Anthony Davis
b. 20 February 1951, Paterson, New Jersey, USA. Coming from an academic background (his father was the first black faculty member at Princeton University and, as chairman of Afro-American Studies at Yale, devised one of the first and best black studies programmes in the USA), Davis grew up in Princeton and State College in Pennsylvania. He began to take classical piano lessons at the age of seven. He studied music at Yale University and played in nearby New Haven with trombonist George Lewis and drummer Gerry Hemingway in a group called Advent. He graduated with a BA in 1975, forming a quartet which featured the master drummer Ed Blackwell in the same year. From 1974-77 he was a member of Leo Smith's New Dalta Ahkri. In 1977 he moved to New York and became involved with the burgeoning Loft scene (documented in the Wildflowers series), later recording with Oliver Lake (SHINE), Anthony Braxton ( SIX COMPOSITIONS (QUARTET)) and Leroy Jenkins (THE LEGEND OF A. GLATSON, SPACE MINDS NEW WORLD'S SURVIVAL SURVIVAL OF AMERICA). In 1978 he formed a long-standing partnership with flautist James Newton they co-lead the group which plays on HIDDEN VOICES, work together in a trio with Abdul Wadud and Davis has recorded on Newton's PASEO DEL MAR and JAMES NEWTON. In 1981 Davis said ‘I don't see the need to be self-consciously avant garde’, proving as much with the octet Episteme, which, whilst recognising Ornette Coleman's innovations, represented a return to tonality. In 1982 he started teaching at Yale. In 1985 he wrote X, an opera about Malcolm X and his politics. Davis lists Messiaen and Stravinsky alongside the great jazz pianists as influences, and a ‘composer's’ approach characterizes his work. Sometimes criticized for his supposedly 'European' leanings, Davis's riposte was ‘If somebody uses tradition as a way of limiting your choices, in a way that's as racist as saying you have to sit at the back of the bus.’