New album, Silhouettes in the Glass Sky, is now available for purchase/streaming on CDBaby, iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon!
Streams of harmony, rhythm, and spontaneous improvisations erupt from five musicians to form the Dan Burke Quintet. Playing contra facts and originals, this band uproots your preconceived notions of what a jazz quintet should be. Like a blindfold wearing homing pigeon, DBQ is much more than a cute, antiquated idea. This group is a fierce ensemble, unafraid of risk, venturing out to alien landscapes and back again bringing listeners on an exciting voyage of music.
Silhouettes in the Glass Sky
The Tasty Nugget The majority of this tune was written one morning after listening to Marquis Hill’s group the night before. One of the many things I love about his playing is his sense of motivic development and wanted to write a tune with a similar sound. This tune is the first attempt. The name is taken from the coffee I was imbibing that morning.
I Could be Wrong I wrote this slow 12/8 tune trying to branch out of my writing style. I wanted to write something very minimal that would steadily build to a heroic resolution. The title is a pretty common phrase I’ll say when being noncommittal or when I starting thinking about my student loan debt.
Blues for DP An older tune of min that just sat around until I formed this group. I named it after Rich’s and my high school saxophone teacher, Dave Polk. Dave is a great guy and wonderful musician! I always hear his laugh when the saxophones harmonize second time through the head.
Contemplation The oldest one of the lot. I wanted to write an introspective tune (as most 20 year old’s do) and this is the end result. Some interesting phrases of 5 and 7 happen in this tune, but it still sounds very natural and organic.
Zombie Dust This is one of the many tunes I’ve written to celebrate my love of another craft: beer. I wanted to communicate both the fragrant pungency of this beatiful American pale ale while still holding onto the brewery’s heavy metal roots. At the very least I’ve communicated what it feels like to drink a lot of them.
Silhouettes in the Glass Sky This is a song I wrote for my fiance, Kristina. My initial concept for this tune was to write something elegant and simple. I believe I succeeded in the former. I tried to keep the melody pure with a single motif and then come up with different ways I could augment, invert, diminish, and mess with that small piece of information. I think the end result is a pretty good aural representation of my love for her.
Pumpkin Lord This adorably awkward tune was what came out of my brain some November evening while sitting at the piano. I was really getting into diminished major sounds at the time and wanted to write a tune incorporating them in a dreamlike way. I think the triplet feel during the into, bridge, and drum solo acts as a good binding agent bringing the whole tune together.
Daisy Cutter The last tune on the album and a little bit of an outlier, but a favorite of mine and the band. I wanted to create a tune that not only sounded like the collective brainchild of Brian Blade and Thom Yorke, but also conveyed my sadness for when Half Acre’s canning system malfunctioned halting the distribution of one of my favorite brews. I like to think this tune is the silver lining to what was a series of miserable events.
dan burke 