Seulah Noh

Seulah Noh Jazz Orchestra: NOhMAD

by Jack Bowers
December 10, 2023

On her debut album, NohMAD, South Korea-born, New England-educated Seulah Noh is listed as composer, arranger and conductor. She could be described as “painter" too, as she uses her seventeen-piece orchestra (enlarged to twenty-one by strings on three numbers) as a palette on which to render sophisticated--and sometimes daring--portraits in sound that are generally progessive but seldom boring. Several impart an East Asian flavor, especially the three-movement Traveler's Suite, which presumably depicts Noh's long journey from Korea ...