DAVE STRYKER, Blue Fire: The Van Gelder Session

Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2022, the Van Gelder Studio is the most iconic recording studio in jazz history, giving rise to the “Van Gelder Sound” characterized by warmth, clarity and intimacy that defined the catalogs of Blue Note, Prestige and Impulse! while hosting legendary sessions for John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and countless other legends.

While achieving a longtime dream, Dave Stryker’s first immersion into this sacred space, the freewheeling, action-packed Blue Fire: The Van Gelder Session, marks another key milestone in the veteran composer/guitarist’s nearly 30-year recording career – 20 years of stellar and wildly adventurous ensemble energy with his power trio of drummer McClenty Hunter and organist Jared Gold, who plays the original Jimmy Smith/Larry Young Hammond organ on the session. “Given the story of Van Gelder’s, it would have been easy to be overwhelmed,” Stryker says. “But we were inspired and captured some of the magic. We can now add Blue Fire to the long list of albums recorded at this legendary temple of jazz."

It’s inspiring to imagine the spirits of some of those jazz cats smiling their approval and groovin’ right along as the trio bursts and blazes, seduces and slow burns their way through the nearly hour-long set centered on four Stryker originals -  “Van Gelder’s Place,” “Blue Fire,” “Waiting for Ruby,” “Every Dark Street” – but also featuring winsome and fanciful swings through “The Fool on the Hill,” Charlie Parker’s “Dexterity” and “Summer Night” and a thoughtful, meditative romantic rendition of Jerome Kern’s “The Folks Who Live on the Hill.” One wonders if “the fool” ever met “the folks” – things to ponder as Stryker’s trio works its way through this transcendent repertoire.