New York-based drummer, percussionist, composer, and bandleader
Dan Weiss has, almost since beginning his career, displayed an innate ability to integrate and balance modern jazz, East Indian, and rock rhythms in his playing signature. It has allowed him to work in a wide variety of musical situations with diverse groups of modern musicians. His work as a sideman includes nearly 200 credits with a diverse array of leaders including
Rez Abbasi,
David Binney,
Rudresh Mahanthappa,
Tineke Postma, and
Vijay Iyer, to name just a handful. His 2005 debut,
Tintal Drum Set Solo, was a recital. He followed it with the three-tabla collaboration Three D with Dibyarka Chatterjee and Debu Nayak.
Weiss is sonically and musically restless; he never records as a leader the same way twice. There are piano trio dates such as 2010's
Timshel, as well as duos and larger group offerings like 2016's widely acclaimed outing
Sixteen: Drummers Suite, with two pianists, reeds, winds, brass, guitar, harp, bass, and voices. Inspired by the return of
David Lynch's television series
Twin Peaks in 2017, he formed an avant-jazz-metal outfit to record
Starebaby for Pi Recordings two years later.
Weiss was born in New Jersey. His guitar-playing father exposed him to music early on. He began playing in his teens when he first heard recordings by
Led Zeppelin; he counts
John Bonham as his very first influence, and
Led Zeppelin IV as the record that convinced him to become a drummer. Soon after,
Weiss became a
Rush fan and a metalhead. His first 14 years of playing were dominated by rock & roll. It was his drum teacher, Jeff Krause, who introduced him to jazz via records by
Max Roach & Clifford Brown and
Count Basie.
Weiss changed course almost immediately.
He attended the Manhattan School of Music and received a B.A. in Jazz Percussion & Classical Composition; he later studied tabla with
Samir Chatterjee, drum set studies with
John Riley, composition work with David Noon, and frame drums with
Jamey Haddad.
Weiss has four working bands: Dan Weiss Trio (with
Thomas Morgan and
Jacob Sacks), the
Dan Weiss/
Miles Okazaki Duo, the
Dan Weiss/
Ari Hoenig Duo, and a co-billed collaborative project with
Lorenzo Feliciati,
Joel Harrison,
Roy Powell, and
Cuong Vu.
Weiss' first album was
Tintal Drum Set Solo on Chhandayan Records in 2005 (the same year he contributed to
David Binney's
Bastion of Sanity on Criss Cross).
Now Yes When by the Dan Weiss Trio was on Toneofapitch in 2006, as was his second date as a member of
Binney's band,
Cities and Desire.
Mirror, recorded with
Okazaki, also appeared in 2006.
Weiss' Tabla Solo appeared on Chhandayan in 2007. He guested on rock band Bloody Panda's Pheromone, and was part of the
Jackson Harrison Trio for
The Land Tides, issued on Hatology that year. He premiered his composition Trio for Piano, Violin and Percussion in Nova Scotia in 2008, and recorded his first date with
Joel Harrison; entitled The Wheel, it was released on Innova. In 2009,
Weiss recorded
Apti as a member of
Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition. In 2010, his second large composition, Layas: For Piano, Drums and Orchestras, was conducted by
Ohad Talmor and premiered in Portugal. His trio released
Timshel on Sunnyside the same year.
Weiss is also an instructor. He provides private instruction for tabla and drum kit, and is a faculty member at both the New School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. In January 2012, his first recorded collaboration with a new band -- comprising
Feliciati,
Joel Harrison,
Powell, and
Cuong Vu -- was titled
Holy Abyss and released by
Cuneiform Records. Two years later, the drummer began his partnership with Pi Recordings and issued the ambitious seven-part suite Fourteen with his large ensemble.
Sixteen: A Drummer's Suite followed in 2016, along with
Weiss' collaboration with
Florian Weber and
Donny McCaslin on Criss Cross: Exploring the Music of Monk and Bill Evans for Enja.
In 2018, he realized his longstanding dream of assembling some of the most accomplished players on the jazz scene to play music that combines jazz with heavy metal and electronic new music (as well as being deeply influenced by
David Lynch's television series
Twin Peaks). To that end, he recruited
Craig Taborn on acoustic and electric piano,
Matt Mitchell on piano and Prophet-6 modular synthesizers, guitarist
Ben Monder, and electric bassist
Trevor Dunn. Entitled
Starebaby, the album was issued by Pi Recordings in April, followed by a European tour. The set was lauded globally for its clean fusion of jazz's compositional frames and improvisation, and the dynamics and textures of doom metal. A year later, he issued the
Dan Weiss Trio Plus 1 album Utica Box, with pianist
Jacob Sacks and bassists
Thomas Morgan and
Eivind Opsvik. After a run of Starebaby dates,
Weiss reassembled the group and cut the eight selections that netted
Natural Selection. Like its predecessor, it was inspired by the 2017 return of
Twin Peaks, whose dreamlike, foreboding feel pervades much of this music. The album was issued by Pi Recordings in September 2020. ~ Thom Jurek