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Nick DePinna

San Francisco bay area native turned Los Angeles resident and enthusiast, composer and trombonist Nick DePinna studied music composition at UCLA, completing his M.A. in 2010. During his time at UCLA, his mentors included James W. Newton, Paul Chihara, David Lefkowitz, and Kenny Burrell among others.

As a composer of concert, film, and commercial music, his output is wildly diverse. His creative concert works and large ensemble arrangements are performed with increasing regularity by various professional ensembles and universities across the nation, while at the same time his music for visual media can be heard frequently on such networks as ABC, FOX, HBO, National Geographic WILD, VH-1, and CMT. When not composing music of his own, he arranges and orchestrates for an increasing number of hollywood composers.

Also a versatile trombonist, Nick has performed, toured, and/or recorded with a large variety of groups, including Kenny Burrell’s Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra Unlimited, the Brian Setzer Orchestra, the Billy Vaughn Orchestra, the Jon Jangtet, the John Daversa Big Band, the Tom Kubis Big Band, the Mike Barone Big Band, the Roger Neumann Rather Large Band, the Long Beach Opera, the Pasadena Pops, and co-leads his own jazz orchestra, “Jazz Nexus.” He has also recorded and performed with the likes of Dee Dee Bridgewater, Bobby Caldwell, Dream Theater, Paloma Faith, Herbie Hancock, Hubert Laws, Jerry Lee Lewis, Kenny Loggins, M83, Bobby Rodriguez, Dianne Schuur, Wayne Shorter, Moses Sumney, The Temptations, and Gerald Wilson.

Nick is a co-founder of “L.A. Signal Lab,” a new-music collective focused on the intersection of notated and improvised music. He is also a co-founder and director of the culinary concert series, “Sensus.”

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Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf's Assembly of Shadows: Assembly of Shadows

Read "Assembly of Shadows" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Dopo aver debuttato in veste di leader nel 2019 con il ricercato album Light as a World (un sestetto con, tra gli altri, Aaron Parks e Walter Smith III) il 33enne sassofonista e compositore d'origini californiane, presenta un ambizioso progetto orchestrale comprendente la suite “Assembly of Shadows," un'altra sua composizione ("Strata") e una riscrittura di “Honeymooners" di Ornette Coleman. Prima di questi lavori ha condiviso la leadership del gruppo Le Boeuf Brothers col suo gemello Pascal. La ...

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Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf: Assembly Of Shadows

Read "Assembly Of Shadows" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


With his second date as a leader, multi-woodwind artist Remy Le Boeuf performs these largely self-penned comps with an orchestra, featuring notable musicians Anna Webber (woodwinds), Alex Goodman (guitar) and other jazz VIPs. Here, the leader's composing acuity brims with multicolored hues and harmonious arrangements, largely executed with a composite of modern jazz and classical inferences via gradual buildups, brash outbreaks and complex unison choruses that occasionally mimic single note bop lines. Sure enough, this young visionary's unflagging creative spirit ...

5
Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf: Assembly Of Shadows

Read "Assembly Of Shadows" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Remy Le Boeuf's Assembly Of Shadows, an ambitious jazz orchestra recording, opens with his original composition, the cinematic “Strata," followed by a majestic take on alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman's “Honeymooners," a tune from the free jazz pioneer's Virgin Beauty (Portrait Records, 1988). These sounds--collectively clocking in at fifteen and a half minutes--set the stage for the five-part “Assembly Of Shadows Suite." Saxophonist Le Bouef considered the voices in his orchestra for the purposes of highlighting the individual musical personalities, a ...

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Album Review

Nick DePinna: Nexus Music Vol. 1

Read "Nexus Music Vol. 1" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Los Angeles-based composer-trombonist Nick DePinna dips his toes warily into the big-band pond on Nexus Music Vol. 1, a concise yet largely impressive glimpse at contemporary motifs from a large-group perspective. The album encompasses only three songs whose total playing time is a brief twenty minutes, about one-quarter the maximum length of a Compact Disc. So much for duration, what about content? In that respect, the news is essentially quite good. DePinna is a splendid writer and arranger ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Nexus Music Vol. 1

Orenda Records
2019

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Assembly of Shadows

Soundspore Records
2019

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