Doug Mathews is an American jazz electric
bassist
A bassist (also known as a bass player or bass guitarist) is a musician who plays a Bass (instrument), bass instrument such as a double bass (upright bass, contrabass, wood bass), bass guitar (electric bass, acoustic bass), synthbass, keyboar ...
, double bassist, and
bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...
ist best known for being a former member of multi-instrumentalist
Sam Rivers' trio.
Career
Mathews became a member of Rivers' trio in 1993, two years after Rivers moved from New York to Florida, along with drummer Anthony Cole. The trio recorded three albums together: ''Firestorm'' (1998), ''
Concept'' (1997), ''
Caldera
A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcano eruption. When large volumes of magma are erupted over a short time, structural support for the rock above the magma chamber is ...
'' (2022).
On the albums ''Concept'' and ''Caldera'', Mathews played his second instrument, the bass clarinet, in order to form a woodwind trio with Cole on saxophone.
Free jazz critic John Sharpe praised the group's collaboration, noting that Mathews' "bowing segues into a spirited conversation between Rivers' soprano wail and Cole's intertwining tenor".
The trio with Mathews and Cole was described by ''
Orlando Weekly
''Orlando Weekly'' is a liberal progressive alternative newsweekly distributed in the Greater Orlando area of Florida. Every Thursday, 40,000 issues of the paper are distributed to more than 1,100 locations across Orange, Osceola and Seminole coun ...
'' writer Matt Gorney as "an almost vaudevillian, recombinant band offering free bop, out funk, ballads, ruminant impressionism and, of course, the fire." Mathews was known to attend concerts by Rivers' original trio (with
Dave Holland on bass and
Barry Altschul on drums) when they performed.
Mathews joined the quintet of trombonist David Manson for the album ''
Fluid Motion
In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids— liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) an ...
'' (2002), which included the trio from the ''Caldera'' recording plus Manson and trumpeter Jonathan Powell.
In 2010, Mathews was part of a tribute performance to
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian a ...
; other performers and contributors included poet
Frank Messina, arranger
David Amram, and drummer Michael Welsh. Three years later, Mathews joined resident guitarist
Mary Halvorson
Mary Halvorson (born October 16, 1980) is an American avant-garde jazz composer and guitarist from Brookline, Massachusetts.
Among her many collaborations, she has: led a trio with and Ches Smith, and a quintet with the addition of Jon Irabago ...
at the
Atlantic Center for the Arts along with saxophonist Dan Jordan, trombonist Keith Oshiro, saxophonist David Pate, trumpeter Tom Parmerter and drummer Tomas Fujiwara. In 2023, Mathews was a member of the New York All-Star RivBea Orchestra, a group paying tribute to Rivers.
References
{{Reflist
Living people
American jazz double-bassists
Year of birth missing (living people)