Jazz Articles about Ted Nash

Portrait in Seven Shades

by AAJ Staff
February 8, 2007

By Ted Nash“Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it. - Pablo Picasso About two years ago, Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, asked me to compose a long-form piece to be performed at some future date by the Jazz at Lincoln ...

Ted Nash and Still Evolved: In the Loop

by Brian P. Lonergan
October 24, 2006

Ted Nash and his Still Evolved quintet's thoroughly appealing In the Loop opens with a strong whiff of the early to mid-'60s Blue Note era, as if the wind which filled the sails of Maiden Voyage stirred again to nudge Nash's embarkation. The opening original “Kensington High, with its misty atmosphere of cymbals and snare rolls and its minor key modal feel, features an appropriately contemplative solo by pianist Frank Kimbrough and the first evidence of Nash's robust, firm and ...

Ted Nash & Still Evolved: In the Loop

by Jim Santella
October 3, 2006

Ted Nash's modern mainstream quintet creates impressions that let your mind run free. Like his band's eponymous Palmetto debut from 2003, In the Loop features the leader's compositions in a creative, emotional affair. Much of the program resembles the work that Nash does with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, mixing tradition and invention together in one adventurous melting pot.

Nash, 46, has a creative tenor style and enjoys the freedom that this format allows. There's ...

Ted Nash: In The Loop

by Troy Collins
August 24, 2006

For In The Loop, tenor saxophonist Ted Nash reconvened his mainstream quintet, last heard on Still Evolved (Palmetto, 2003). Trafficking in fresh interpretations of straight-ahead jazz, Nash's quintet may not be as conceptually unorthodox as his global jazz ensemble, Odeon, but his freewheeling aesthetic flourishes regardless of the setting.

Nash is no stranger to traditional forms of jazz, having spent his formative years playing with Lionel Hampton, Gerry Mulligan and Louie Bellson, among others. Currently a member of ...

Ben Allison: Medicine Wheel

by Troy Collins
May 4, 2006

Bassist Ben Allison was a virtual unknown when this album was originally released by Palmetto in 1998. After Seven Arrows (Koch, 1996), this was Allison's first major release. Combining conservatory training, ethnic/world music fusions, post-bop energy and free-jazz vigor, Allison and company were on the cusp of a new movement. Listening to this recording in retrospect reveals a blueprint for the new breed of jazz improviser. Medicine Wheel is a watershed moment in end of the century East Coast jazz.

Ted Nash: La Espada De La Noche

by Budd Kopman
September 14, 2005

The first thing you notice on “A Night in Tunisia, which opens the wonderful La Espada De La Noche, is the accordion, which is not the most heavily used instrument in jazz, to say the least. The next thing is Ted Nash's beautiful, soft, caressing sax sound, followed by the “full band, which excludes a bassist but includes Clark Gayton's tuba and Nathalie Bonin's “straight violin. The main theme is then treated as a tango mixed with a Eastern European ...

A Love Supreme and La Espada de la Noche

by Joel Roberts
June 5, 2005

For years, jazz artists have shied away from A Love Supreme, treating it as somehow too iconic, too hallowed or at least too uniquely tied to its composer to cover. Who would dare try to improve on the perfection the Coltrane quartet achieved on their legendary 1964 Impulse! recording? Wynton Marsalis, that's who. And it's a good thing. As one of the most important, popular and magnificently realized works in the jazz pantheon, A Love Supreme deserves its place in ...