Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Dayna Stephens is set to release his first recording as the leader of a trio, Liberty.
(Photo: Paolo Soriani)It almost doesn’t feel like it, but Dayna Stephens has issued eight albums in just over a 10 years. His ninth, Liberty (Contagious), is due out Feb. 28, and it’s the first time the saxophonist has led a trio date. A video for “Loosy Goosy,” a cut off the upcoming album, premieres below.
The able rhythm tandem—bassist Ben Street and drummer Eric Harland—that joined Stephens on his 2007 leader debut, The Timeless Now, again convenes here, granting the saxophonist a sacrosanct landscape over which he roams, rhapsodizes and blows bottomless lines on a tune he refers to as kind of “squirrelly.” But check out Harland’s snare work.
“Balancing our multiple unique levels of diversity and world views with the awareness that we are all a part of a global community atop a spinning delicate crumb in space,” Stephens begins in a press release while discussing the album’s title, “has proven to be a persistent puzzle for our species that leaves me wondering if ‘Liberty’ is capable of being one of those vast fields of common ground it once seemed to be.”
The saxophonist also has a live quintet recording, Right Now: Live At The Village Vanguard (Contagious), with pianist Aaron Parks, Street and drummer Greg Hutchinson due out April 24.
For additional information about Liberty, visit the bandleader’s website. DB
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