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Although the name of this early
Dave Douglas group,
Tiny Bell Trio, might suggest that the trumpeter, composer, and bandleader started his solo career on a small scale, quite the opposite is true. Emerging as an ambitious solo artist in the early to mid-'90s, New Yorker
Douglas led several groups simultaneously: his String Group, a quintet with violin, cello, bass, and drums; a sextet with more conventional jazz instrumentation; and this trio, featuring the trumpeter along with drummer
Jim Black and guitarist
Brad Shepik (who began his performing career using the surname Schoeppach, but apparently grew weary of correcting continual mispronunications). And although a trio is obviously smaller than a quintet or sextet,
Tiny Bell Trio did not achieve its name for that reason; instead, the moniker was derived from the small physical space the band occupied during an ongoing gig at the Bell Café in SoHo.
Douglas had the gig first, playing in a duo with his then-wife, a Swiss accordionist, but after the husband and wife split,
Douglas held on to the tiny performance space and
Black and
Shepik soon joined him.
Douglas' world-spanning creative explorations included Eastern European and Balkan music -- in fact, the duo with his former wife played Romanian folk tunes -- and, particularly after the release of
The Tiny Bell Trio (the band's debut but
Douglas' second album as a leader) on the Songlines label in 1994, the trio gained a wider listening audience as the trumpeter's premier vehicle for exploration of Balkan and Eastern European song forms. Such traditional music was, in fact, one of the group's major influences -- no doubt strengthened by the presence of
Shepik, at the time considered by some observers to be a linchpin of the New York downtown scene's Balkan jazz contingent by virtue of his membership in not only
Tiny Bell Trio but also
Matt Darriau's Paradox Trio,
Pachora (with
Black), and his own Commuters.
But
Tiny Bell Trio used Eastern European folk mainly as a launching pad for
Douglas and the band's unique take on modern creative jazz and contemporary improvisation -- they did not approach their folk-derived material in a way that could be considered remotely conventional. And although most of
Tiny Bell Trio's material was penned by
Douglas, the group's albums also included "covers" from a diverse array of composers; for example, the band's sophomore album, the 1995 Hat Hut album Constellations recorded in Zurich while the band was on a European tour, featured inimitable versions of
Herbie Nichols' "The Gig,"
Georges Brassens' "Les Croquants," and
Robert Schumann's "Vanitatus Vanitatum: Mit Humor." (The eponymous debut disc from the previous year had included
Kurt Weill's "The Drowned Girl," "La Belle Saison," and "Fille d'Acier" by Hungarian-French composer
Joseph Kosma, "Arabesque for Clarinet and Piano" by French composer and Les Six member Germaine Tailleferre, the traditional Hungarian "Czardas," and "Felijar" by
Shepik.)
Whether exploring music from traditional or contemporary sources,
Tiny Bell Trio's unique approach was also derived from the band's unusual instrumentation, lacking a bass. This configuration forced the players to reinvent the customary roles of their instruments in a jazz trio, shifting soloist and accompanist roles and using extended techniques to provide textural and timbral variety. One antecedent was the trio of guitarist
Bill Frisell, saxophonist
Joe Lovano, and drummer
Paul Motian, but a contemporaneous "bass-less" concept had become nearly de rigueur for
Jim Black, whose other New York downtown ensembles included
Human Feel (two reeds, guitar, drums) and
Ellery Eskelin's trio with
Andrea Parkins and
Black (tenor saxophone, accordion/sampler, drums).
Tiny Bell Trio was the most mobile of
Dave Douglas' working groups of the '90s, and after outgrowing the Bell Café gig, the band toured widely in both the United States and Europe, providing many audience members with their first opportunity to experience
Douglas -- and
Black and
Shepik -- in a live setting. In fact, two of the group's four albums were recorded live on European tours, the aforementioned Constellations from 1995 and the third
Tiny Bell Trio album, Live in Europe, recorded in the Netherlands and Belgium in 1996 and released the following year on the Arabesque label. As
Douglas embarked on additional projects as both leader and collaborator his profile continued to grow, culminating in multiple Down Beat poll wins and the signing of a major-label contract with RCA prior to the release of his acclaimed breakthrough sextet tribute to
Mary Lou Williams,
Soul on Soul, in 2000. The preceding year would see the final release by
Tiny Bell Trio,
Songs for Wandering Souls, on the
Winter & Winter label; it was the fourth
Tiny Bell Trio disc, but the 13th for
Douglas as a leader. ~ Dave Lynch