At 17, while enrolled at the Mapua Institute of Technology, Dave wanted badly to go pro. He searched for suitable teachers to gain the confidence needed to break into the music scene. Unable to find any, he signed up for music classes at Santa Isabel College and shortly began accepting invitations to gigs. As these increased in frequency and variety, he started missing classes, until he ultimately threw himself to playing bass full time with different groups in as many venues.

This constancy would serve Dave well down the road. So that by the mid-1990s, not quite 30 and eager to dive into a fresh sound, he found himself at an open jam jazz night where a friend, drummer Mar Dizon, introduced him to admired bassist Meong Pacana, who would eventually become one of his mentors.

“This was what was then called a sink-or-swim night, or ‘sumabog’  (literally, ‘exploded’), when young musicians were called on stage to play with the seasoned ones,” says Dave. “There were many of us young ones in such one-off events, as well as the more advanced musicians. It was called ‘sumabog’ to describe those moments when all hell broke loose, and the newbies lost their way through a song. It’s a lot like when kids got lost in the mall—a moment of confusion, mayhem, a time for lessons.”

In one of those sessions, this time at the University of the Philippines, Dave was introduced to the renowned composer, arranger, and double bass player Angel Peña, now deceased, by pianist and jazz historian Richie Quirino. This encounter seemed to confirm that, indeed, the teacher(s) appear when the student is ready, as Angel himself would put Dave through his paces.

As he moved deeper into jazz territory, Dave found himself consulting with who has been described as “Asia’s best bassist,” the late Roger Herrera. “Mang Roger was so generous with his time and knowledge; one call and he readily shared his expertise,” Dave recalls. “I bought my first upright bass from him.”

The constant bassist

Today, Dave lugs his double bass—15 to 20 pounds, including the soft case—to shows or gigs with proper stages, and for recording. He has two other smaller custom-made basses, with detachable necks, ready for a plane ride.

He has also since played for a wide range of musical formats, some of which stand out more than the others: Between 2008 and 2010 he played for jazz-inflected television shows (“The Lynn Sherman Show” and “Sessions on 25th Street”).

Dave eventually got to play with the late saxophone legend Eddie Katindig, and sometime in 2013 with piano supremo Romy Posadas. In 2014 he was part of the orchestra for the musical “Chicago” in Manila. In 2024, he played the jazz bass parts for the Manila show of global sensation Laufey, with the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO).

“I enjoyed doing these—playing with the MPO, which was very new to me, and with somebody famous,” he says.

These days, Dave plays with five regular groups and then some, bringing the deep-throated joy of his bass wherever it’s needed.

With Sifu, he plays with keyboardist and arranger Elhmir Saison, drummer Rey Vinoya, and saxophonist Tots Tolentino.

With Zenfu, he plays bass with Rey and Tots, and pianist Yong Aquino, with the occasional vocals by Faye Yupano.

With Dixie Sheikhs, he’s with Rey, Tots, Joey Quirino on keys, bandleader Ronald Tomas, and trumpeter Glenn Lucero.

With Up All Night, he’s with Rey and pianist Mike Lichtenfeld.

With The Jazz Standard, he’s with Elhmir, Rey, Tots, and guitarist Daniel Ibasco. 

Dave’s the trusty constant in these moving parts, the years of dedication to his instrument placing him firmly on the roster of go-to rhythm main men.

“Playing jazz calls for the same discipline and dedication required of doctors, lawyers, engineers, or athletes,” he says. “You can’t be half-hearted about it.” 

He passes on his knowledge through individual mentorship, maintaining a virtuous cycle, and his mentees have subsequently found work as musicians, notably on cruise ships.

But to push the love for art further, Dave believes we all should find and cultivate it in everything we do—“from how we choose to spend our day and talk with people, to the food we cook, the coffee we drink, the way we do business, the books we choose to read, how we parent and nurture our most important relationships.”

Dependable Dave: Singers know he’s got their back, and friends cherish his life lessons and laughs, and reliable support—all in perfect timing.

Read more: Portraits in Jazz: Simon Tan’s season of grace

The post Portraits in Jazz: Dave Harder’s moveable feast appeared first on CoverStory.

Perhaps the most resolute of the bar owners is Nelson Gonzales, drummer and owner of Tago Jazz on Main Avenue in Cubao, Quezon City, which is turning out to be jazz’s permanent home address. Open from Friday to Sunday for evening shows, Tago is the stage to be for jazz musicians of all generations and the place to be for the growing number of enthusiasts. 

The wiry and self-effacing Gonzales, 49 in July, is not easily discouraged. Since Tago’s birth 13 years ago he has parented it with equal parts patience and tough love, defending its choices no matter how unpopular, despite the odds. Its regulars, which in the early days already included a handful of media practitioners, have seen it grow in both sound and spirit. 

Its headway, however, was cut short by the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. While businesses big and small scaled back operations or shut down completely in the two years that followed, Gonzales kept his business afloat by pivoting it online: He sold food for a good part of the first year and, when it was deemed safe for small groups to congregate, he livestreamed shows from Tago.     

Looking back on “those horrid and hopeless times,” Gonzales refuses to give up on his mission to “remind people that jazz is alive and well in spite of everything.”

Survival steps

Musicians foundered too, perhaps more than others, given the face-to-face nature of their livelihoods. 

To survive, composer/arranger/keyboardist Elhmir Saison taught music online. Bassist Dave Harder sold his car and the kitchenware that was lying idle, and resold meat products. “I practiced, rested my ears and mind, and unlearned,” says Harder, who also did recording studio work when restrictions loosened somewhat. Guitarist Riki Gonzales had the misfortune of catching the coronavirus on board the Diamond Princess, a luxury cruise ship he had been working in as a musician. He used the downtime to practice his guitar and compose a song. When he returned home with no place to play, he sold seafood online. Drummer Jinggoy Balane taught online for a spell and started a small business, but shortly quit both when neither gained any traction.

But it’s not as if gigging were completely cushy before Covid-19 either, although Saison thinks that compared to the present, gigs then were more easily accessible and offered highly competitive rates. 

Over the last decade and a half, jazz bars have opened and closed and opened again, only to shut its doors a second time (Monk’s Dream, the jazz place in the ‘90s). The speakeasy-esque Ten 02 off Timog operated from 2008 to ‘12, and was instrumental in showcasing rising jazz musicians who have since become recording session artists. Balete@Kamias, an art-deco house turned jazz-bar-under-an-ancient-balete-tree, where, since 2013, the AMP Big Band played Monday nights to a full house, closed permanently after the lockdown. 

Being a jazz musician in the Philippines—and, really, most anywhere in the world—will never be enough to live like Croesus’ handyman. And while it is easy to go all wistful for a return to the glory decades of the ‘70s through the ‘90s when places that served up jazz were always packed—Birds of the Same Feather on Tomas Morato, Vineyard on Pasay Road, Calesa Bar at the Hyatt, Tap Room at the Manila Hotel, and Papillon in Makati—and at least three Manila jazz radio stations kept the music playing night and day, scanning the horizon would better serve the task of mapping the future for jazz and its bearers.

The only reason

“We need jazz,” says Nelson Gonzales, “and that is the only reason we are here—to make it available and, we hope, to allow the community to thrive again.” At the same time, it needs all the help it can get because “the old are busy being old, the mid-players are busy making ends meet.” 

Thus, Tago hopes that exposing more people to the music will help develop sensibilities especially among the younger ones. 

And it’s happening. The Tago audiences are getting younger, and more attentive and curious. Says Harder: “Jazz is a small market, but it is improving. We’re playing and listening better now. If anything, the pandemic also taught a lot of people how to listen, watch, eat, and read better stuff.”

To be sure, streaming platforms have also contributed to the dwindling live jazz venues and professional fees. Writing in 2017 for the website jazzinjapan.com, Michael Pronko, a Tokyo-based “writer of murder, memoir, and music,” reminds us: “In this age when people record all manner of experiences, unrepeatability becomes more precious, valuable, and beautiful. Live music, especially jazz, is unrepeatable… Unrepeatable experience has even more value in this age of recorded, retweeted, shared, YouTube-ized life… Technology lets us pretend we can control everything. Live music reminds us of the value of submitting humbly to direct experience, to give up our pause buttons and volume controls. Live music reasserts the importance of submission as a listener to the power of creation as a performer.”

We slog on, do what we have to do to keep on playing what we love to play seems to be the formula for musical longevity.  Musicians that have played in ships or abroad for extended periods invariably return to face the music at home—quite literally—perhaps to renovate their houses or send more children to college and, where possible, play some more. Less for the money this time than for the sheer joy of co-creating music with an audience.  

Sustaining this wave of returning talent will help ensure the genre’s continuity, as will providing performance spaces they can share with next-generation jazz musicians in our midst. 

Saison, whose greatest takeaway from the pandemic is the magnificent impermanence of life vis-à-vis God’s eternity, accedes that the rush from doing something new, in the moment of a live performance, trumps all worry and fear over the next paycheck. Some days are happier than others. On the whole, he says, “it’s not so bad.” 

But it could certainly be better.

Read more: In Iloilo’s museums, you find pioneering photos and rock stars

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