Known locally in several circles from restorative justice trainings to fine cabinetmaking, Dan DeWalt is, at the core, a musician: a solo and ensemble player on piano and trombone, an accompanist, and a composer.Heard on other artists’ albums and having produced a couple of his own in recent years, DeWalt is in a prolific season, now working on four new recordings simultaneously, the recently released Time to Face the Music among them.
“I’m excited about it,” says DeWalt. “It was all pretty homegrown. I invited Wim Auer, a wonderful bassist, and Tim Gilmore, a fantastic drummer, to come to my house on a Monday morning.”
DeWalt and Auer have been working together since 1980, most memorably in the late band, Simba. He and Gilmore have “played on and off for a decade or two.”
At the South Newfane home that DeWalt built himself, the trio recorded seven songs, with no rehearsal.
“The music we’ve played together in the last couple of decades serves us well,” he says. “Most tunes only needed one take. No dubbing or angst – just three musicians together, playing for each other.”
DeWalt, whose grandfather was a professional trombonist (“and my grandmother was a flapper,” he adds), started piano in second grade. By his senior year in high school he was tackling Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C minor. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Marlboro College, where he studied voice with Blanche Moyse and piano with Joe Schaeffer and Nigel Coxe.
-written by Annie Landenberger (The Commons)