David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ Remembered by Donnie McCaslin

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UNITED KINGDOM – JUNE 13: ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL Photo of IOW FEST/STUART MOSTYN, David Bowie performs live on stage and headlines at Isle of Wight Festival Sunday 13 June 2004 (Photo by Stuart Mostyn/Redferns) Redferns Jazz saxophonist and composer Donny McCaslin’s introduction to the work of David Bowie was the massively successful 1983 album Let’s Dance. Then he became acquainted with some of the music icon’s well-known hits, including 1985’s “This Is Not America,” a collaboration with the Pat Metheny Group. But when McCaslin and his fellow New York City-based bandmates began working on what turned out to be Bowie’s final album, 2016’s Blackstar, he started to familiarize himself with more of Bowie’s works. “I reached out to him and I said, ‘Well, I’m starting to look back in your catalog and listen to some other stuff,’” McCaslin recalls. “He asked me, ‘Well, what are you listening to?’ So I sent him maybe 20 songs. His response was something like, ‘That’s old stuff. I’m into something new now.’ I thought, ‘Well, that’s a clue to me to stop listening to his recorded history and filter the songs that he’s sending me through the aesthetic that I and my band had created. I realized he had chosen us because he was, I think, drawn to what we were doing in that moment.” With its jazz-rock and avant-garde leanings, and propelled by the performances of McCaslin and his band, Blackstar became a fitting swansong by Bowie, who died on Jan. 10, 2016, two days after its release. Both that album and the No Plan EP, whose music was recorded during those sessions, are included on the recently released Bowie box I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002-2006). That set also contains the studio albums Heathen, Reality and The Next Day, a previously…