Dave Holland

As a rising young bassist on London’s jazz scene in the late 1960s, Dave Holland caught the attention of trumpeter Miles Davis, who hired him for his own band and brought him to the U.S. Holland never left, and has earned his place as one of the most in-demand, versatile instrumentalists and bandleaders in jazz history. He was born in Wolverhampton in 1946 and taught himself to play electric bass to pursue his interest in pop music, but after reading about jazz bassist Ray Brown, he switched to double bass, gravitating exclusively to jazz. He moved to London in 1964, playing gigs and pursuing studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He straddled the line between tradition and free improvisation, developing tight connections to saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer John Stevens through the latter’s Spontaneous Music Ensemble. He worked with Davis for two years beginning in 1968, playing on proto-fusion classics Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way, before going on to join pianist Chick Corea’s Circle. Holland’s 1972 bandleading debut, Conference of the Birds, featured saxophonists Anthony Braxton and Sam Rivers, both of whom he worked with during the 1970s. He finally returned to bandleading in the early 1980s, pursuing a sturdy post-bop sound with emerging figures like Steve Coleman, Chris Potter and Robin Eubanks. Holland dipped a toe back into fusion in 2013 with Prism, a project with guitarist Kevin Eubanks, while exploring Indo jazz in a trio with Potter and tabla master Zakir Hussain on the 2019 album Good Hope.