Jazz Articles about Nathan Eklund

Nathan Eklund: Trip to the Casbah

by David Adler
July 11, 2009

Trumpeter Nathan Eklund's first two CDs as a leader, The View from Afar and The Crooked Line, both featured pianist Joe Elefante as the harmonic anchor. Eklund's newest, Trip to the Casbah, finds guitarist John Hart playing that role, giving the music a bit more of an economical, riff-oriented flavor. The all-original program also includes Donny McCaslin on tenor, Bill Moring on bass and Tim Horner on drums, powerhouses all. The front and inside cover art shows Eklund with flugelhorn ...

Nathan Eklund: Trip To The Casbah

by Jerry D'Souza
May 10, 2009

Nathan Eklund is based in New York City, where he leads two bands: the Nathan Eklund Group and the Nathan Eklund Quintet. This gives him the leeway to cast his music in different streams and to interpret it in the manner that suits his compositions. Eklund has also been part of projects by Craig Yaremko, Eddie Daniels, Richie Cole, Joe Lovano, and Kermit Driscoll. This involvement calls for an approach that sits in with the wide ranging styles of the ...

Nathan Eklund: Trip to the Casbah

by Woodrow Wilkins
March 27, 2009

With Trip to the Casbah, his third release as a leader, Nathan Eklund is firmly establishing himself as one of today's prominent trumpet and flugelhorn players. A fixture on the New York jazz scene, Eklund has earned credentials as both a student and an instructor, with associations including Joe Lovano, Craig Yaremko's Sync, Richie Cole, Gerald Veasley and Chuck Loeb, and a guest appearance on Spyro Gyra's Grammy-nominated Wrapped in a Dream (Heads Up, 2006). Joining him ...

Nathan Eklund Group: The Crooked Line

by Michael P. Gladstone
March 3, 2008

Trumpeterr/flugelhornist Nathan Eklund's The Crooked Line offers a pretty good measure of his quintet's capabilities. Anyone hearing much of this album, without any prior identification, would likely tab this to be straight out of the hallowed Blue Note era of the early-to-mid 1960s.

The title track is an attractive post-bop vehicle; the jaunty trumpet melody and solo insinuating the memories of Lee Morgan, Kenny Dorham and Johnny Coles. Joe Elefante's florid piano solo is right in ...

Nathan Eklund Group: The Crooked Line

by Woodrow Wilkins
January 22, 2008

Nathan Eklund may only have been recording as a bandleader for a few years, but he already belongs in the class of such artists as Randy Brecker, Rick Braun and, perhaps, the greats he counts among his inspirations. Born near Seattle, Washington, Eklund began playing trumpet at age eleven, and later added the flugelhorn. Interested in the music of jazz legends Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, Eklund studied classical trumpet at Central Washington University. After ...

Nathan Eklund Group: The Crooked Line

by Troy Collins
December 10, 2007

The Crooked Line is New York based trumpeter Nathan Eklund's vibrant sophomore effort, following his 2006 debut, The View From Afar (Jazz Excursion Records). Joined by his erstwhile quintet, Eklund and company ply a subtly adventurous program of mainstream post-bop.

Joined by saxophonist Craig Yaremko, pianist Joe Elefante, bassist Brian Killeen and drummer Josh Dion, Eklund and company are typical of many young conservatory trained jazz musicians; technically proficient and highly accomplished, yet still finding their own voices ...

Nathan Eklund Group: The Crooked Line

by Edward Zucker
February 14, 2007

The Crooked Line, Nathan Eklund's sophomore release, reveals a musician on an upward trajectory. Eklund arranged the ten tunes on the CD and composed all of them except Bjork's “Isobel, “All The Things You Are and Lee Morgan's “Totem Pole. The original compositions are the most striking and display a subtle complexity as they traverse the terrain of hard bop and beyond. It is too early in Eklund's career to make comparisons to others, but he is a composer to ...