Pass It On (Dave Holland album)

An AllMusic review by Michael G. Nastros awarded the album 4 stars, stating, "Using a sextet, upright bassist Holland sets the bar even higher, adding the always tasteful pianist Mulgrew Miller and a four-horn front line that is relentless. This group continues to define jazz perfectly in the 21st century."^[1]

Josef Woodard of JazzTimes wrote "Given the power and familiarity of Dave Holland’s longstanding sextet and the quintet before that, going back to the early ’80s, one point of surprise with his new band and recording is a fundamental change: the presence of piano. Mulgrew Miller does the keyboard honors, and along with the three-horn frontline, he makes the band sound, on first impression at least, like Holland’s most “traditional” band in decades... One of the more exciting aspects of this project, in fact, is the sense of continuity in hearing Holland dipping into his past songbook and applying new textural/ensemble garb. To hear, for example, Holland’s wakeup-call neo-hard-bop tune “Double Vision”-originally from the great 1984 chordless quintet album Seeds of Time-in this new, horns-and-piano thickened format, is to recognize the sweep and significance of the man’s work and musical thinking over the decades. In Holland’s case, the seeds of time keep reaping."^[7]

Mark Corroto, writing for AllAboutJazz, says that sextet "plays music much like a very small big band."^[8]