flame alive, each with their own sensibility, David S. Ware’s musical roots stretched much deeper than that. The initial in his middle name stood for Spencer, after his grandfather, and he was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in November 1949. His first love wasn’t the instrument he’d become known for: he wanted to play drums. “It’s like being attracted to a certain car; it fits you,” he told me. “Rhythm is part of life, and I gravitated towards expressing those rhythms. Not that they cannot be expressed on other instruments.”
Indeed, he soon found himself expressing rhythms and melodies on tenor saxophone. After graduating from high school in Scotch Plains, where he grew up, he went to Boston, where he attended, albeit briefly, the iconic Berklee College of Music. Ware doesn’t look back on the experience as particularly formative, as the school didn’t seem to have a keen eye for the boundary-pushing musicians who inspired his playing. If anything, the three semesters spent there might have made him a more well-rounded player: “Basically, at 17 years old, my concept, my direction of what kind of musician I wanted to be was already set. So at Berklee I learned what I did not want to do.”
From both New Jersey and Boston, he never stopped hanging out in the New York area, where he could witness firsthand the most exciting developments in jazz music. Those trips proved far more influential than the prestigious but conservative school, thanks in part to an unexpected friendship with fellow, already legendary tenorist Sonny Rollins. As Ware confirmed, he and Rollins met through a mutual acquaintance when he was still a teen and began exchanging letters. Other recollections mention a random meeting at a grocery shop in Greenwich Village. All the stories end up with Rollins taking the young musician under his wing and teaching him his trademark circular breathing.
When I asked David how he convinced an established musician to mentor him, he answered candidly: “There was no convincing. I used to go see him play in Greenwich Village and, at one point, I told him I wanted him to listen to me play. That’s when the musical relationship began. We started to practice together from that point. There was never any form of instruction: we just practiced freely together. There was no word passed or anything.”
Third World Visions
David S. Ware’s first documented recording session is so mysterious and interesting that it might be its own article. The group recorded it on tape in 1968 at the home of Abdul Hannan, alto saxophonist and flutist, with other Boston-area musicians. The resulting music was a challenging, spiritually infused brand of free jazz that aligned with late-era Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Marion Brown, and Pharoah Sanders, but also tried to bring something new to the table through unusual instruments for the genre, like violin and electric piano, and by hinting at world music. They planned to release the recordings as an album titled The Third World, so they shopped copies around, hoping to spark a label’s interest.
If the name rings a bell, it’s because you might remember an identically titled 1970 release by Gato Barbieri that explored fairly similar soundscapes. It was no coincidence, according to Ware: “In 1968, Abdul, myself, and a friend of ours had a meeting in New York with someone from a magazine. I think it was Jazz Magazine,” he recounted, probably either referencing an American reporter from the French magazine or having hazy memories of the exact publication.
“I remember they were supporting Gato Barbieri a lot. We spoke to that person about our concept of The Third World, and we left a tape. A little later, we called to get their feeling about the music, and their response, which sounded silly or crazy to us, was that they didn’t have a machine to play the tape. Not long after that, Gato came out with that album. Right away we thought they stole the concept we had introduced to them. I don’t think it was a coincidence, but what could we do? None of us knew anything about how things were working at the time; we were naive.”
While Barbieri’s project indeed bore strong similarities, it also had a more Latin-oriented approach and certainly didn’t share the same level of spirituality. Eventually, Hannan issued the 1968 recordings (plus an extra track cut at a later date) as a private pressing in 1971. However, the plot thickens: not only did Hannan retire from the jazz scene soon after, but over the years, for reasons unknown, he also actively fought any reissue attempts for The Third World.
Original copies seldom show up on the market, and when they do, they change hands for three- or even four-figure sums, depending on the condition. In his 2025 book Now Jazz Now, an overview of the golden age of free jazz, Byron Coley recalls seeing so many copies of the record while browsing store bins in the Boston area, long before it became highly sought after.
If anything, The Third World laid the foundations for how Ware’s music and beliefs would always be entwined. “Spirituality will manifest itself through everyone in different ways. It gives anything meaning; nothing has meaning without spirituality. Because this is the base of all subjects.”
It is indeed around this time that the saxophonist embraced transcendental meditation, something that would deeply affect his life and was even the subject of a documentary, A World of Sound, produced in 2011 by the David Lynch Foundation, as the late film director was himself known to practice the same discipline: “I did not have any direct contact with David Lynch,” explained Ware. “They were interested in artists who meditate; that was the connection. They contacted us and came to New York. They filmed some live music and did the interview. That’s how it came about.”
David S. Ware In the Lofts
Ware moved to New York around 1973, where he began gravitating more consistently toward the so-called loft scene, which gathered most musicians and listeners interested in free jazz. He tried to make his way through it both with his own group, which he formed in Boston and brought with him, and as a sideman. In the latter role, he worked both live and in the studio with groups led by two well-known figures: pianist Cecil Taylor and drummer Andrew Cyrille.
“It was two different ways of approaching improvisation. Cecil Taylor has his music set up a certain way, which makes you improvise a certain way: a specific system that runs through all his music. Andrew is different: you go from piece to piece with him.” Records like Cecil Taylor’s Dark to Themselves or Cyrille’s Junction and Metamusicians’ Stomp helped Ware make a name for himself, earning Apogee — the trio he had formed with pianist Gene Ashton (better known as Cooper-Moore) and drummer Marc Edwards, also a member of Taylor’s group — multiple invitations to perform in Europe.
The old continent played an important role in Ware’s first recordings as a leader, towards the end of the decade. It all started with a self-financed session in New York, in 1977: “We were able to go into the studio and do a tape. Then HatHut came along and bought it.” When the Swiss label released it in 1979 as Birth of a Being, billed as a David S. Ware album rather than Apogee, it was the tenorist’s second official release, after From Silence to Music a year earlier.
Again, it was prompted by a European deal: “I was in Paris at the time, on tour, and I was offered to do that. I didn’t know anything about any kind of follow-up. The company ran out of business or something.” It was one of the final releases by the French label Palm, and it was also a very unusual debut album for Ware, basically a solo studio performance (four originals and three standards) with some accompaniment by violinist Jean-Charles Capon.
Birth of a Being, on the other hand, better represented his musicality at the time: a ferocious take on Coltrane’s and Ayler’s lessons, yet injected with surprising melody, with just piano and drums backing the sax.
David S. Ware’s Taxi Days
Such endeavours didn’t immediately lead to wider recognition. With a good chunk of the public seemingly more drawn to fusion or a more melodic mainstream revival, interest in free jazz and its heroes was waning. That might be one reason why, by the early 1980s, Ware decided to step back from music and take a regular job as a cab driver. When I asked him if New York, in those days, was as tough as films like Taxi Driver depicted, he answered honestly and bluntly: “There is nothing I want to share about that.”
One day, while driving through the East Village, Ware stumbled into an old friend, bassist William Parker. Hesitantly, Parker asked if he wanted to play some concerts together and was surprised by the positive answer. That meeting slowly brought Ware back to jazz, but he held on to his cab-driver job for many more years. He stopped driving only in 1995, after sustaining a broken knee when someone didn’t stop at a red light.
Music, for him, was never a way to make ends meet, even later on, when the returns were satisfying: “I play music because I love it, because I am excited about the potential of a certain band. Making a living is like a side effect, and I am fortunate I don’t have to think of playing music as a way to make a living. Even though I am making a living with it, that is not the first consideration. It is not the first intention. The first intention is always the music itself.”
Working with Parker sparked a new group, the David S. Ware Trio, which saw the two joining forces with old friend Marc Edwards on drums. Passage to Music, released in 1988 through Swedish imprint Silkheart Records, marked the beginning of the second phase of Ware’s career and showed a more mature musician. His playing remained fierce, yet richer in subtlety; he also embraced unusual reeds like the saxello and the stritch. The interaction with Parker’s punchy bass and Edwards’ nervous drumming was engaging, but the bandmates also knew when to step aside and let Ware take the spotlight.
Soloing, even in a group setting, would prove to be a defining feature of his career. It showed his music wasn’t just about aggression, attack, and pushing boundaries. The legacy left behind by decades of jazz music was equally important: “With a player like me, this tradition exists. My playing stays on top of the tradition, and that is why I want to play more solo. By listening to only one instrument, people can have a chance to hear how tradition runs through my playing.”
No Second Takes
The trio soon enlarged to a quartet, with Ware and Parker recruiting pianist Matthew Shipp. The three remained the core lineup, while a revolving cast of impressive drummers replaced Edwards starting in 1993: from the experienced Whit Dickey to younger profiles like Susie Ibarra and Guillermo E. Brown. Albums like the two volumes of Great Bliss, Flight of I, or Third Ear Recitation went on to refine the style and gave David S. Ware a very recognisable voice: never short on creativity, yet never avant-garde just for avant-garde’s sake.
This was a goal he had had in his mind since the early days: “Apogee was a group concept, but I felt I was already working on my own sound with them. Long before we got to New York, I always thought I was working on my own personal sound, so by the time the quartet formed, there was a huge reservoir of concepts to delve into. That included music that had set melodies and music without set melody.”
He never stopped working on it, constantly oscillating between free improvisation and written form, always trying to keep things fresh. His brief stint at Columbia, when Branford Marsalis was hired as the creative consultant for their jazz division (an experience that David summarized as: “It was easy in the sense that I was given the freedom to do what I wanted to do. It was much harder in the sense for them to understand what it is that we do”), produced what’s perhaps his most accessible work (Go See the World, 1998), and even in such a context he managed to throw some brilliant curveballs. Just check how Marvin Hamlisch’s Barbra Streisand hit “The Way We Were” became a 14-minute modal blues with wonderful, relentless interplay between Ware and Shipp.
Not to mention some late-career projects like Shakti (2009), which for the first time saw him adopting a guitar in the line-up, courtesy of the highly talented Joe Morris, or his final quartet, better known as Planetary Unknown, from the title of the only studio album recorded together, released in 2010. With the saxophonist and Parker joined by old friend Cooper-Moore and veteran drummer Rashied Ali, the line-up might seem like a return to the past, but in Ware’s mind the past was never something to rehash. It was a foundation, a heritage to honor while always looking forward. He told me he had extremely high expectations for the project: “If my health allows, there will be much more coming from this band.” Unfortunately, we can only imagine what could have been.
Through changing lineups, major and independent labels, illness and recovery, the variables shifted, but the goal stayed the same: preserve an unmistakably personal voice that walked the line between exploratory forms and heartfelt melody without ever becoming a formula. “Jazz is a very gracious way of self-expression, to express oneself through a musical instrument,” he reflected. “And it should be a very creative way. Creativity is the biggest part: one should not repeat oneself in jazz as much as possible.” David S. Ware definitely didn’t repeat himself much.