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The Herbie Nichols Project was introduced by the Jazz Composers Collective in 1994. Co-led by Frank Kimbrough and Ben Allison, the latest incarnation of the group includes Ron Horton on trumpet, Ted Nash and Michael Blake on saxophones, Wycliffe Gordon on trombone, and Matt Wilson on drums (though roughly twenty players have participated in it at one time or another). The basis of the Herbie Nichols Project is twofold – to introduce the long-neglected music of this great American composer to musicians, audiences and record collectors; and to arrange, perform and record his work with horns – something he never was able to do in his lifetime. Other musicians have recorded Nichols' music before – most notably Roswell Rudd and Steve Lacy – but this outgrowth of the Jazz Composers Collective has taken it one step further by creating a repertory band committed to annual performances, multiple recordings and unearthing never-recorded Herbie Nichols gems from the Library of Congress. Co-leaders Kimbrough and Allison had little idea when they began the project what a life it would take on. Prolific media accolades poured in from the release of the first record and helped bring much-deserved attention to other Collective efforts as journalists overwhelmingly embraced the musical personalities behind the Project in addition to the Herbie Nichols repertory aspect. In addition, the HNP has toured far more than any other Collective band, a mixed blessing as it is a result of the jazz industry's obsession with the past at the expense of the present – a negative phenomenon which was certainly not something the Collective intended to feed into.

"One can create one's own system of composing jazz. Sometimes I find it hard to distinguish where my technique ends and inspiration begins. . . Rhythms and patterns seem to be endless and I find them inboxing, architecture, literature, vaudeville, the dancing art of Primus, Hale and Dunham. All the world's a stage for the jazz pundit." – Herbie Nichols, Metronome Magazine,1956

Says Kimbrough: "I first heard Herbie Nichols' music in January, 1985 on one of WCKR FM's ‘Birthday Broadcasts,' recalls Kimbrough. "They played three hours of his music and I taped the program. I was so struck by it I started transcribing his music the next day. I played many of the tunes at a solo piano gig on Bleecker Street, then after a while began to take the tunes to sessions with my friends. As these sessions gradually evolved into what was to become the Jazz Composers Collective, we decided it would make a great project, even though our main focus has always been our own music. We premiered the Herbie Nichols Project in 1994. The next year I got an NEA grant to produce two more concerts."