The Sextet David Weiss Spent Decades Building

With his album Auteur and a seasoned working band, the trumpeter and composer brings a hard-earned collective language to SFJAZZ’s Joe Henderson Lab on May 17.

David Weiss, whose sextet brings Auteur and decades of shared bandstand experience to SFJAZZ’s Joe Henderson Lab on May 17.

Listen to the full conversation with David below.

David Weiss talks about bands the way master builders talk about structures: with patience, respect for materials, and a clear understanding that a thing only becomes itself over time. Songs matter. Concepts matter. Individual players matter. What matters most, in his telling, is sustained collective practice, the long process by which a group stops sounding like a collection of musicians and begins to speak as one.

That is the story behind the sextet Weiss brings to SFJAZZ’s Joe Henderson Lab on May 17. The San Francisco date closes a five-city run, giving the music time to settle, stretch, and sharpen on stage before it reaches the Bay Area. For Weiss, that is where the real work happens. “Things happen when you have a band that plays together for a long time,” he said.

The idea has deep roots. Weiss recalled a remark by saxophonist Benny Golson from a sound check years earlier, a simple explanation for why the older generation of jazz musicians had such authority: they played constantly. Night after night, city after city, they learned each other’s time, tendencies, and reflexes through repetition. “They just played and played and played,” Weiss said. “And they were also, you know, great.” The lesson stayed with him. Technique and imagination always matter, but a band earns its depth by living inside the music together.

That way of thinking runs through Auteur, Weiss’s latest album for Origin Records. Even the title carries a note of inquiry. “I think I want to put a question mark after it,” he said. Weiss clearly has a compositional identity, but he hears it in conversation with the musicians around him, not from a position above them. Auteur documents a writer and bandleader working through the push-and-pull between individual voice and group life.

Two pieces from the album bring that dynamic into focus. “Resilience” emerged from overlapping lines of influence, one traceable to the British fusion group National Health and another unexpectedly close to a harmonic device pianist George Cables had used on “Ebony Moonbeams.” Weiss discovered the connection only after the fact, then played it for Cables at a sound check. Cables laughed and asked, “Do I owe you money?” Weiss did not take it as an imitation. He took it as kinship. He eventually subtitled the tune “For George,” whom he described as “about as resilient a person as I know.”

“The Other Side of the Mountain” began with a very different spark: a Ron Carter documentary, Finding The Right Notes. Carter reflected on Martin Luther King Jr.’s mountaintop speech, contemplating movement toward a goal that may remain just beyond reach. Weiss heard something sobering and useful in that image. He spoke about age, perspective, and the reality of “speed bumps,” then circled back to Carter’s larger point. Keep going. Keep working. “Let’s just keep rolling,” Weiss said. “Let’s keep doing this.”

That spirit fits the band he is bringing to San Francisco. Drummer EJ Strickland has been with Weiss since the beginning and is now nearing a quarter-century in the group. Alto saxophonist Myron Walden has logged two decades of shared history. Pianist David Bryant is a newer arrival, stepping into the chair once held by Xavier Davis. Bassist Eric Wheeler took over after the death of Dwayne Burno, whose presence remains part of the ensemble’s memory. Tenor saxophonist Ben Solomon, the youngest voice in the band, brings strong experience, including work with Aaron Parks and Chick Corea. Weiss summed it up in characteristic fashion: “Good band.” He did not dress the phrase up because it did not need dressing up. He was stating the core fact.

That accumulated trust gives the music its shape. Weiss spoke about tunes needing room to “unwind, to develop, and get to where we’re going.” The Joe Henderson Lab, with its close quarters and attentive listening culture, should suit that process well. It is a room that rewards detail, interplay, and tonal character. By the time the sextet arrives, Weiss expects the music to have found its footing on tour. “Whatever it is,” he said, “we will have figured it out by then.”

This moment carries extra weight for Weiss. As The Cookers move toward what may be their final year, his sextet now commands his focus more than ever. Here is a bandleader with decades of experience, directing his attention to a group built patiently over time, one player at a time, one tune at a time. The set offers more than a preview of the new album. It offers a chance to hear a mature working band in the act of becoming more fully itself.

For listeners in San Francisco, that is reason enough to be in the room. A small stage, six musicians who know how to listen, and a bandleader still refining the question at the center of his music: how much belongs to the composer and how much to the band's shared life? That question will be answered in the Joe Henderson Lab.

Show Information

David Weiss Sextet

Venue: Joe Henderson Lab, SFJAZZ Center

Location: 201 Franklin Street, San Francisco

Date: Sunday, May 17, 2026

Showtimes: 6:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

Personnel: David Weiss, EJ Strickland, Myron Walden, David Bryant, Eric Wheeler, Ben Solomon

Tickets:SFJAZZ

More information:davidweissmusic.com