Neither Toronto nor New York, the two cities that Quinsin
Nachoff calls home, offered prime viewing conditions as the moon eclipsed the
sun in August of 2017. But Nachoff, who has long drawn inspiration from the
scientific wonders of the universe, couldn't help but be moved by this rare
astronomical phenomenon - and to find a degree of solace in it. After all, here
was a shadow large enough to blot out the face of the sun, darkening the Earth
and then moving on. In the Path of Totality could be found hope that this, too
- whatever "this" might be in the moment, whether political, personal
or environmental - will indeed pass.
That faith in change is at the heart of Flux, the name that
Nachoff has bestowed upon his remarkable group, which returns on February 8,
2019 with its second release, Path of Totality, via Whirlwind Recordings. Flux
is an ensemble, and Nachoff a composer, that thrive in the spaces in between
genres, styles and inspirations. At its foundation Flux is a quartet, though at
times on this album a quintet and sometimes more, employing a vast array of
instruments and a vivid palette of musical colors to create something that is
consistently surprising as its shape morphs from moment to moment over the
course of these six epic-length pieces.
In saxophonist David Binney, Nachoff has a frontline partner
with a keen-edged tone and a refined ear for texture, having integrated
electronics into his own work as an artist and a producer that expand and
mutate his sonic environments. Matt Mitchell is a rigorous boundary pusher, a
pianist and composer who astutely avoids obvious choices in favor of pressing
fervidly into the unexplored. Kenny Wollesen couples a similarly adventurous
instinct with a passion for the playful, as reflected not only in the eccentric
arsenal of invented instruments known as "Wollesonics" but in the
buoyant swing he maintains even in his most complex and abstract rhythmic
excursions. The new addition this time out is Nate Wood, who alternates and at
times shares the drum chair with Wollesen, lending the band an urgency and
avant-rock propulsion familiar from his work with Kneebody.
While that combination of voices would offer a wealth of
possibility for any composer, Nachoff was handed an even larger palette by
Canada's National Music Centre, a non-profit organization dedicated to
promoting Canadian music through exhibitions, performances and educational
programs. As one of the NMC's first Artists-in-Residence, Nachoff was granted
access to the Centre's extensive keyboard collection, an enormous resource of
both acoustic and electronic instruments.
"They really want this to be a living collection,"
Nachoff says. "So I spent three weeks at the NMC exploring the keyboards
and synthesizers in their new, state-of-the-art building, then another two
weeks writing during an artists' residency in Banff."
Raised in a household where electronic music was not only
heard but composed, Nachoff has long been spurred to follow his own, more
acoustic path, but the NMC's collection proved too tempting to resist. Both
Mitchell and producer David Travers-Smith have a field day with the array of
instruments, particularly on the stunningly pointillistic "Splatter,"
recorded at the NMC. Beginning with Mitchell's Baroque-by-way-of-Sun-Ra solo
harpsichord improvisation, the tune progresses through a cosmic haze carved by
jagged rhythms before the erratic horn melody intrudes, gradually building in
density before breaking apart into stark fragments.
In a sense that arc could be seen as the portrait of the
universe in miniature, though a model of the stellar regions was more directly
a source for "Orbital Resonances," the album's closing track. Based
on the intersecting pathways of orbiting bodies in space, the tune places the
members of Flux into interrelated motion, crafting a piece from the accumulated
sound of singular identities. Nachoff is an artist that takes the idea of
"experimentation" quite literally. He's taken his interest in science
beyond simple inspiration, working directly with Dr. Stephen Morris, a
physicist at the University of Toronto, to translate experimental data into
musical form.
One early result is "Bounce," whose percussive
outbursts and heady call-and-response are built on the mathematical model of a
bouncing ball. The conceptual is ultimately subsumed by the poignant, however,
as the massive swell of a 1924 Kimball Theatre Organ from the NMC collection
overwhelms the piece, turning into a requiem for a pair of recently lost
influences, Kenny Wheeler and John Taylor - the latter of whom Nachoff was
honored to record with on the 2007 release Horizons Ensemble. Another
compositional inspiration, John Cage, provided the spark for "Toy Piano
Meditation," which takes the late pioneer's "Suite for Toy
Piano" as a starting point and fuses Cage-ian ideas with the entrancing
melodic/percussive turns of Balinese gamelan.
Of course, no album that names itself for a momentary
darkness shrouding the planet can help but comment on our current political
reality, and "March Macabre" does just that, with a healthy dose of
bleak humor. Wollesen's "march machine," a wooden board outfitted
with a row of clomping clogs, provides the marching beat that opens the piece
on a totalitarian note. By the end, through the blissful improvisation of tap
dancer Orlando Hernández, the lockstep has been broken and individual freedom
restored.
"We went on tour for the first Flux record the day
after Trump got elected and I was concurrently going through the process of
becoming a US citizen," Nachoff recalls. "We were all in shock. We
didn't know what to think, what to say to people. 'March macabre' was the first
piece I wrote after that, and the Russia scandal inspired me to tie in elements
from Shostakovich or Prokofiev -- composers who worked under a strict
authoritarian structure but were still able to overcome this and make really
interesting music."
NYC-based saxophonist and composer Quinsin Nachoff has
earned a reputation for making "pure, bracing, thought-provoking
music" that is "cliché-and convention-free" (Ottawa Citizen).
Since moving from his native Toronto to New York City, Nachoff has made a habit
of freely crossing borders: his music moves fluidly between the jazz and
classical worlds and manages to be soul-stirring at the same time that it is
intricately cerebral. His passions reach into both the arts and the sciences,
with concepts from physics or astronomy sparking inspiration for exhilarating
compositions. As a saxophonist, Nachoff's playing has been described as "a
revelationŠ [p]arsing shimmers of Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter and Mark
Turner" (DownBeat). He was a semifinalist in the renowned Thelonious Monk
Jazz Saxophone Competition and has been nominated for numerous Canadian
National Jazz Awards. His diverse ensembles include Flux, the Ethereal Trio,
Horizons Ensemble and FoMo quartet as well as the Pyramid Project.
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