Dave Holland Big Band

The young Brit bassist was recruited by Miles Davis on the cusp of the Davis fusion era in 1968. Then he migrated to the free jazz scene, recording his 1972 classic Conference of the Birds, a high-water mark for balancing form and free-form exuberance. But he never became a regular bandleader until the 1980s, and only expanded into the big band format about a decade — and what a decade — ago. Most of the players from the first record are still onboard — vibraphonist Steve Nelson and trombonist Robin Eubanks among them — in this Grammy Award-winning ensemble. The compositions notably work like wheels-within-wheels, to indulge in one cliché, but we won’t continue with the “like clockwork” cliché. No, because if clocks worked like this, time would be an altogether wilder experience.