Dave Douglas was the international headline act of this year's festival, and unlike one year that I can recall, was someone who genuinely merited that title. Dave was a performance powerhouse all weekend, appearing in a number of ensembles and also In Conversation. This album features images from two separate gigs by his quintet - you can tell which is which from Dave's shirt. This was high-class playing from a high-quality ensemble, although for my taste, just a little more subtlety and variation would not have gone astray.
The Dave Douglas Quintet (Dave Douglas - trumpet; Jon Irabagon - sax; Matt Mitchell - piano; Linda Oh - bass; Rudy Royston - drums) performing in the WPAC Theatre at the 2015 Wangaratta Festival of Jazz