“I suggest starting with ‘October’ and ‘Sun-Day.’ It’s here you’ll find the best of Nachoff’s esthetic: greys, beiges, btowns, deep, earth-bound colors that set off his exquisite, forlorn tenor. If he sometimes overwrites, he also creates stuff that breathes magnificently….And it takes real moxy to go out, as ‘Sun-Day’ does, in the great, keening gusts of a tenor-drum duo.” – Greg Buium, DownBeat
New York based Quinsin Nachoff’s Magic Numbers combines the sax trio tradition of freewheeling improvisation and the discipline of a classical string quartet into an original aesthetic. Most of the music was composed before 2000, when Nachoff met and played with drummer Jim Black at the Banff Centre and decided Black’s textures and grooves would be perfect for the music. That’s when he also met Montreal-based classical/jazz/world/pop violinist Nathalie Bonin.
In 2005 he invited Black and bassist Mark Helias to Toronto to perform and record the music. Bonin chose the other string players from among Montreal’s young classical elite. With Helias acting as the bridge between the classical and improvisational worlds, Bonin sometimes improvising too (e.g. “Branches”), and Black often laying down a rockish 8th note beat, the music took on its definitive shape and emotional charge, with some great solos (e.g. Black’s in “Sun-Day” as well as Helias’s solo with the strings). Nachoff’s saxophone inhabits the music’s melodic and harmonic heart, his singing lines demonstrating the expressive range, fluency and cohesion of a mature, thoughtful improviser. The arrangements are often complex, the strings elegantly weaving together the music’s forms and textures in sometimes unexpected ways.
As Quinsin writes in the liner notes, he was seeking a diplomatic blend of musical genres and styles which would nevertheless maintain the essence of melody and beauty. “I grew up listening to a lot of 20th century composers because my parents were really into that, starting with Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, going up to Stockhausen, Xenakis…I tried to cover quite a spectrum, sometimes within a piece and certainly across the album as a whole. The ballad ‘October’ is a really meditative, melancholy and austere tune. ‘Branches’ is frenetic. ‘To Solar Piazza’ tries to capture the angst and intensity of Astor Piazzolla’s music. ‘Circles & Waves’ is aiming for a fresh sort of romanticism along the lines of Kenny Wheeler and Maria Schneider. ‘Postmodern’ is crazier and more playful, little snippets of Mozart moments, free improv, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and rock all juxtaposed or squished together. ‘Whorls’ is much more serious, inspired by Berg and Schoenberg.”
Quinsin Nachoff, tenor & soprano saxophone, compositions
Mark Helias, bass
Jim Black, drums
Nathalie Bonin, Noémi Racine Gaudreault, violins
Jean René, viola
Julie Trudeau, cello
Tracklist
Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.Total time: 01:09:16
Additional information
| Label | |
|---|---|
| SKU | SGLSA15562 |
| Qualities | DSD 512 fs, DSD 256 fs, DSD 128 fs, DSD 64 fs, DXD 24 Bit, FLAC 192 kHz, FLAC 96 kHz |
| Channels | |
| Artists | |
| Composers | |
| Genres | |
| Instruments | Bass, Tenor Saxophone, Cello, Drums, Soprano saxophone, Viola, Violin |
| Original Recording Format | |
| Release Date | July 26, 2024 |
Press reviews
AllAboutJazz
… Nachoff’s compositions are lush but labyrinthine. Interwoven string parts commingle with a rhythm section of astonishing dexterity for a dynamic session that veers from hushed whispers to an almost rock-like intensity. …
No longer invoking the saccharine compromise of crossover accessibility, improvising jazz units augmented with strings are leading the forefront of new music collaboration. Quinsin Nachoff may be a relative unknown, but Magic Numbers should change all that.
The Squid’s Ear
Quinsin Nachoff’s disc on Songlines is a strangely striped cat. It has classical music claws with its string quartet of improvising musicians, but with the groovy padded feet of the drums and bass duo of Mark Helias and Jim Black, a pair of killer rhythmists. The combination of jazz trio (Nachoff, saxophone, Helias, bass and Black, drums) with string quartet (Nathalie Bonin and Noémi Racine Gaudreault, violin; Jean René, viola; and Julie Trudeau, cello) makes for a very appealing cocktail, that goes down like a daiquiri, very subtle and elegant, but intoxicating nonetheless. Nachoff’s soprano musings are earnest and whimsical, but I prefer the tenor, which he can play with a wider-ranging expressivity. The strings sound great; no surprise, since these are some of the best of the crossover musicians in Québec. The voicings for the violins, viola and cello are creative and fresh, with mannerisms from “classical” quartet writing seamlessly integrated into a more jazz-oriented context (i.e. rhythmically plastic and blues-informed). Some tunes, sound like re-workings of standard jazz repertoire-e.g. “October” sounds like “‘Round Midnight.” “How Postmodern of Me” is, to these ears, the strongest cut, with its frenetic yet spot-on cross-cutting between grooves, styles, meters, tempi and textures. Most of the disc is, on first hearing, rather startling, with the confluence of dry string textures, the keening saxophone and the urban beats and bass, but this is music that starts from very polished and controlled composition but, happily, does not end there and develops via some risk-taking, yet beautiful playing.
AllMusic
Look carefully at the album title and the instrumental lineup (sax, bass, drums plus string quartet), and consider yourself forewarned: saxophonist and composer Quinsin Nachoff is not writing straight-ahead jazz. Nor, thankfully, is he ginning up pseudo-intellectual third stream bloviation. Instead, he’s working a complex but compelling fusion of harmonically complex, densely arranged music that manages to combine all the best energy of funk and hard bop with all the sophistication and intellectual incisiveness of modern classical music. When it works, the effect is electric: the combination of funky drumming, cool strings, and restrained sax blowing on “There & Back” is nothing short of brilliant, and “October” is one of the loveliest and most affecting modern jazz ballads in years. When it doesn’t work so well, it sounds like Nachoff is playing more to his colleagues than to his listeners: “Circles & Waves,” though aptly titled, comes across as unnecessarily smart-aleck, and the 13-minute-long “Sun-Day” never really gets interesting at all. But at all points on the album, Nachoff’s ability to write engagingly and insightfully for strings is jaw-droppingly impressive, and his overall achievement on this album is equally so. Recommended.
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