DETAILED THROUGH THE PERIODS

COPENHAGEN (1963-1981) | BOSTON (1981-1984) | NEW YORK (1984-1989) | PARIS (1989-2013) | COPENHAGEN (2013-PRESENT)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA

In spite of a very humble start, Niels’ career quickly started to take off, with great reviews and press quotes, engagements in the most prominent venues and festivals, TV and radio shows, performances with the greatest living jazz stars, great recording contracts, and numerous tours and album releases.  Even with this perceived success, the very beginning was tough.

Upon their arrival in New York, Terri Lyne and Niels spent every night hanging out in clubs and going to after-hours jam sessions to meet other musicians and make their presence in New York known. Living in Spanish Harlem at that time was dangerous. Their street had about 12-15 crack dealers permanently stationed down the block and getting mugged on your way to the subway was a regular occurrence if you lived in the neighborhood. Gunshots weren’t unusual either and finding a dead body on the sidewalk in front of your apartment building on your way home from grocery shopping was unfortunately not a surprise.  This was before Mayor Guiliani’s cleaned up New York City and the crime rate was high. The AIDS scare hadn’t seriously hit the media yet (but would soon after) so people were still partying hard and living dangerously. But this is what Niels and Terri could afford and it was time to start paying dues. Luckily they both had advantages over most other young musicians arriving in New York trying to make it. Terri Lyne was a former child prodigy who had sat in with Roland Kirk at age 5, played drum duets with Buddy Rich on national TV at age 6, played with the likes of Oscar Peterson and Dizzy Gillespie at age 11, etc. So her reputation had preceded her on her arrival in the big apple. Niels’ background was in a similar league as he had worked professionally since age 13 and played with Thad Jones and other prominent American jazz ex-pats in Denmark since the age of 15.

The mere fact of being from Denmark also seemed to be a door opener in musicians’ circles in New York at the time, as many of the city’s most established players had extensive track records of playing in Copenhagen and befriending many locals friends and sharing lots of fond memories there. So in a relatively short time, Niels met and began playing with musicians such as Billy Hart, Alvin Queen, Ray Drummond, Rufus Reid, Bob Berg and Tom Harrell. Terri’s network also contributed to a large extent. Not least when it came to meeting some of the great drummers. Louis Hayes once came by to visit Terri in the apartment that she was sharing with Niels  and the three of them went on to hang out in the clubs. Before leaving Boston, Terri had also introduced Niels to Fred White, the drummer from Earth Wind and Fire. And Terri also introduced Niels to her mentor, Jack DeJohnette, who later recorded with Niels on his second album as a leader “The Target” alongside Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. Terri and Niels were roommates for a little over a year before she moved to Brooklyn but they have remained close and stayed in touch since and have done a good handful of recordings together and numerous tours. Niels stayed in the apartment after that and other roommates came in, including and for the longest time his former Berklee classmate, bassist Ira Coleman who had landed the gig with Freddie Hubbard. 

Other young players who arrived in New York around the same time as Niels and Terri and who had the same objective of breaking into the New York jazz scene,  were people like Kenny Garrett, David Kikoski, Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, Cindy Blackman, Wallace Roney, Diana Krall, and many others. Most of the new young players in town would meet each other from hanging out nightly at the same after-hours jam sessions in jazz clubs like the Blue Note, Star Café and others. Or at the gigs of band leaders known for hiring young musicians, such as Art Blakey. On nights with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers at jazz club Sweet Basil on Seventh Avenue it would not be unusual to see 12-15 young musicians at the bar (cheapest admission charge) all dressed up in suits, trying to mingle with the band in the breaks (bands played 3 sets a night back then) with the hope of getting a chance to sit with the band and be heard and thus considered for future employment, by Art or other band leaders in the audience. New York was still a late-night town back then. Sets were at 10 PM, Midnight and 2 AM in a lot of clubs and then the after-hours events after that.  Young musicians would usually hang out all night in the clubs and end up in a diner for breakfast before going home to sleep. For the first many months in New York, Niels didn’t get out of bed until 3 PM every day.  

The remainder of 1984 and 1985 was a hustle to stay afloat in the tough and fiercely competitive city of New York and Niels was often tempted to go back to Copenhagen to a safer and easier life there (this continuous dilemma caused Niels to name his 1986 debut album “Here Or There”).  During most of 1984 and into 1985 Niels mostly worked with many various up-and-coming singers who each had very few gigs but combined would amount to not only a decent amount of work for Niels but also a good learning experience in terms of being a music director and accompanying many different types of singers and providing them with instrumental backdrops to enhance the stories in the song lyrics. In 1985 however, Niels finally succeeded to get gigs around New York under his own name. He would play mostly at The Angry Squire with people like Ira Coleman and Jeff “Tain” Watts or duo gigs at places such as Bradley’s and Greene Street with bassists such as Rufus Reid and Ray Drummond. The latter would subsequently hire Niels for his own record date, where Niels met drummer Alvin Queen for the first time. One of the highlights of 1985 was a 4-night engagement at the West End Café on Manhattan’s upper west side. Niels had put together a fantastic quartet featuring Billy Hart on drums, Curtis Lundy on bass and Bob Berg on tenor saxophone. The latter was with Miles Davis at the time and remains one Niels all-time favorite tenor players. The two became good friends and started to play a lot together after that.

During his periodic European tours, that always included visits to Copenhagen, Niels began to develop a relationship with the Danish bass virtuoso, legend, and innovator, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen who was arguably the top jazz artist from Denmark at the time and whom Niels had been a big fan of since his earliest years in the business. Niels-Henning soon became a mentor to Niels and got him his first record deal and did many tours with him for the rest of the decade and well into the 90s. Niels signed with the Storyville label in late 1985 and recorded his debut album “Here or There” in Copenhagen in January 1986 with NHØP on bass and Alvin Queen on drums. In the album’s  liner notes, the American jazz writer and 8 times Grammy Award winner for album notes, Dan Morgenstern, wrote: “There is nothing more encouraging and satisfying than to encounter for the first time a young Jazz musician of real stature, someone who can make you feel that the future of the music is in good hands. There can not be the slightest doubt that Doky’s talent is of real significance --‐ that rare thing in the Jazz of our time, an original voice in the great tradition”. The album release propelled Niels’ career into a higher gear and he soon found himself playing at major jazz festivals and jazz venues around the world, most often either with NHØP and Alvin Queen in his trio or Terri Lyne Carrington and Danish bassist Bo Stief.  Steve Getz (son of Stan Getz) became Niels’ manager for a few years. And Stig Linderoth (Miles Davis’ Scandinavian agent) became Niels’ agent. 

In May of 1986 Niels brought a fantastic quintet into the Blue Note jazz club in New York, Buster Williams on bass, Alvin Queen on drums, Bob Berg on tenor saxophone and Claudio Roditi on trumpet. The gig was a success but the next morning became a life-changing turning point for Niels. He woke up coughing and almost unable to breathe. For 2 years he had been trying to quit smoking but had given up every day around mid-afternoon, postponing the start of his new smoke-free life until the next day. Niels had started smoking in highschool and over the course of 6 years, he had gradually increased his consumption, culmination the day before with a new record of 50 cigarettes in one day. The inability to breathe shocked Niels to such a degree that he managed to stay smoke-free the whole rest of the day and night. And this success gave him the courage and strength to stay smoke-free yet another day and then yet another day and so on. He was heavily addicted to nicotine and it took him a year and a half to get completely rid of the urge to smoke, and that turned into a powerful exercise of self-control and discipline. In parallel, as the months went by, he experienced growing energy and feeling of health which was exciting to him and enhanced his determination even further to stay smoke-free. And since that last post-concert cigarette at the Blue Note in York on a late night in May of 1986 he never smoked ever again. 

In the Summer of 1986, Niels got hired to accompany tenor saxophone legend Joe Henderson at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen for his visit during the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Joe was so impressed with Niels that he asked to see the young pianist in the club’s office immediately after the concert, to discuss forthcoming engagements in the USA for which Joe needed a pianist. Coincidentally, another saxophone legend who was in the audience, David Sanborn, was patiently waiting in line at the office’s entrance to say hello to Joe and congratulate him on the success of the concert. Niels did not yet know Sanborn then. This was the first time that Sanborn heard Niels live and they later became good friends and played a lot together. About a month later, Niels found himself playing a multi-night engagement with Joe Henderson at the iconic New York jazz club The Village Vanguard and with an all-star band that also included Al Foster on drums, Woody Shaw on trumpet and Delbert Felix on bass. Joe at that time was doing a lot of piano-less trio gigs with just bass and drums and was accustomed to not having a chordal instrument to accompany him and he would often ask pianists to layout for portions of the saxophone improvisations. Joe was always very metaphoric and abstract in his way of speaking and he would say to Niels before the show started things such as,  “If you feel like not comping sometimes, just take a stroll. You know, on a clear day you can see forever”. Woody Shaw had turned blind from diabetes at that time, and after the last night, Niels went over to him backstage and told him before leaving to go home, “bye Woody, take care, it was really great playing with you again”. Woody then reacted by saying “who’s there, who are you?”. Niels replied, “it’s me, Niels”. Woody then said “Who?” and Niels replied “Niels Lan Doky”. And then Woody bursted out loud “NIEEEELS, how are you? How have you been?”. When Niels told him that he was the piano player that he had just completed an engagement with, his comment was “that was YOU????”. The sets at the Vanguard in those days were 10 PM, Midnight and 2 AM. The last set would always attract a radically different and sometimes shady audience full of suspicious characters or young or lesser-known musicians trying to hustle gigs. Lots of colorful people, also in the early sets. Joe was notoriously late every night and each night started with Max Gordon (the owner of the Village Vanguard) standing at the entrance, almost blocking the door for arriving guests looking for Joe to arrive and furiously repeating over and over again (loud enough so that every guest in the club could hear him) “I’ll kill that son-of-a-bitch”. But Joe was the smoothest talker and would slip in and straight to the stage and start and play so well that it would quickly dissolve Max’ anger.

At the end of 1986, NHØP flew to New York to meet up with Niels and drive to Woodstock, New York where Jack DeJohnette lived and the three of them recorded Niels’ second album “The Target” in a studio there that Jack had recommended. The album was critically acclaimed and the line-up was sensational. Jack was a part of the Keith Jarrett trio that remains one of the most successful jazz acts of all time and NHØP was known worldwide mainly for his long association with Oscar Peterson, another one of jazz history’s most successful and influential pianists. The Target remains the only album  that Jack and Niels-Henning ever appeared on together and it was a dream team for a young pianist like Niels. The album came out in early 1987 and due to his commitments with Keith Jarrett, Jack was unavailable for touring and Danish drummer Alex Riel did the tour with Niels and Niels-Henning behind the release of the album. 

Niels-Henning had been playing with the top names in jazz since the age of 15 when he worked with Bud Powell. During high school, he was offered to join Count Basie but his mother wouldn’t let him drop out of school. But later he played  with Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and numerous others. When he eventually landed on the Norman Granz roster he was amongst jazz royalty of the highest order. As the most innovative and influential impresario in jazz history, Norman Granz was the first to take jazz out of small clubs and into large concert halls. He took jazz to a higher level than it had ever been. First-class in any way one can imagine. He created iconic labels like Verve and Pablo Records (named after his friend Picasso who also designed the label’s logo) and he managed the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, and the likes. Norman Granz was synonymous with First Class. And when Niels-Henning joined Norman’s team, he was introduced to a whole new set of high-class values that most jazz musicians had never experienced. This, of course, rubbed off on young Niels, who idolized his mentor. Niels-Henning taught Niels the importance of dignity as a jazz artist, and always required the best. First-class hotels, travel, high fees and high standards in everything. This prompted Niels to always require first-class pianos for his concerts from early 1988 and onwards. But before that, Keith Jarrett was also an early rebel against the poor quality of pianos routinely offered to jazz artists. In the media he would often state that concert promoters would never consider offering a classical pianist a bad piano to play on, so why should jazz artists accept it. This resonated well with Niels and the values that his mentor had taught him. As the years went by, Niels increasingly grew into a conscious symbiosis with these values.  Not least in the case of the music itself, always reaching for the ultimate best. 

Following the release of The Target, Niels records a live album in Copenhagen in May 1987 with tenor saxophonist Bob Berg added to his trio with Terri Lyne Carrington and Bo Stief. The album is entitled The Truth and is released in 1988 and marks Niels’ (temporary) departure from the trio format.  

On January 26-27, 1988 Niels was asked to take part in a very prominent recording session at the legendary A&R Studios in New York City. If was trumpeter Tom Harrell’s record date for the album “Stories” for the Contemporary label with producer Bill Goodwin and featuring - aside from Niels and Tom -  Bob Berg on tenor sax, John Scofield on guitar, Ray Drummond on bass and Billy Hart on drums. Prior to this session Tom and Niels had built quite a relationship and played on various record dates together, including drummer Klaus Suonsaari’s album “Reflecting Times”. Klaus was one of Niels’ closest friends and he lived in New Jersey with his girlfriend and their former Berklee schoolmate Diana Krall, who later went on to become a super-star and the #1 top-selling jazz artist in the world. In the months leading up to the Stories record date, Tom would come by very often to Niels apartment and do duo sessions, so they developed quite a musical rapport and friendship. Tom’s music was highly evolved and had a rare clarity of form, direction, and intention. He was an important influence on Niels at the time. After the call to do this record date, Niels started to intensity his practice habits in the months leading up to the date. However, he ended up overdoing it and come the day of the record date, the muscles in his arms and hands were so strained and stiff that Niels felt unable to deliver at his full potential. This turned out to be an important learning experience for Niels in terms of pacing. 

In April 1988 Niels went on his first tour of Japan, a country that Niels would fall in love with and which would play a crucial role in his career on multiple occasions. Niels dear friend and associate in New York, the great drummer Billy Hart, had recommended Niels to the Japanese promoter Nobunosuke Saito, mostly known for booking Japanese tours for Miles Davis but who worked with many American jazz artists. Upon hearing Niels’ debut album he immediately called Niels and invited him to Japan on tour. So in April of 1988, overlapping the Japanese National holiday “Golden Week” Niels took a trio with Ray Drummond on bass and Alvin Queen on drums to Japan for a tour covering most major cities. During this tour, he was approached by the record label JVC-Victor who at the time was the exclusive Japanese licensee of the American jazz label Milestone, whose roster at the time included Sonny Rollins and had previously included piano icons Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner.  JVC-Victor arranged for Niels to be signed to Milestone and on his return from Japan, Niels eventually flew to San Francisco to meet the label’s president Ralph Kaffel at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California. They hit it off well and agreed to a signing once Niels’ current recording contract with Storyville had expired in January 1989.

When Karl-Emil Knudsen, president of Storyville Records realized that Niels’ contract was about to expire, he arranged for Niels to record 2 trio albums and VHS video before the end of his contract term, and Knudsen and Kaffel struck a deal amongst themselves to schedule the release of their respective Niels Lan Doky albums far enough apart to avoid competition. The following Summer July/August 1989, Niels recorded not less than 3 albums and a video, including 2 trio albums and a video for Storyville, entitled Close Encounter Vol. 1 and 2, with a trio that included Gary Peacock on bass and Alex Riel on drums recorded at Studio 39 in Copenhagen. And after that, an all-star sextet record featuring Randy Brecker, Bob Berg, John Scofield, and Adam Nussbaum was recorded in New York by stellar engineer James Farber known for his great work with James Taylor, Mike Brecker, and Don Grolnick. The album was called “Dreams” and was Niels’ Milestone debut and also featured his brother Chris Minh Doky on bass, who had moved to New York fairly recently.  By now, Niels was focusing extensively on performing and recording mainly his own original music. 

Back to 1988. Although Niels’ manager at the time, Mary Ann Topper,  booked Niels’ trio with NHØP and drummer Billy Hart to perform nightly for a week at the Manhattan jazz club Fat Tuesday’s in September 1988, Niels-Henning and Niels used the daytime to record in a local studio with Terri Lyne Carrington on drums and John Scofield on guitar for Niels’ next quartet record entitled “Daybreak” to be released in 1989. During the Fat Tuesday’s trio engagement, many renowned musicians come to hear Niels and the trio, including bassists Ron Carter and Gary Peacock and pianist Michel Petrucciani. 

In July 1988 Terri Lyne is performing in Copenhagen with David Sanborn who has a Danish wife, Rikke. Following a gig in Paris Niels is home for a visit and comes backstage and meets up with Terri who introduces him to David and Rikke, with whom he is great friends with and David and Niels later end up doing quite a few projects together. 

At this point in time, Niels is endorsing a clothing brand, Matinique, and is wearing their clothes on stage and on all of his album covers. This is common in the pop world but very rare in jazz. This causes a stir in Denmark where his peers find it unsuitable for a “serious” jazz artist to be engaging in such commercial activity. Niels totally disagrees and dismisses the critique. As part of the values he has adopted, it is natural for him to be associated with high-class brands that he respects and admires. He later worked with Hugo Boss, Costume National and most recently and currently with Tiger of Sweden. 

By now, Niels is making more money than ever before and whenever he returns from a tour he has enough money to pay his bills for the next 6 months. So given this new financial edge, he decides to move into a new duplex apartment in a building next door that costs nearly 3 times as much as his first apartment. But it was a nice relief to raise the living standard and he also bought a fax machine and got a cable TV subscription and started to watch CNN on a daily basis to become more up to date of world politics. 

Upon their return to New York from their respective Summer tours, David Sanborn starts to call Niels several times a week to come over to his house to play sessions and the 2 start to develop a friendship and musical relationship that would last to this day. David was hugely successful at the time but felt that his success was confining him into a limiting musical environment and he was experimenting with new songs, concepts, and directions in music so it was an exciting process for Niels to be a part of. Not least since Niels and his high school friends all were Sanborn fans. Although Niels did do a recording session for David produced by Marcus Miller around this time, their first public appearance on a full-blown project didn’t occur until 1993. 

In October/November 1988 Niels did a pan-European tour with Bob Berg, NHØP and Terri Lyne Carrington (Swedish bassist Anders Jormin did the Danish leg of the tour). During a stop-over in Paris Charles-De-Gaule airport, the band missed their connection to Bordeaux and had to go to the SAS desk for help. Here, Niels meets his future wife for the first time, a half Danish half-French Guyanese SAS Paris staff by the name of Valentine. Five months later Niels moved to Paris and by June of 1989, they were married.