DaveO' Higgins: Big Shake Up (BCCD 79208)DAVE O'HIGGINS
CandidRecordings:
DaveO' Higgins: Big Shake Up (BCCD 79208)
Website:www.daveohiggins.com
Acclaim of this sort has been coming Dave O'Higgins' way since he first started performing, and his talent has only grown more distinguished and refined. An incredibly hard working musician, Dave has always been much liked and respected by his peers and the jazz media. The tangiable evidence to support the praise has come in form of awards, Dave winning 'Best Tenor Sax' at the British Jazz Awards in both 1995 and 1997 and receiving nominations in the Best Instrumentalist and Best Band categories at the BBC Radio Jazz Awards in 2001 and 2002 respectively. His superlative sax ability has earned him right to work with greats such as Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Cleo Laine and John Dankworth. Their influence on him radiates in his brilliant live performances, full of vigour, improvisation and intricacy.
O'Higgins illuminates his mastery of the soprano and tenor sax through more than just jazz. The versatile O'Higgins combines aspects of rock, funk, soul and Latin in his innovative originals - his fusion of genres appealing to a much wider audience than just that of jazz. Perennially busy and brimming with confidence, O'Higgins continues to disprove the argument that jazz is elitist and never makes money. 'For a sax player now, if you're not known as a soloist the only way to work a lot is either to tour with a pop band or to do a West End show and neither of them is really going to inspire a more jazz-related sensibility' says O'Higgins. Fortunately, though O'Higgins' rousing solos could qualify him as a one man band, he leads an explosive group comprised of Sam Burgess on acoustic and electric bass, Peter Eckford on percussion, Mike Outram on guitar, Tom Cawley on piano, and Simon Lea on the drums a band that can inspire even the most indifferent follower of music to take interest. As a child O'Higgins was taught the trumpet, drums and piano, but at 16 he learned how to play the sax by his own volition because 'All the sax players were terrible. I thought, "I'm sure I could do a better job. Give me that thing!"' At the age of nineteen, O'Higgins moved to London to study music at the City University, where the National Youth Jazz Orchestra quickly picked him up. His sax skills, music reading abilities and list of contacts rapidly developed in his three years with the NYJO impressing all who played with him. An early education with Jim Mullen's band guided his musical sensibilities before Martin Taylor Took O'Higgins under his wing and over time taught him how to be a supreme showman.
O'Higgins has completed five solo albums since he started recording, including The Grinder's Monkey and The Secret Ingredient. His last work Big Shake Up gave him 'a perfect opportunity to write for a new 10 piece band of my choice… trying to capture the spirit of (rather than the parody) the history of jazz. I decided to do this in an original format, drawing on elements of New Orleans second line grooves, through jazz, funk, Latin, and whatever. I ended up writing for three months and was very pleased with the result, recording while it was still hot.' His latest project Fast Foot Shuffle is an eclectic, highly energized album, on which he leads a six-member band and the JazzCotech Dancers. Full of fast bop and greasy funk, Fast Foot Shuffle is his best yet, with an effortless flow of highly developed harmonic sense.
Constantly touring O'Higgins 'is one of the most engaging and hardest working guys I know' says Candid's CEO Alan Bates, who signed Dave up for his Big Shake Up and by whom Fast Foot Shuffle is released. Though fully entrenched in his own music, O'Higgins has taught at London's Guildhall and Royal Academy, the South Africa's Universities of Natal and Cape Town, a place where he spends much of his time, and lectured in the Royal Northern College of Music. He has done workshops and performed with Jazz Squad, a program dedicated to bringing out jazz to a wider audience. His academic musical background combined with his spontaneity and creativity makes him 'the cream of the crop' according to Time Out.
