His ensembles include the Dave Douglas Quintet; Sound Prints, a quintet co-led with saxophonist Joe Lovano; Uplift, a sextet with bassist Bill Laswell; Present Joys with pianist Uri Caine and Andrew Cyrille; High Risk, an electronic ensemble with Shigeto, Jonathan Aaron, and Ian Chang; and Engage, a sextet with Jeff Parker, Tomeka Reid, Anna Webber, Nick Dunston, and Kate Gentile.

As a composer, Douglas has received commissions from the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Essen Philharmonie, The Library of Congress, Stanford University and Monash Art Ensemble, which premiered his chamber orchestra piece Fabliaux in March 2014.

Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Douglas grew up in the New York City area and attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a private high school in New Hampshire.

[2] In the late 1980s, Douglas began playing with bands led by Don Byron, Tim Berne, Marty Ehrlich, Walter Thompson, and others in New York.

In 1996, Douglas recorded Sanctuary with Cuong Vu, Anthony Coleman, Yuka Honda, Dougie Bowne, and other musicians of the New York downtown scene of the time.

Towards the end of the 1990s, Douglas formed a Quintet with Uri Caine on fender rhodes, Chris Potter, James Genus and drummer Clarence Penn.

His international touring continued with multiway residencies of his original works at festivals in Belgium, Italy, Poland, Germany, France and Spain.

Douglas also started a new band called Keystone, which performs works influenced by the silent film actor and director Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.

Greenleaf Music recorded and released all ten sets through their website as a download-only series, Keystone: Live at Jazz Standard (Complete Book).

Released under the unifying label of the Greenleaf Portable Series, or GPS, the albums showcased ensembles that Douglas may only "rarely get to play with" in some cases.

The second album, Orange Afternoons included Ravi Coltrane on tenor sax, Vijay Iyer on piano, Linda Oh on bass, Marcus Gilmore on drums.

[7] After the bandleaders' intersecting tenures in the SFJAZZ Collective in 2008, Douglas joined with tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano to form the co-led quintet Sound Prints with drummer Joey Baron, bassist Linda Oh and pianist Lawrence Fields.

The album featured Douglas' newly formed quintet of Jon Irabagon on saxophone, Matt Mitchell on piano, Linda Oh on bass, and Rudy Royston on drums with the addition of vocalist Aoife O'Donovan.

The tour aimed to include performances in "unlikely and outdoors locations for people who might not otherwise have the same kind of access to live, improvised music as those in larger cities.

The two explore the music of the Sacred Harp tradition, taking on four pieces from the shape-note tune books as well as several new Douglas compositions undertaken in the same vein.

The trio released Devotion in 2019, performing Douglas compositions inspired by Franco D’Andrea, Carla Bley, Mary Lou Williams, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Scored for four winds, four brass, four strings, and four percussion, including electronics, the music explores ideas of hocket, isorhythm, and modal counterpoint as points of departure, mixing improvisation with timbre and structure in unexpected ways.

[20] Dave first met DJ, producer and beatmaker Shigeto (Ghostly International) at a Red Bull Music Academy event that paired musicians in a series of solo and duet improvisations, and the two found some common creative ground.

[22] In the fall of 2015, Dave released Brazen Heart, an album featuring his longstanding quintet with Jon Irabagon, Matt Mitchell, Linda May Han Oh, and Rudy Royston.

The title track was commissioned for the Ecstatic Music Festival as a piece for large brass ensemble to be performed at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan, reimagined for a small group.

[24] In 2016, Douglas joined with French pianist Frank Woeste, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Clarence Penn to produce a cooperative album with support from the French-American Jazz Exchange.

It challenges the performers to maximally tease out the implications of each idea, using their own personal vocabulary to develop and explore the music in fresh ways every time.

Subtitled, “Twelve Pieces For Positive Action,” the music was conceived by Douglas as a response to the tumultuous political and social climate of the United States and beyond.

The ensemble, which came together to record the music in December 2017, features saxophonist Joe Lovano, guitarists Mary Halvorson and Julian Lage, bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Ian Chang.

The songs were specifically built for this collaborative and dynamic ensemble including woodwind player Anna Webber, cellist Tomeka Reid, guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Nick Dunston and drummer Kate Gentile.

For that, Douglas assembled a sextet that included Ambrose Akinmusire on trumpet, guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Linda May Han Oh and Joey Baron on drums.

In addition to Baron, Douglas brought trumpeter Dave Adewumi, guitarist Matthew Stevens, pianist Fabian Almazan, and bassist Carmen Rothwell into the studio.

Featuring a special quartet with guitarist Rafiq Bhatia, bassist Melvin Gibbs and drummer Sim Cain, the ten pieces were released throughout 2020 to subscribers.

Drawing on Latin Mass, on early medieval folk songs, on composers of the period, like Guillaume DuFay, and on jazz and improvised music, Douglas and team deliver a lyrical, mystical, spiritual score full of upbeat optimism for our times.

[33] The Dave Douglas Quintet featuring Irabagon, Mitchell, Oh, and Royston reunited to release its fourth studio album, Songs of Ascent: Book 1 - Degrees on October 7, 2022.