By Michael Ullman

The members of Dave Douglas’ quartet members are alertly sensitive to each other and unfailingly intelligent in their choices, which makes them fun to hear.

Dave Douglas, Four Freedoms (Greenleaf Music)

In his 1941 State of the Union address, Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the “Four Freedoms” that were essential human rights: it was a time when there was much to be fearful of. They are freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear, and freedom from want. They were the values that Americans were fighting for, and what they hoped would guide the nation after the battles ended.

Trumpeter Dave Douglas explains in his album notes that “freedom rings in music, too.” His disc is a tribute to that powerful idea, as well as a set of homages to other kinds of freedom fighters. Douglas is a veteran of music. For decades, despite the challenges posed by changing fashions, he has been a continually poll winner among trumpeters. Now in his early sixties, he’s recorded over 200 times, by my count at least 20 times as a leader. Dougals mostly records his own pieces, but he also has a folksy strain and delights in visiting American classics, such as “Barbara Allan”. With his large, imposing tone, Douglas has turned with respect to hymns like “There is a Balm in Gilead,” as well as to folk songs, “Deep River” among them. That said, he has also recorded a version of John Coltrane’s intimidating forty-minute free improvisation, “Ascension.” Overall, you could characterize him as an adventurer with a sense of humor: “Hawaiian Punch” is one of his pieces; “Joe’s Auto Glass” is another.

Douglas tells us that the theme of the tracks on Four Freedoms is “freedom within structure, structure within freedom.” It’s a spot-on description of what we hear on this Greenleaf Music disc — and, not coincidentally, in a lot of jazz. The album was recorded on two nights. Some of it live at the Getxo Kultura Jazz Festival in Spain on July 6, 2025; the rest the following evening, on the same stage but without an audience. All nine compositions, including two dedicated to band members, were composed by Douglas. His music is vivid, often amusing and, through its playful variations on freedom, engrossing. Douglas can be broadly lyrical yet also, as in the title cut, enigmatic rather than declarative.

On Four Freedoms, the trumpeter is joined by pianist Marta Warelis, bassist Nick Dunston, and drummer Joey Baron. At first, Douglas plays the herky-jerky theme of the title cut in a series of short bursts. There follows a kind of bridge in which he plays smearing, low tones lazily over the murmurings of his accompanists. This develops into a quiet — but nervy conversation — mostly between Warelis and Baron, which then shifts to include the group. The improvisation is free but, as Douglas suggests, it still refers back to his chattery themes.

“My First Rodeo” begins with Baron, mostly on tom toms. Warelis steps in to state the cheery melody, whose lines Douglas then obscures with long tones. The surprise comes when, after a couple minutes, Baron lays down a steady beat for Warelis’s solo. Suddenly, Douglas enters with brash vigor: shifts in texture and mood are an inevitable part of the music. On “My First Rodeo,” bassist Dunston solos over Baron’s brushes and tom toms. (It’s as if the cymbals would break the mood.) The band generates a distinctive kind of swing before the ride is over. There’s nothing audibly military-like on “Militias” — Douglas does not march, he ruminates. Without raising their voices, the band members rush through the scampering introduction to “Fire in the Firewood.” The tempo is fast, the interactions open.

I am totally intrigued by the music of Douglas and his band. The quartet members are alertly sensitive to each other and unfailingly intelligent in their choices, which makes them fun to hear. They know each other well, and their freedom becomes a commentary on what they know.

Michael Ullman studied classical clarinet and was educated at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and the U. of Michigan, from which he received a PhD in English. The author or co-author of two books on jazz, he has written on jazz and classical music for the Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, High Fidelity, Stereophile, Boston Phoenix, Boston Globe, and other venues. His articles on Dickens, Joyce, Kipling, and others have appeared in academic journals. For over 30 years, he has written a bimonthly jazz column for Fanfare Magazine, for which he also reviews classical music. He is emeritus at Tufts University where he taught mostly modernist writers in the English Department and jazz and blues history in the Music Department.