Review: Dave Douglas’s ‘Four Freedoms’

Trumpeter-composer Dave Douglas has a remarkable sixty-plus albums credited to him as a leader. One of the major voices in creative music, he can always be counted on to deliver a new approach, often with new ensembles. That’s certainly the case with Four Freedoms (Green Leaf, 2026), where he channels the liberties outlined in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s January 6, 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech – Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. Let those words sink in for a bit. Delivered seventy-five years ago, many people unfortunately still do not fully enjoy all four.  

Douglas wrote the music for a new quartet – featuring pianist Marta Warelis, bassist Nick Dunston, and drummer Joey Baron- with the aim of personalizing the music to the way each member plays and improvises. Douglas and Baron share a long history in groups led by Joe Lovano and John Zorn.  But the leader’s experience with the other bandmates is not nearly as extensive. Dunston is a fixture in the creative music scene who has collaborated with Marc Ribot, Ches Smith, Vijay Iyer, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey. While lesser-known to American listeners, Polish pianist Warelis has quickly built a reputation in Europe for her improvisational and experimental techniques that draw on classical music and other genres.  

Seeking to combine both the energy of a live performance and the focus and intensity of a studio session, for Four Freedoms, Douglas took a novel approach towards crafting an album. Much of it was recorded at the Getxo Festival in the Basque Country of Spain in July, 2025. The group recorded a live concert and then reconvened the next day on the same stage, this time without an audience. 

The opening track, “Grits,” is a joyous romp, featuring Baron leading a thirty-two-bar rhythm form with a tag.  His drums set the pace for the ever-kinetic Dunston providing propulsive bass lines. Warelis simply injects playfully in the spaces, while Douglas provides the “glue.” “Dreams We Hold” is solemn, featuring a long intro from Douglas, almost akin to a bugle call in the lower registers. He passes to Warelis, who delivers gorgeous single-note lines while Dunston stays steady underneath atop  Baron’s gentle brushwork. Shortly after the four-minute mark, the full quartet joins to lift the music triumphantly, before settling into a calm close.  

Dunston and Baron set an elastic, jaunty groove in “Sandhog.” An ode to human labor, the piece is inspired by the workers who built New York tunnels for both the subway system and the Brooklyn Bridge. In Douglas’s vision for the tune, Dunston represents the perseverance of the heroes, along with Baron’s insistent beats. Warelis weaves her way through energetically, and Douglas symbolizes the endgame, light at the end of the tunnel.  It’s a terrific, highly accessible track.  

By contrast, the title track is fully improvisational, meant to allow each member to go their own way. Warelis employs every aspect of the piano, both in active and prepared piano, inside and outside the instrument. Dunston weighs in with haunting bow work that meshes with Douglas’s muted trumpet and Baron’s cascading percussion. This is the first track where we hear the enthusiastic response from the live audience.  “Militias” builds slowly with Douglas moving from lyrical lines to feverish agitation before the piece concludes on an elongated, somber note. Standout “Fire in the Firewood” is a reference to Roosevelt’s famous radio addresses, dubbed “fireside chats.” It is largely a feature for Dunston, who authors a declarative intro for Warelis and Douglas’s free play that builds intensity accordant with the title of the piece. We are left with mere embers.  

“Sing Sing” seemingly takes its name from the infamous prison operated by the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, where some of the first public executions took place. The quartet’s rendition is acutely somber, likely pointing to the horrors of imprisonment. “My First Rodeo” is a polar opposite, Douglas soars freely above the teeming rhythm section, with Warelis playing gleefully before the duo yields to a feisty conversation between Dunston and Baron. When the full quartet reconvenes, they ultimately settle on a groove, to the delight of the live audience. The closer, “Ruminants,” is the album’s lengthiest piece at close to nine minutes. It showcases the imagination of pianist Warelis, who roams freely throughout. Douglas joins about three minutes in, blowing what sounds like an epitaph. Yet, in the second half, his playing grows more aggressive and higher pitched, before bringing it all to peaceful exit.  

In his notes to the album, Douglas notes that, “Freedom rings in music, too. Over time, freedom appears in multiple guises, and our understanding of freedom evolves. Freedom within structure, structure within freedom. That’s the them of what we play here. May it lead to light and liberty for all our days.”  With Four Freedoms, Douglas’s quartet makes an outstanding statement, one eminently accessible at times, and out on the edges in others. Let freedom ring.

‘Four Freedoms’ is out now on Greenleaf Records. It can be purchased on Bandcamp.