Jazz Articles about Nick Fraser

About Nick Fraser

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As Farahser, Torontonians John Kameel Farah, a classically trained pianist, and drummer/producer Nick Fraser roam the frontier where improvised and notated music meet. It is well traveled territory these days, but on their eponymous release these sonic explorers find a borderland between memory and legend, imagination and investigation. Echoes of the Palestine of Farah's ancestors ripple through his spare, often interrupted modal melodies like the faded details of an antique photograph. Fraser's rustles and shivers emerge and recede with the ...

Album Review

John Kameel Farah & Nick Fraser: Farahser

Read "Farahser" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
June 28, 2024

On their entrancing debut duo outing Farahser-- Toronto/Berlin-based keyboardist and composer John Kameel Farah and eminent Toronto area drummer Nick Fraser--engage in a thrillingly unpredictable and genre-defying musical conversation. Drawing upon their respective backgrounds in classical, jazz, and experimental music, Farah and Fraser craft a series of spontaneous compositions which distort the lines between structure and improvisation due to acoustic and electronic textures, cerebral complexity and visceral emotion. The duo has constructed a work of striking ...

Album Review

Dan Pitt Trio: Stages

Read "Stages" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 29, 2023

Shades of Link Ray's “Rumble," from 1958. Shades of Dick Dale's 1963 hit “Miserlou." Shades of every guitar/bass/drum band that has ever set up in someone's garage in an attempt to work on their hard rock and roll chops, trying to become the next heavy metal band to hit the charts. Canadian guitarist Dan Pitt rolls with the guitar trio format on his Stages, though his trio is a good deal more intricate and musically skilled than the ...

Album Review

Lina Allemano Four: Pipe Dream

Read "Pipe Dream" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
April 21, 2023

Recorded in the winter of 2021 during the heart of the COVID pandemic, it is understandable that Pipe Dream, the latest offering from the Lina Allemano Four, has an air of ominous foreboding. Indeed, much of the album is devoted to the “Plague Diaries," a suite inspired by some of the darker themes of that period (with song titles like “Hunger and Murder" and “Doom and Doomer" giving an indication of what is in store). But like all of Allemano's ...

Album Review

The Brodie West Quintet: Meadow Of Dreams

Read "Meadow Of Dreams" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
February 25, 2022

It may or may not be because of a recent series of programmes about Impressionist art on British television, combined with a passing knowledge of intoxicants, but for some reason the album title Meadow Of Dreams suggests one of Claude Monet's paintings of a field of poppies. As it happens, Monet's poppy paintings are a good fit for Toronto-based alto saxophonist Brodie West's sophomore album with his acoustic quintet. The music is beautiful, sunny, uncorrupted—and a million ...

Radio & Podcasts

Nick Fraser Quintet, Paula Shocron & Jörg Schippa

by Maurice Hogue
October 6, 2021

Toronto's noted drummer, Nick Fraser, kindly shared a preview track from If There Were No Opposites back in June as part of the 1200th show, and now the full album is ready to go, released by the much-respected Hat Hut label. Nick's got his usual crew of Tony Malaby, Rob Clutton and Andrew Downing, and the music they make is original and worthwhile. Other new releases opened for the first time include Chicago cellist Ishmael Ali, German guitarist Joerg Schippa ...

Album Review

ITACA: Vortex

Read "Vortex" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
May 10, 2021

Il quartetto ITACA, protagonista di questa diciassettesima uscita di nusica.org, deve il proprio nome all'incontro dei due paesi d'origine dei suoi componenti. La sua denominazione è infatti l'acronimo di Italia --da cui provengono Nicola Fazzini e Alessandro Fedrigo, le due anime di nusica.org -e Canada--paese degli altri due musicisti, il clarinettista Francois Houle e il batterista Nick Fraser. È in Italia che la formazione ha preso vita, grazie a due residenze del 2016 a Novara Jazz e a ...