by Nikki M. MascaliWeekender Editor
Dave Liebman discovered jazz after seeing John Coltrane perform in New York City. Since then, the saxophonist/flautist has played with the likes of Miles Davis, Elvin Jones and Chick Corea. And this year, in addition to having “Turnaround: The Music of Ornette Coleman,” the latest recording by the Dave Liebman Group, win Record of the Year by German Jazz Journalists, Liebman received the 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award — the nation’s highest honor in jazz.
They’re accolades he never envisioned for himself as the young man drinking in the scene of legendary New York jazz clubs like Birdland and the Village Vanguard.
“I never saw myself even playing this music,” Liebman says with a laugh via phone from his Stroudsburg home. “The thought of even playing was completely foreign. I never thought I’d be with Miles Davis or (Coltrane’s drummer) Elvin Jones. The point is, you never know where it’ll go — but if you asked me that when I was 20 years old, I’d say, ‘That’s not going to happen.’”
Liebman returns to the Scranton Jazz Festival Sunday, Aug. 8 with a performance by the Dave Liebman Big Band (DLBB). The DLBB, as well as his quartet, the Dave Liebman Group, features Scranton Jazz Festival founder Marko Marcinko on drums.
“We’re going to play stuff from two recordings; an older one and one that was actually just released called ‘As Always,’” Liebman says of the DLBB performance. “It’s mostly original tunes of mine, but also, notably, arrangements of my favorite things by Marko and an arrangement of ‘Sing, Sing, Sing.’”
The DLBB version of the Louis Prima swing classic, which appeared on the band’s first album “Beyond the Line,” received a Grammy nomination in 2004 for best arrangement.
Liebman finds jazz festivals like Scranton’s important because they introduces the genre to people who ordinarily wouldn’t go to places to hear it.
“The thing about jazz (is) just getting used to it makes it more palatable,” the musician explains. “Once you hear it, very few people walk out and say, ‘I don’t like it.’ They say, ‘God, I didn’t know this existed.’”
As an instructor of jazz — he is the founder and artistic director of the International Association of Schools of Jazz — Liebman has seen constant interest in the music over the years.
“It’s a two-sided coin,” he says. “There’s an incredible interest in schools from the young people, and yet we have less opportunities to actually perform it. The lifeline of jazz has always been the small club where people can try things and are able to experiment, (but) the venues are disappearing.”
With Grammy nominations, rave reviews, books, classes and of course, his music, when Liebman thinks of what’s next for him, he looks to Poconos-area peers like Bob Dorough, 87, Urbie Green, 84, and Phil Woods, 79.
“I’m in my 60s, and they’re, in one degree or another, still active. When I look at them, I feel like I’m half asleep,” Leibman says, chuckling.
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