Christopher Hollyday

Feature CD Review: Christopher Hollyday's "Dialogue"

For Release: January 13, 2020
Review by Malvin Massey, Jr., 1/13/2020

This Feature CD Review is the story of an artist's return to recording jazz after an absence of nearly two decades. It is from alto saxophonist, composer and educator Christopher Hollyday. The title is "Dialogue," and is a follow-up of his 2018 release Telepathy.

Christopher began performing professionally in Boston at the age of 13 with his brother Richard's quintet. He grew up in a musical family and started playing alto at the age of nine.

He was strongly influenced by Charlie Parker, and the hard-bop style he heard from his father's music collection. In 1988 he headlined a week at the Village Vanguard.

In '89 he toured as featured soloist for Maynard Ferguson's 60th Birthday Big Band. From '89 to '93 he toured with his own quintet, and was one of the "young lions" of jazz at the time along with Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, and Marcus Roberts.

In 1993, after releasing four albums with the RCA/Novus Label and touring the world for more than 200 nights a year, Novus closed suddenly and he was at a crossroads in his life at just 23.

He jumped back into school at the Berklee College of Music, where he says he finally learned how to read and write music. He got married, moved to San Diego and taught music in school for about 25 years.

His career as a music educator gave him a new perspective on the music he was already so familiar with, and he also realized that it was very necessary to encourage younger players to get into the "process of knowing the language (of the music) and living it, and falling in love with it, and finding their own heroes."

This CD feeds off his early lessons in New York, working and learning with greats like Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins, Wallace Roney, Ron Carter and the like. He reunites with his bandmates from the past, Rob Thorsen on bass, Gilbert Castellanos on trumpet, Joshua White on piano, and Tyler Kreutel on drums.

It is written on the liner notes that "this is a foray into unfettered be-bop that includes hot-blooded takes on some popular jazz and jazz influenced works, as well as three of Hollyday's own compositions."

After listening to this CD for myself, I think that the description says it all. It is a throwback to the hard-bop sounds that were the second beginning of jazz in the 40's, just an updated version.