Jazz Articles about Quinsin Nachoff

About Quinsin Nachoff

Album Review

Quinsin Nachoff's Flux: Path of Totality

Read "Path of Totality" reviewed by Vincenzo Roggero

by Vincenzo Roggero
October 7, 2019

Quinsin Nachoff, sassofonista e compositore, è nome sostanzialmente sconosciuto dalle nostre parti. Nativo di Toronto, Canada, da anni risiede a New York dove è diventato in breve tempo protagonista apprezzato e trasversale di quella scena, con interessanti lavori sia nell'ambito del jazz che della musica classica. Altra qualità del nostro è quella di saper scegliere musicisti con i fiocchi nell'allestire i numerosi ensemble con i quali veicola le sue differenti declinazioni musicali. Basta scorrerne i nomi per accorgersi che molti ...

Album Review

Quinsin Nachoff's Flux: Path Of Totality

Read "Path Of Totality" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
March 20, 2019

Quinsin Nachoff is a saxophonist and composer who draws inspiration from the world around him. The 2017 solar eclipse, the 2016 American presidential election, Kenny Wheeler and John Cage all figured in the creation of the music on Path Of Totality, an ambitious program combining jazz, classical music and prog rock. It is performed by his group Flux, an impressive collection of forward-thinking musicians, Nachoff and David Binney on saxophone, Matt Mitchell on all manner of keyboards and both Kenny ...

Album Review

Quinsin Nachoff’s Flux: Path of Totality

Read "Path of Totality" reviewed by S.G Provizer

by S.G Provizer
March 15, 2019

Composer/musician/producer Quinsin Nachoff, the force behind Path of Totality, is interested in and is at least somewhat conversant with physics and other things celestial. The 'Totality' he refers to in the title is that period of complete darkness, which is achieved during a complete solar eclipse. Of course, using themes is fairly common in jazz releases (The Moon, Springtime, Cole Porter, etc.) and it's always folly to overdraw metaphors drawn from science (or, for that matter, from another art form). ...

Album Review

Quinsin Nachoff's Flux: Path Of Totality

Read "Path Of Totality" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
January 24, 2019

The title of Quinsin Nachoff's ambitious double album refers to the August 2017 lunar eclipse, when the moon passed in front of the sun and cast a shadow known as the “path of totality." This event also gave rise to a twin-headed metaphor reflecting both his band's creative evolutionary process and the current political and environmental discord in which (hopefully) light will triumph over darkness. Nachoff's approach is to employ his quartet as a nucleus for the album but also ...

Radio & Podcasts

Quinsin Nachoff’s Flux & Hot Heros

by Maurice Hogue
December 12, 2018

A pair of albums from Northern European artists demonstrate a similar approach in this episode--improvising upon the folk melodies of their countries--Poland's Irek Wojtczak and his Folk Five and Finland's Hot Heros. For Wojtczak, he's just happy to see his recording available: the radio station that was recording the live concert lost the tapes, but fortunately, like a lot of other musicians, he recorded the shows himself. Hot Heros is a trio with connections to another prominent Finnish band: Black ...

Album Review

Andrew Rathbun Large Ensemble: Atwood Suites

Read "Atwood Suites" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
September 16, 2018

Andrew Rathbun is a Canadian saxophonist who has made a major musical statement here with this collection of suites, two of which are based on the poetry of author Margaret Atwood. Rathbun's writing shows the influence of another Canadian, Kenny Wheeler, in its lush sonority, the frequent gorgeous flugelhorn solos by Tim Hagans and the role of Luciana Souza, who both sings Atwood's poetry with gentle forcefulness and moans wordlessly within the orchestral ensembles, the same way Wheeler often utilized ...

Album Review

Andrew Rathbun: Atwood Suites

Read "Atwood Suites" reviewed by Paul Rauch

by Paul Rauch
September 6, 2018

The mingling of jazz music and poetry is not a new concept. It has always been an amiable, yet at times, uncomfortable fit. From a verse standpoint, it is in many ways liberating. While most vocalized lyrics and spoken word forms rely on rhyme to speak to cadence and rhythm, free verse poetry liberates the narrative from the confinements of structure, and much like an improvising instrumentalist, takes spoken language into a intertwining duality with the melody within harmonic dimension. ...