Jazz Articles about Lewis Nash

About Lewis Nash

Album Review

John di Martino: Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn

Read "Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 30, 2020

Composer / arranger Billy Strayhorn was barely twenty-three years old when he first met bandleader Duke Ellington, an encounter that would lead to a collaboration that lasted more than half of Strayhorn's life. During that time, Strayhorn wrote some of the Ellington orchestra's most acclaimed and enduring songs including “Lotus Blossom," “Chelsea Bridge," “Isfahan" and, most notably, the jazz classic “Take the 'A' Train," as well as others for which Ellington claimed partial credit ("Daydream," “Something to Live For") and ...

Album Review

John Di Martino: Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn

Read "Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 17, 2020

When esophageal cancer took Billy Strayhorn's life in 1967, his work and legacy rested squarely in the shadow of Duke Ellington's world. More than half a century later, though the two figures remain inextricably linked, Strayhorn's genius has moved past the penumbra of his legendary collaborator and employer, occupying its own clear place in the jazz firmament. Through biography and documentary film, his own lush life has been illuminated. And of equal importance, Strayhorn's compositions continue to bloom in others' ...

Album Review

Elio Villafranca: Cinque

Read "Cinque" reviewed by Maurizio Zerbo

by Maurizio Zerbo
May 21, 2019

Questo doppio CD è dedicato alla memoria di Joseph Cinque, che nel 1839 capeggiò la rivolta degli schiavi africani imbarcati sulla nave Amistad con destinazione Cuba e le sue piantagioni di zucchero. È un progetto ambizioso sulla diaspora africana in cui la narrazione vocale delle vicende storiche ben si combina ad un sontuoso apparato musicale, articolato in una suite di cinque movimenti. A fare da trait d'union, l'ancestrale retroterra ritmico della regione congolese, su cui vengono di volta in volta ...

Live Review

Lewis Nash and Steve Wilson at JazzNights

by David A. Orthmann
April 18, 2017

Lewis Nash and Steve Wilson Hockaday/Jones Barn JazzNights Hopewell, NJ April 9, 2017 Two tacit, entwined propositions animated a performance by Lewis Nash and Steve Wilson at JazzNights, a long running concert series in the Princeton, NJ area curated by Mary Wisnovsky and Maitland Jones. The first is that it's possible for the compositions of Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Billy Strayhorn, and Denzil Best to coexist in a ...

Live Review

The Nash Second Anniversary in Phoenix

by Patricia Myers
November 25, 2014

The Nash Second Anniversary The Nash/Private Home Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona October 31, November 1-2, 2014 There's something about the way Lewis Nash plays drums. No, there's everything about the way he plays drums--selectively, tastefully, underplaying vs. bombastic; in a word, elegantly. Nash's classy combination of swing and sophistication was abundantly evident during two weekend concerts with two NEA Jazz Masters, tenor/soprano saxophonist Jimmy Heath, 88, and pianist Barry Harris, 84. The legendary beboppers were ...

Extended Analysis

The Caribbean Tinge: Live from Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola

by Steve Bryant
July 29, 2014

Ever since the jazz was created in the clubs and dancehalls of New Orleans, there was always a significant influence from the Caribbean region, specifically from Cuba. The island, which was just a ferry ride from the port city, had such a significant effect on the development of the music that Jelly Roll Morton always spoke of the importance of Afro-Cuban based rhythms (the Spanish Tinge) in creating and performing this nascent music. However, it was the arrival of a ...

Album Review

Steve Wilson/Lewis Nash: Duologue

Read "Duologue" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 27, 2014

Saxophone and drum duos aren't as rare as some might believe, but a good percentage of such encounters are challenging, left-leaning affairs. John Coltrane's edgy encounters with Rashied Ali on Interstellar Space (Impulse!, 1974) emboldened many in the so-called avant-garde to marry these instruments time and again over the ensuing decades, yet few centrists seem as interested or willing to explore that territory. That's why a recording such as this, featuring man-for-all-seasons saxophonist Steve Wilson and paragon-of-class drummer Lewis Nash, ...