[TR24][OF] Quinsin Nachoff’s Flux (ft. David Binney, Matt Mitchell, Kenny Wollesen and Nate Wood) - Path Of Totality - 2019 (Contemporary Jazz, Modern Creative)

Quinsin Nachoff: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone
David Binney: alto saxophone, C melody saxophone
Matt Mitchell: piano, Prophet 6, modular synthesizer, Novachord, harpsichord, Estey pump harmonium
Kenny Wollesen: drums, Wollesonic percussion (#1, #3, #4, #6)
Nate Wood: drums (#1, #2, #5, #6)
On Bounce:
Jason Barnsley - 1924 Kimball Theatre Organ
On Toy Piano Meditation:
Mark Duggan - marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, crotales, Tibetan singing bowls
On March Macabre:
Carl Maraghi - baritone saxophone, bass clarinet
Dan Urness, Matt Holman: trumpets
Ryan Keberle: trombones
Alan Ferber: trombone, bass trombone
Orlando Hernández: tap dance
On Splatter:
David Travers-Smith - Buchla 200E analog modular system, EMS Synthi 100 analog/digital hybrid synthesizer, Arp Chroma (Rhodes) analog synthesizer, clavioline, Oberheim SEM, modular Moog

The title of Quinsin Nachoff's ambitious double album refers to the August 2017 lunar eclipse, when the moon passed in front of the sun and cast a shadow known as the "path of totality." This event also gave rise to a twin-headed metaphor reflecting both his band's creative evolutionary process and the current political and environmental discord in which (hopefully) light will triumph over darkness. Nachoff's approach is to employ his quartet as a nucleus for the album but also to deploy additional musicians on various tracks.
Unpacking this double CD suite yields a mass of complex music that requires and demands multiple replays, the better to understand and appreciate the extent of its many nuances. The opening title track, for example, is swathed in a spiralling head that leads into solo passages. But this is just an hors d'oeuvres for the entrée which is divided into several layers. At nearly twenty minutes, "Bounce" is festooned with surprises including breathtakingly fleet saxophone solos. There's also a poignant section towards the conclusion of the number where Jason Barnsley performs, on a Kimball Theatre organ, a requiem for two of Nachoff's late-lamented heroes, Kenny Wheeler and John Taylor. Another twenty minute track is the sultry, swirling "Toy Piano Meditation" on which Matt Mitchell's lengthy piano introduction is eventually joined by saxophone and Mark Duggan's subtle and varied percussion. "March Macabre," beginning with melodramatic sounds of marching feet, is instantly engaging and continues to hold the listener's attention with its unequivocally eccentric approach. For example, Mitchell's solo on harmonium is extraordinary in its vivacity. Likewise, Orlando Hernández's (literally) show-stopping tap-dancing contribution. By contrast, the ensemble horn sections are gripping in their fluidity. On "Splatter," both Nachoff and David Binney evince tumultuous saxophone solos which vie with Nate Wood's drums and Mitchell's synthesizer gurgles.
What the prospective listener to Path Of Totality should be aware of is that Nachoff's music crosses a boundary between contemporary classical and jazz, deliberately fusing the two genres as one. So the music isn't to any degree "easy listening" nor is it meant to be. This is challenging music but not to the extent that it is totally free, but neither is it rigidly scored. The balance indeed seems optimal. It is an imaginative and ground breaking suite of compositions. However, and as stated above, the listener should be prepared to invest a great deal of time in assessing it, the better to properly assimilate this gargantuan work because it certainly merits it.

Quinsin Nachoff’s Flux communicates an extraordinarily colorful palette of conceptual reasoning and musical expression in the effulgent new release, Path of Totality. Working with saxophonist David Binney, pianist/keyboardist Matt Mitchell, drummers Kenny Wollesen and Nate Wood, plus a clutch of guest artists, saxophonist/composer Nachoff’s overarching inspiration arose from the moon’s total eclipse of the sun in 2017. That event became a dramatic, natural metaphor for the band’s evolutionary creative process, plus a reminder (especially amidst current political and environmental discord) of light’s assured emanation from and triumph over transitory darkness.
The Toronto-born, New York-based saxophonist devises this project’s music as metamorphic narratives, hence the breadth of these six mainly larger-scale works. “I’ve been focusing, back and forth, on the jazz and classical worlds, especially over the last five years”, he explains. “I was featured in the première of my saxophone concerto at the 2017 Vancouver International Jazz Festival, so my thinking has taken on a larger scope, which allows more time for compositional development and the weaving-in of improvisational aspects.”
Nachoff’s acoustic-based compositions each begin from a clear-cut kernel of an idea, with their own set of parameters, which are then developed into stories of differing landscapes, all crafted from the ground up for these specific players to interpret and improvise across. Underlying this cerebral artistry is his fascination with mathematical and scientific disciplines, as well as the formative experiences of a family upbringing which exposed him, first hand, to an array of 20th century electronic, avant-garde and minimalist music. Experimentalism is further bolstered by distinctive sonorities from the vast, living archive of keyboards and synthesizers at Canada’s National Music Centre (Nachoff was amongst its first artists in residence) and Kenny Wollesen’s ‘Wollesonics’, the drummer’s assemblage of unconventional, self-invented percussion instruments.
A progressive yet cyclical impetus in giant-stepping title track ‘Path of Totality’ is explored through thunderous, phased double-drum patterns and far-reaching saxophone figures; and ‘Bounce’ takes motivic ideas and rhythmic structures from a bouncing ball’s motion (studied through mathematical programmes), manipulating them to create elasticized environments, the two saxophonists’ extemporizations eventually narrowing against the full swell of a 1924 Kimball Theatre Organ.
Otherworldly ‘Toy Piano Meditation’, influenced by John Cage’s ‘Toy Piano Suite’ of 1948, transforms five-note melodies over time; and its slow, Gamelan-hued growth reflects Cage’s interest in Eastern philosophy and obsession with mushrooms. Here, Nachoff describes David Binney’s transcendental coda/cadenza as “one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard.” Kenny Wollesen’s totalitarian-suggestive ‘march machine’ threads through ‘March Macabre’, an ominous, big-band-scored political commentary of unrest and disarray, its regimented angst finally broken by the freedom of Orlando Hernández’s intricate tap dance.
Harpsichord and Novachord pointillism, coupled with gurgling modular synth and mesmerizing drumming, underpin Nachoff’s and Binney’s dazzling saxophone extemporizations in ferocious ‘Splatter’; and portraying intersecting planetary pathways, the double drums and saxes of ‘Orbital Resonances’ vociferously rotate around Matt Mitchell’s central piano focus towards a tumultuous crescendo.
As you immerse yourself in its narrative, on whatever level you connect with its story, Path of Totality's artistic journey continues to intrigue, fascinate and enthrall.