Here’s a fascinating orchestral suite composed by Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra member Ted Nash, offering seven impressionistic movements, each related to the work of a renowned modern painter who came to prominence during the first century of jazz. It’s an attractive concept, with a couple of potential pitfalls for those coming to the project unawares. First, this is probably more through-composed and thus less improvisational than many Jazz at Lincoln Center-affiliated programs. Second, the painters are famous enough to already evoke concrete expectations from listeners, who might be chagrined to discover Nash has a different musical interpretation of those iconic canvases.

For instance: despite Nash’s best intentions, “Pollock” is not as cacophonous and “abstract expressionist” as one might assume, and the inevitable cubist connection you expect him to draw in “Picasso” has to do with stacking the trombone chords in fourths (as in four sides to a cube) and having places where the music is based on the interval of the fourth, rather than the kind of angular “cubist” refractions you hear in Monk’s music. Again, preconceptions are the bugaboo here: Being open-minded will help bridge the gaps, as will a visit to Nash’s superb and informative liner notes (click… read more »