We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Spinning Songs of Herbie Nichols

by Simon Nabatov solo

supported by
Jacob Cartwright
Jacob Cartwright thumbnail
phanthom
phanthom thumbnail
Michael Rosenstein
Michael Rosenstein thumbnail
st1n
st1n thumbnail
Jeff Schornack
Jeff Schornack thumbnail
Jochen Fleeth
Jochen Fleeth thumbnail
James Lunt
James Lunt thumbnail
tutankhamen
tutankhamen thumbnail
bandcampdom28
bandcampdom28 thumbnail
Robert Bresnan
Robert Bresnan thumbnail
/
1.
2300 Skiddoo 09:02
buy track
2.
The Spinning Song 13:12
buy track
3.
Blue Chopsticks 06:04
buy track
4.
Lady Sings The Blues 09:45
buy track
5.
Sunday Stroll 08:40
buy track
6.
The Third World 08:03
buy track
7.
Terpsichore 07:14
buy track
8.
Twelve Bars 02:15
buy track

about

John Litweiler wrote in Moment's Notice June 2012:

If you love the composing and piano interpretations of the great Herbie Nichols, you eagerly check out each new collection of his music for more insight into his music. Nichols, with his odd changes and long choruses, was a late-blooming heir to theatrical types like Ellington, Waller, and James P. Johnson in projecting feelings, scenes, and personalities. Songs like “Terpsichore,” “The Spinning Song,” and “2300 Skidoo” are themselves dramas – Nichols did not compose bookends to bop blowing sessions. Oddly enough, two guitarists who recorded his Blue Note songs, Eric T. Johnson and Duck Baker, sound most sympathetic, while other tribute CDs reveal far more about (mostly lyric) artists like Roswell Rudd, Steve Lacy, The Herbie Nichols Project, the ICP Orchestra, and their friends than they reveal about dramatic artist Nichols. So it’s especially appealing that pianist Simon Nabatov’s sweeping inventions capture some of the essence of Nichols, fleetingly in the way some passages evolve, and mostly in the grand drama of these solos.
In fact, in a two-minute track Nabatov plays “Twelve Bars,” which Nichols never got to record, mostly just as Nichols himself must have interpreted it: as a stride piece with Nichols-like altered harmonies and decorations. The other seven tracks are much longer and they include Nichols-like passages, a strain or even a chorus long, in the midst of expansive reinterpretations.
Mainly, this CD’s most obvious ancestor is Earl Hines’ late-in-life solos. There’s a similar grandeur of spontaneity, of technique, of changing feelings, and of free, open-end form. Nichols’ themes are marvelous source material. Nabatov envelops these songs in elaborate fantasias; themes emerge subtly, Cecil Taylor-like, in increments out of piano musings. Also, Nabatov often seizes on theme motives, elaborates on them like a man obsessed, then after half a minute abandons them entirely. He begins the longest track, “The Spinning Song,” with spacey tones that gradually become a tonal line; theme phrases enter the discourse via little trailing treble figures, then bass underlines to descending arpeggios. At five minutes he finally plays the entire theme. As fantastic variations continue, bass rumbles enter (at 9:30); the rumbles evolve, the ending is the theme staggered over them. A kaleidoscopic solo with plenty of asides and thematic twists, yet it’s not rambling, but rather a work that grows and makes a complete whole.
Most of the time, Nabatov has separate lines going in the left and right hands, simultaneously. In “Terpsichore” he uses Nichols’ three-note tag as repeated counterpoint to treble clusters, then it evolves as counterpoint to high, fast, wild lines. I love the bumpity-bump of “Sunday Stroll,” with its bass vamp that contrasts, alters, and unifies the solo, and I like his aside in which he worries a little lick, Mal Waldron-like. Nabatov must like Anton Webern and Roscoe Mitchell – hear his quiet, spaced sounds, in chords that end “Terpsichore” and in his rubato tones that slowly gather to suggest a line in “Lady Sings the Blues.” He’s more sensitive to dynamics, to subtle gradations of volume, than most any other jazz pianist – for instance, the theme of “2300 Skidoo” peeps through fanciful lines and p to bombastic ff passages. Nabatov’s imagination is wild; on the face of it he’s discursive. After an impressionistic (Ravelish?) start to “The Third World” he somehow gets on the Ferde Grofe trail. “Blue Chopsticks” starts as a “Chopsticks” jest and bursts into a rambling, virtuoso improvisation that embeds the Nichols theme.
And there’s much more – this CD is full of delights. What buoyant, fanciful music. What a fine sense of the integrity of each solo, in the midst of his expansions and extensions. I’ve heard a few other Simon Nabatov albums, and this is quite his best. It’s also the most creative yet empathetic Nichols tribute yet – it’s a terrific CD.

credits

released December 2, 2022

Simon Nabatov - piano

all music by Herbie Nichols

recorded live September 22 2007
recorded by Christian Heck in LOFT Cologne
released on Leo Records 2012

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Simon Nabatov image

Simon Nabatov Cologne, Germany

Simon Nabatov, pianist and composer, was born in Moscow in 1959.
In 1979 he emigrated to the USA, spent in NY next 10 years and 1989 he moved to Germany.
Simon Nabatov played with the "who's who" of the jazz and improvised music community, gave concerts in over 60 countries, appeared on the numerous international festivals, received prizes and documented his music on 30 CD's under his own name. ... more

contact / help

Contact Simon Nabatov

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Spinning Songs of Herbie Nichols, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Beans joins the show to discuss his album release, "ZWAARD".

listen now