Donny McCaslin

Donny McCaslin entered the professional ranks as a musician at age twelve. Across his career the saxophonist has woven together every shade of tenor expression, embracing mainstream and contemporary idioms alongside funky fusion, relaxed tropical ballads, indie rock, space-age funk, and post-bop. Although the wider audience first encountered him through his role on Blackstar, the 2016 farewell studio album by David Bowie, McCaslin’s probing engagement with jazz as a living strain of American popular music stretches back decades and covers many forms. On the 2003 release The Way Through he offered modernist, post-bop readings of standards, while 2009’s Declaration displayed an intensely dramatic jazz-fusion stance. Casting for Gravity, issued in 2012, refined this cross-genre method by fusing angular avant-garde jazz with fractured funk, atmospheric textures, and exotic colors. The same sensibility flowered further on 2016’s Beyond Now; 2018’s Blow. then documented the permanent shift in the group’s language after its time with Bowie. I Want More, released in 2023, pushed listener expectations still wider with its bold, forward-looking stance.

Born in California in 1966, McCaslin grew up with a father who taught high-school English yet devoted equal passion to his own work as a jazz vibraphonist and pianist. From toddlerhood the younger McCaslin studied piano and clarinet, switching to saxophone only in high school. At twelve he joined his father’s ensemble; by his teenage years he had started his own band and earned three consecutive invitations to the Monterey Jazz Festival. He also performed regularly with an eight-piece salsa orchestra and frequented the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, absorbing performances by visiting national artists. His teachers included Paul Contos and Brad Hecht, both longtime members of his father’s groups, while his early listening centered on John Coltrane, Michael Brecker, and Sonny Stitt.

Technical command and expressive depth soon carried McCaslin across Europe and Japan with elite youth ensembles; in 1984 he received a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music. There his principal mentors were Gary Burton, Herb Pomeroy, Billy Pierce, George Garzone, and Joe Viola. During his final year he entered Burton’s quintet, remaining for four years of international touring that reached Europe, Japan, North America, and South America. After relocating to New York City in 1991, McCaslin spent more than three years with Steps Ahead, stepping into the chair once held by his teenage idol Michael Brecker. He co-wrote two pieces for the group’s album Vibe. Simultaneously he worked with the Gil Evans Orchestra, the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, the Danilo Perez Quartet, the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, and Santi Debriano’s Panamaniacs, appearing on numerous recordings. In 1996 he was featured in Ken Schaphorst’s big-band composition “Uprising,” alongside John Medeski, Doug Yates, and Uri Caine; Naxos issued the performance three years later on Purple, earning widespread critical praise for McCaslin’s solo.

In 1997 McCaslin formed the experimental collective Lan Xang with David Binney, Scott Colley, and Kenny Wollesen; the group’s debut, Mythology, carried a name signifying freedom and the members’ shared vision of exploratory jazz. Lan Xang followed with Hidden Gardens in 2000 and continued presenting collective improvisations in live settings. McCaslin’s first leader date, Exile and Discovery, appeared on Naxos in 1998, featuring Ugonna Okegwo, Bruce Barth, and Billy Drummond. Arabesque Records issued Seen from Above in 2000, an album that folded blues, swing, and fusion into a single statement of compositional and soloistic command. The label released his third album, The Way Through, in September 2003.

Critical, peer, and audience acclaim solidified McCaslin’s standing as both bandleader and first-call sideman. He joined the Dave Douglas Quintet briefly in 2006 and that same year issued Give and Go on Criss Cross alongside Soar on Sunnyside; the latter project continued with In Pursuit the following year. He also contributed a featured solo to the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra’s Sky Blue, one of three Grammy nominations he would receive. Greenleaf presented his trio debut, Recommended Tools, in 2008, produced by Binney. In 2009 he appeared as co-billed artist on Julie Lamontagne’s Now What and as guest on sessions by Monday Michiru and Paul Myers.

Most of 2010 was spent on tour and club dates. In 2011 Greenleaf released the eclectic septet recording Perpetual Motion, reuniting McCaslin with bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Mark Guiliana, both soon to form half of his working quartet; pianist and keyboardist Jason Lindner completed the lineup for their first full album together, 2012’s Casting for Gravity, which earned McCaslin another Grammy nomination for best jazz solo. The band maintained an active touring and recording schedule, including a standing engagement at 55 Bar in Greenwich Village.

In 2014 McCaslin participated in the Maria Schneider Orchestra’s collaboration with David Bowie on the single “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime).” Bowie subsequently invited the pianist to participate in his next project; when scheduling conflicts arose, she recommended that Bowie hear McCaslin’s band at 55 Bar. The ailing singer attended, then enlisted the quartet for recording. Three week-long sessions took place monthly from January through March 2015. McCaslin’s own Fast Future, drawn from the previous year’s work, appeared on Greenleaf that March. Bowie’s Blackstar, featuring McCaslin’s quartet plus guitarist Ben Monder and additional musicians, reached the public on 8 January 2016 to widespread acclaim; Bowie died two days later on his sixty-ninth birthday. Deeply affected, McCaslin began shaping a new band album as tribute. Having signed with Motema the prior year, he entered the studio in late spring 2016. Beyond Now emerged that October, incorporating interpretations of material by Deadmau5, MUTEMATH, the Chainsmokers, and Bowie’s “A Small Plot of Land” (with Jeff Taylor) and “Warszawa,” the latter two issued as advance singles. After extensive international touring during which McCaslin felt he had fully assimilated Blackstar’s influence, he composed and demoed material that extended the connections first heard on Beyond Now. The album reached number three on the Jazz Albums chart and number two on streaming rankings.

Pre-production for a new project with Steve Wall began in 2017, knitting together the varied sonic worlds opened by the Bowie sessions and subsequent band work. Vocals assumed a central role; McCaslin enlisted Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon, Gayle Ann Dorsey, Ryan Dahle, and Jeff Taylor to front the ensemble of Jason Lindner on keyboards, Tim Lefebvre on electric bass, and Mark Guiliana and Zach Danziger on drums and programming. Advance singles “Great Destroyer” and “Club Kidd” previewed the turn toward avant-pop. Motema released the completed album, Blow., in September 2018; it ventured into unclassifiable territory by grafting sleek, emotive electro-jazz onto lush, proggy art rock and jagged post-bop. Traditional jazz listeners in Europe and the United States responded with caution, yet the record attracted a fresh, younger audience on both continents.

McCaslin’s 2023 debut for Edition Records, I Want More, was produced by David Fridmann of Mercury Rev. The eight-track collection juxtaposed vibrant, genre-defying soundscapes with meticulously interwoven melodies and both organic and synthetic textures, situating the music outside conventional jazz boundaries in an exploration that dissolves long-standing divisions between genres and between audiences’ notions of what jazz can be in the twenty-first century.