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Artist Profiles
Nate Morgan's Time Capsule
Rex Butters
After years of writing music related articles, Rex still wonders who has time to listen to all these cds?Despite his early immersion in the genre, other influences called the young musician, and he grew accordingly. No longer known as a free player, Morgan says, I really have to be in the mood. It's cool to have that facility under my belt, I can still think in those terms. But when I started studying modal music, I kinda got hooked into that aspect of the playing. When my ears got good enough to really dissect Coltrane's music, that's when I really got hooked into that modal aspect of playing. After listening to him, and McCoy, and Alice, and other folks going in that direction, Pharoah. To me, it was more spiritual, had those meditative qualities that I didn't know I was going to fall in love with, but I did. Towards the end of Coltrane's career, everything he played was like a prayer, a testimony. I really got into it in that respect, the music was my religion.
The 2005 Church of Nate plays a busy concert schedule throughout the LA area to growing attendance and acclaim. A recently recorded film soundtrack premieres next month. "I co-scored a movie, documentary on the life of Simon Rodia, the man who built the Watts Towers. They're going to show it at the African American Film Festival this February. It's a nice recording. Simon Rodia was a true Verdi fan, operas, arias. So I took some Verdi themes and put my little twist on them-came out pretty interesting. Fritz Wise on drums, Tambu on percussion, Nedra Wheeler on bass, Onajee on vibes, Doug Webb playing sax and flute, it was a real nice date. We performed some of the music at the Central Avenue Jazz Festival and had a real nice reception. For the show we added Lisa Terry on violin.
The more I play, the more fluid it becomes. I go through periods where I don't play that often. I've always had horrible practice habits. I have to perform.
