Caribbean Jazz Project embraces changes in its music, lineup

Change would seem to be a way of life for mallet player Dave Samuels and the Caribbean Jazz Project.

The Grammy Award-winning group has worked its way through some top-notch sidemen in its 10 years, and that has changed the way the band sounds. But Samuels doesn't see a problem.

"Actually, I look at it in a positive way," he says. "It makes for a better ensemble. A more creative ensemble. An interesting ensemble that is always shifting."

The group that will be at Dowe's on 9th, Downtown, tonight is different from the one behind "The Gathering," the Grammy winner from 2002. But Samuels says the band is, in a way, the same because he and the other members "embrace that difference."

"There are always changes, and we are supposed to change," he says.

He says the band is not "chasing after" what the members think will sell albums or fill concert seats. Rather, they "come up with what they do and sounds good," he says.

That steady approach to music is a constant amid the change, he says. He admits the band has changed flavors as it has gone through the likes of sax wiz Paquito D'Rivera, flutist Dave Valentin, steel drum player Andy Narell and guitarist Steve Khan.

At the same time, though, it has retained its nature as a lively, accessible source of spicy Caribbean jazz.

By doing that and coping with change, Samuels says, the musicians do something important for a jazz band.

"First and foremost, that makes it interesting for the artists doing the playing," he says. "We don't go into a record project, for instance, looking for what sells. If you think that is the way to do it, that is total fantasy."

He says he and the others in the band always have tried to recognize and accept that jazz "is, by its very nature, a music of changes."

He has dealt with that in his own career, playing with baritone sax star Gerry Mulligan and being one of the defining sounds for the fusion band Spyro Gyra for 17 years.

In keeping open to changes, he adds, a group is able to look at albums as being representative of "one moment in time" rather than something eternally defining.

The current shift in the band moves it away from the reed sounds of D'Rivera and Valentin to the trumpet and flugelhorn of Ray Vega. That alters the sound, naturally, but doesn't change the band's approach.

"Music is really all about imagination," he says. "It's like the difference between going to a movie and reading a book. In a book, you have to figure things out on your own -- what the characters look like, what they sound like."

Additional Information:

Details

Caribbean Jazz Project
When: 8 and 10 tonight
Admission: $25
Where: Dowe's on 9th, Downtown
Details: (412) 281-9225