Roy Nathanson's Sotto Voce

Words have long been elemental to saxophonist Roy Nathanson’s music, beginning with the colorful lyrics to his songs for the Jazz Passengers, the fine and freewheeling group he co-founded with trombonist Curtis Fowlkes in 1987. The original poems woven into the material for Nathanson’s current Sotto Voce quintet—a stunning drummerless band, including Fowlkes and anchored by “human beatbox” Napoleon Maddox—are mostly penned while riding the Q line of New York’s subway. Nathanson writes on the way to his day job, running the music program at Manhattan’s Institute for Collaborative Education, and while heading back to the Newkirk Avenue subway stop in Brooklyn—the same one he used as a child, just steps from his current house. Nathanson has been inspired by a long legacy of jazz’s interactions with the spoken word, and by other traditions, too; “A Jewish boy should be tethered to the word like a Japanese farmer to his land,” he recalled his father saying in one of his poems.

Lately, Nathanson has been consumed by a new project: “Trashed Out” is an opera for film for which he’s collaborating with musician Lloyd Miller, who will direct. It’s based on Paul Reyes’s book, “Exiles in Eden,” which delves into the “trashing out” of foreclosed homes in Tampa, Florida. “We’re building this discussion about the Ponzi scheme that is Florida, and its historical insanity,” says Nathanson. But as with so much of Nathanson’s work, there’s an autobiographical footnote as well. “My family moved to Florida in the late 1960s and my family basically fell apart,” he said. “My father was broke and my mom was teaching music and playing cocktail piano to support us. And it all happened in this weird track-housing complex along a kind of swamp. There’s just such a resonance about failure, Florida and the American Dream.”

Nearly all the strands of Nathanson’s life work are woven through the performances he’s scheduled through the end of September at The Stone, John Zorn’s artist-curated East Village performance space. The series offers a good window into the range of Nathanson’s abilities and fascinations, and the types of things an open-minded, literate and supremely talented jazz musician can find himself doing. A full schedule can be found here; below are some highlights and comments from Nathanson.

On Sept. 28, the Jazz Passengers will be joined by pianist Arturo O’Farrill and other guests for music from “Trashed Out.” Nathanson and Miller have been working out their ideas in public, so to speak, keeping a running diary and posting audio tracks on the project’s blog.

I like the process idea where we start putting demos up on Tumblr, and it morphs into a performance event. The whole idea is that it is a growing thing in a few forms. But none of us have been in the same room together. So to rehearse the stuff then hear it played at the Stone will be a revelation.

For another night (Wed., 9/19), Nathanson has planned what he calls a “meta-performance, in which standards will be discussed, dissected and examined, with a cast that includes New York Times Book Review poetry columnist David Orr, and Lloyd Miller’s children’s music band, The Deedle Deedle Dees.

I’m really interested in how words and sounds change meaning from context. Orr wrote this amazing book about reading poetry called “Beautiful and Pointless,” so he’ll alternate musings like that with a cento he’s writing. We are going to play and deconstruct the songs while Orr talks about language and juggles words.

Later that night, in duo with guitarist Marc Ribot, Nathanson will perform a set of improvisations inspired by Nathanson’s “song translations,” poems that reference the form or emotions of classic standards.

I just used choice words from songs that have stuck in my craw ever since my father played them when I was a kid. I call them “standard translations” the way poetry translations are really re-written poems. Languages are so different. Sound and meaning and metaphor never translate without actual rewriting. So I’m going to do the poems, and we’ll play the tunes.

Another performance (Sept. 22) will showcase Nathanson’s Sotto Voce group with guest poets, including National Book Award winner Gerald Stern. Nathanson has long used so-called “game pieces” like John Zorn’s “Cobra” when teaching student ensembles at the Institute for Collaborative Education. On Sept. 23, The Luddites, an ensemble of Nathanson’s current and former students will perform a cross-disciplinary game piece of their own invention. And on Sept. 27, Nathanson gives the stage over to Henry Grimes. Grimes, who plays bass and violin, was among jazz’s sought-after bassists in the late ’50s, and he played on free-jazz recordings in the ’60s with the likes of Ayler, Cecil Taylor, and Don Cherry. Then he just dropped out, disappeared. During a long and obscure period of hard times, when he did not have a musical instrument, Grimes took up poetry. His return to the jazz scene since 2 - BLU NOTES

Words have long been elemental to saxophonist Roy Nathanson’s music, beginning with the colorful lyrics to his songs for the Jazz Passengers, the fine and freewheeling group he co-founded with trombonist Curtis Fowlkes in 1987. The original poems woven into the material for Nathanson’s current Sotto Voce quintet—a stunning drummerless band, including Fowlkes and anchored by “human beatbox” Napoleon Maddox—are mostly penned while riding the Q line of New York’s subway. Nathanson writes on the way to his day job, running the music program at Manhattan’s Institute for Collaborative Education, and while heading back to the Newkirk Avenue subway stop in Brooklyn—the same one he used as a child, just steps from his current house. Nathanson has been inspired by a long legacy of jazz’s interactions with the spoken word, and by other traditions, too; “A Jewish boy should be tethered to the word like a Japanese farmer to his land,” he recalled his father saying in one of his poems.

Lately, Nathanson has been consumed by a new project: “Trashed Out” is an opera for film for which he’s collaborating with musician Lloyd Miller, who will direct. It’s based on Paul Reyes’s book, “Exiles in Eden,” which delves into the “trashing out” of foreclosed homes in Tampa, Florida. “We’re building this discussion about the Ponzi scheme that is Florida, and its historical insanity,” says Nathanson. But as with so much of Nathanson’s work, there’s an autobiographical footnote as well. “My family moved to Florida in the late 1960s and my family basically fell apart,” he said. “My father was broke and my mom was teaching music and playing cocktail piano to support us. And it all happened in this weird track-housing complex along a kind of swamp. There’s just such a resonance about failure, Florida and the American Dream.”

Nearly all the strands of Nathanson’s life work are woven through the performances he’s scheduled through the end of September at The Stone, John Zorn’s artist-curated East Village performance space. The series offers a good window into the range of Nathanson’s abilities and fascinations, and the types of things an open-minded, literate and supremely talented jazz musician can find himself doing. A full schedule can be found here; below are some highlights and comments from Nathanson.

On Sept. 28, the Jazz Passengers will be joined by pianist Arturo O’Farrill and other guests for music from “Trashed Out.” Nathanson and Miller have been working out their ideas in public, so to speak, keeping a running diary and posting audio tracks on the project’s blog.

I like the process idea where we start putting demos up on Tumblr, and it morphs into a performance event. The whole idea is that it is a growing thing in a few forms. But none of us have been in the same room together. So to rehearse the stuff then hear it played at the Stone will be a revelation.

For another night (Wed., 9/19), Nathanson has planned what he calls a “meta-performance, in which standards will be discussed, dissected and examined, with a cast that includes New York Times Book Review poetry columnist David Orr, and Lloyd Miller’s children’s music band, The Deedle Deedle Dees.

I’m really interested in how words and sounds change meaning from context. Orr wrote this amazing book about reading poetry called “Beautiful and Pointless,” so he’ll alternate musings like that with a cento he’s writing. We are going to play and deconstruct the songs while Orr talks about language and juggles words.

Later that night, in duo with guitarist Marc Ribot, Nathanson will perform a set of improvisations inspired by Nathanson’s “song translations,” poems that reference the form or emotions of classic standards.

I just used choice words from songs that have stuck in my craw ever since my father played them when I was a kid. I call them “standard translations” the way poetry translations are really re-written poems. Languages are so different. Sound and meaning and metaphor never translate without actual rewriting. So I’m going to do the poems, and we’ll play the tunes.

Another performance (Sept. 22) will showcase Nathanson’s Sotto Voce group with guest poets, including National Book Award winner Gerald Stern. Nathanson has long used so-called “game pieces” like John Zorn’s “Cobra” when teaching student ensembles at the Institute for Collaborative Education. On Sept. 23, The Luddites, an ensemble of Nathanson’s current and former students will perform a cross-disciplinary game piece of their own invention. And on Sept. 27, Nathanson gives the stage over to Henry Grimes. Grimes, who plays bass and violin, was among jazz’s sought-after bassists in the late ’50s, and he played on free-jazz recordings in the ’60s with the likes of Ayler, Cecil Taylor, and Don Cherry. Then he just dropped out, disappeared. During a long and obscure period of hard times, when he did not have a musical instrument, Grimes took up poetry. His return to the jazz scene since 2 - BLU NOTES

Roy Nathanson has been a true champion of new jazz songs, pieces that splice and dice the finger-popping aura of decades past with off-beat lyrics and contemporary touches. He’ll rhyme “reading Herman Hesse” with “my life is a mess,” and never look back. For 1994’s innovative In Love, he and the Jazz Passengers recruited artists from Jeff Buckley to Jimmy Scott; on his latest, Nathanson aligns bass with human beat-box for a rhythm section, includes poetic narrations and lots of a cappella singing, and often holds the sax, violin, and trombone until well into the tunes. Did somebody say innovative? Bobby Hebb’s ’60s hit “Sunny” and a wailing lamentation built on Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “The Inflated Tear” are among the covers, and from Nathanson’s songbook comes a surreal yarn set in London, a Jewish boy’s childhood memories and a meditation on keeping faith in the beat while your hair thins and money evaporates. Nathanson and company harmonize well, but singing lead they come across more as pluggers selling the idea of the song than great interpreters born to sing them (or anything else). Still, until Nathanson hustles another project with A-list vocal stars, this will do just fine. - Metro Times

Roy Nathanson has been a true champion of new jazz songs, pieces that splice and dice the finger-popping aura of decades past with off-beat lyrics and contemporary touches. He’ll rhyme “reading Herman Hesse” with “my life is a mess,” and never look back. For 1994’s innovative In Love, he and the Jazz Passengers recruited artists from Jeff Buckley to Jimmy Scott; on his latest, Nathanson aligns bass with human beat-box for a rhythm section, includes poetic narrations and lots of a cappella singing, and often holds the sax, violin, and trombone until well into the tunes. Did somebody say innovative? Bobby Hebb’s ’60s hit “Sunny” and a wailing lamentation built on Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “The Inflated Tear” are among the covers, and from Nathanson’s songbook comes a surreal yarn set in London, a Jewish boy’s childhood memories and a meditation on keeping faith in the beat while your hair thins and money evaporates. Nathanson and company harmonize well, but singing lead they come across more as pluggers selling the idea of the song than great interpreters born to sing them (or anything else). Still, until Nathanson hustles another project with A-list vocal stars, this will do just fine. - Metro Times

It’s been six years since saxophonist Roy Nathanson issued his acclaimed concept album Fire at Keaton’s Bar and Grill. What he has come up this time is difficult to describe and easy to enjoy. Sotto Voce blends bebop, funk, free improv, poetry and hip-hop, and the result is bizarre and irresistible.

Nathanson’s unusual quintet includes violinist Sam Bardfeld and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes—the three are members of the Jazz Passengers—as well as bassist Tim Kiah and human beatbox artist Napoleon Maddox: Anything that resembles drumming or percussion on this album is courtesy of Mr. Maddox’s mouth. All of the band members provide vocals in one form or another.

Six of the nine tunes are little music-stories composed by Nathanson. “London Story,” for instance, is a vignette about a subway musician who sings “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” The others include a compelling version of the old R&B song “Sunny,” an arrangement of Roland Kirk’s “The Inflated Tear” that features lyrics by Nathanson, and a riveting version of the standard “Sunrise, Sunset.”

The record dazzles from start to finish, but the first track is simply sensational. Based on an original poem with the recurring line “My father paid me to read/Five cents a page,” “By the Page” sounds like a mash-up of Bobby McFerrin and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and it will get stuck in your brain. Be forewarned: It is insanely catchy. You will be singing that tune for days after listening to this strange and exhilarating disc.
- JazzTimes

It’s been six years since saxophonist Roy Nathanson issued his acclaimed concept album Fire at Keaton’s Bar and Grill. What he has come up this time is difficult to describe and easy to enjoy. Sotto Voce blends bebop, funk, free improv, poetry and hip-hop, and the result is bizarre and irresistible.

Nathanson’s unusual quintet includes violinist Sam Bardfeld and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes—the three are members of the Jazz Passengers—as well as bassist Tim Kiah and human beatbox artist Napoleon Maddox: Anything that resembles drumming or percussion on this album is courtesy of Mr. Maddox’s mouth. All of the band members provide vocals in one form or another.

Six of the nine tunes are little music-stories composed by Nathanson. “London Story,” for instance, is a vignette about a subway musician who sings “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” The others include a compelling version of the old R&B song “Sunny,” an arrangement of Roland Kirk’s “The Inflated Tear” that features lyrics by Nathanson, and a riveting version of the standard “Sunrise, Sunset.”

The record dazzles from start to finish, but the first track is simply sensational. Based on an original poem with the recurring line “My father paid me to read/Five cents a page,” “By the Page” sounds like a mash-up of Bobby McFerrin and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and it will get stuck in your brain. Be forewarned: It is insanely catchy. You will be singing that tune for days after listening to this strange and exhilarating disc.
- JazzTimes

Roy Nathanson's eccentric quartet was an unexpected highlight of last November's London Jazz festival. With facial hair and thick glasses, Nathanson (ex-Lounge Lizards, Jazz Passengers) looks like a 3D toon of a downtown hipster. His band is similarly oddball: bassist Tim Kinh, violinist Sam Bardfield (recently heard on tour with Bruce Springsteen) and Napoleon Maddox - human beatbox. That's right: every kick drum, cymbal splash and snare fill is made by Maddox's mouth. Everyone sings, and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes guests on a few numbers.

But it's the ingenious arrangements that make Nathanson's work stand out from the crowd. The Inflated Tear is Roland Kirk's famous ballad with new lyrics. Sunny is the Bobby Hebb standard, embellished by Nathanson's Ornette-ish alto. All the numbers are imbued with jazz feeling, but they use even-quaver rhythms that put them closer to Tom Waits or off-Broadway theatrics. The stand-out track is By the Page, an apparently true story from Nathanson's childhood: "My father paid me to read. Five cents a page." - The Guardian

Roy Nathanson's eccentric quartet was an unexpected highlight of last November's London Jazz festival. With facial hair and thick glasses, Nathanson (ex-Lounge Lizards, Jazz Passengers) looks like a 3D toon of a downtown hipster. His band is similarly oddball: bassist Tim Kinh, violinist Sam Bardfield (recently heard on tour with Bruce Springsteen) and Napoleon Maddox - human beatbox. That's right: every kick drum, cymbal splash and snare fill is made by Maddox's mouth. Everyone sings, and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes guests on a few numbers.

But it's the ingenious arrangements that make Nathanson's work stand out from the crowd. The Inflated Tear is Roland Kirk's famous ballad with new lyrics. Sunny is the Bobby Hebb standard, embellished by Nathanson's Ornette-ish alto. All the numbers are imbued with jazz feeling, but they use even-quaver rhythms that put them closer to Tom Waits or off-Broadway theatrics. The stand-out track is By the Page, an apparently true story from Nathanson's childhood: "My father paid me to read. Five cents a page." - The Guardian

Wer ständig mit öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln und dann vielleicht auch immer die selbe Straßenbahn oder denselben Bus nehmen muss, der kennt das Gefühl – man kennt die täglichen Mitfahrer, man beobachtet jeden Neuankömmling und die Geschichten, die der Alltag frühmorgens und späten Nachmittags zur Hauptverkehrszeit durchscheinen lässt. U-Bahn fahren wirkt immer irgendwie anders. Man ist wie vom normalen Leben abgeschlossen, man sieht nur Wände und Menschen, die an einem vorbei hetzen und während man wie jeden Tag auf die selbe U-Bahn wartet, beobachtet man Geschichten, die einem im Leben über der Oberfläche wohl nicht so aufgefallen wären. Und das Leben in dieser anderen Welt ist das Thema mit dem sich das Experiment von Roy Nathanson beschäftigt. Ein Klangerlebnis der Extraklasse, das Lyrik und Musik als Einheit präsentiert.

Die Geschichte hinter dem Subway Moon ist ebenso faszinierend wie die Umsetzung der Idee. Nathanson lebt mit Frau und Kind in Brooklyn und fährt jeden Tag mit der ‚Q‘ nach Manhattan, um Musik zu unterrichten. Die Inspiration für dieses außergewöhnliche Album ist also schnell erklärt. Die ersten Auftritte und Darstellungen der Underground Erzählungen wurden 2007 in Paris aufgeführt. An dem Spektakel waren 80 Musiker beteiligt, darunter Schüler aus New York und Paris, sowie Mitgliedern der Sotto Voce und den Jazz Passengers. Letzteres ist die Band um Nathanson, die er zusammen mit Curtis Fowlkes 1987 gegründet hat. Was dem Publikum dort vorgetragen wurde, findet sich jetzt in fertiger Form auf Subway Moon. Doch von fertig kann nicht die Rede sein, denn das Album ist eine fortwährende Geschichte, die mal naiv fröhlich klingt und einem ein anderes Mal Gänsehaut bekommen lässt.

Gesprochener Text wird mit Melodien verschiedenster Art verbunden. Jazz, Rock und Klezmer wird mit einander kombiniert und herauskommt das Ganze mal melodisch, mal nicht, mal harmonisch, mal nicht, mal mit typischen U-Bahn Geräuschen versehen, mal mit Regen, Stimmen und Husten im Hintergrund. Es sind Melodien, die ohne Worte mitteilen können, was gesagt oder gesehen wird und mit Lyrik, die den Menschen berührt. Subway Moon hat so gut wie keine Wiederholungen, das gesamte Album ist ein Erzählstrang und man kann nicht einfach so anfangen oder mittendrin aufhören. Roy Nathanson ist Geschichtenerzähler und Musiker und schafft es mit diesem Experiment, den Hörer ganz für sich einzunehmen. Das Album braucht Aufmerksamkeit und hat diese mehr als verdient. Und wer das Ganze live erleben möchte, der sei informiert: es gibt im März 2010 eine Aufführung in London – natürlich in abgeänderter Fassung. U-Bahnen und die Erlebnisse im Undergound sind ja nirgendwo gleich.
- Alternativ Musik

Wer ständig mit öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln und dann vielleicht auch immer die selbe Straßenbahn oder denselben Bus nehmen muss, der kennt das Gefühl – man kennt die täglichen Mitfahrer, man beobachtet jeden Neuankömmling und die Geschichten, die der Alltag frühmorgens und späten Nachmittags zur Hauptverkehrszeit durchscheinen lässt. U-Bahn fahren wirkt immer irgendwie anders. Man ist wie vom normalen Leben abgeschlossen, man sieht nur Wände und Menschen, die an einem vorbei hetzen und während man wie jeden Tag auf die selbe U-Bahn wartet, beobachtet man Geschichten, die einem im Leben über der Oberfläche wohl nicht so aufgefallen wären. Und das Leben in dieser anderen Welt ist das Thema mit dem sich das Experiment von Roy Nathanson beschäftigt. Ein Klangerlebnis der Extraklasse, das Lyrik und Musik als Einheit präsentiert.

Die Geschichte hinter dem Subway Moon ist ebenso faszinierend wie die Umsetzung der Idee. Nathanson lebt mit Frau und Kind in Brooklyn und fährt jeden Tag mit der ‚Q‘ nach Manhattan, um Musik zu unterrichten. Die Inspiration für dieses außergewöhnliche Album ist also schnell erklärt. Die ersten Auftritte und Darstellungen der Underground Erzählungen wurden 2007 in Paris aufgeführt. An dem Spektakel waren 80 Musiker beteiligt, darunter Schüler aus New York und Paris, sowie Mitgliedern der Sotto Voce und den Jazz Passengers. Letzteres ist die Band um Nathanson, die er zusammen mit Curtis Fowlkes 1987 gegründet hat. Was dem Publikum dort vorgetragen wurde, findet sich jetzt in fertiger Form auf Subway Moon. Doch von fertig kann nicht die Rede sein, denn das Album ist eine fortwährende Geschichte, die mal naiv fröhlich klingt und einem ein anderes Mal Gänsehaut bekommen lässt.

Gesprochener Text wird mit Melodien verschiedenster Art verbunden. Jazz, Rock und Klezmer wird mit einander kombiniert und herauskommt das Ganze mal melodisch, mal nicht, mal harmonisch, mal nicht, mal mit typischen U-Bahn Geräuschen versehen, mal mit Regen, Stimmen und Husten im Hintergrund. Es sind Melodien, die ohne Worte mitteilen können, was gesagt oder gesehen wird und mit Lyrik, die den Menschen berührt. Subway Moon hat so gut wie keine Wiederholungen, das gesamte Album ist ein Erzählstrang und man kann nicht einfach so anfangen oder mittendrin aufhören. Roy Nathanson ist Geschichtenerzähler und Musiker und schafft es mit diesem Experiment, den Hörer ganz für sich einzunehmen. Das Album braucht Aufmerksamkeit und hat diese mehr als verdient. Und wer das Ganze live erleben möchte, der sei informiert: es gibt im März 2010 eine Aufführung in London – natürlich in abgeänderter Fassung. U-Bahnen und die Erlebnisse im Undergound sind ja nirgendwo gleich.
- Alternativ Musik

The saxophonist Roy Nathanson considers himself more a jazz musician than a poet. But as he told me on the phone from his home in Brooklyn last week, he feels most like a storyteller.

Nathanson, 61, who leads the Jazz Passengers and another jazz group called Sotto Voce, likes to incorporate spoken word into his music. He's published one book of poetry, Subway Moon, which dwells on things like family, nostalgia, Brooklyn, politics, and words themselves. His poems are gritty and urban, and so is his music. He was a part of the downtown music, art, and theater scenes in the 1980s (he was a member of the Lounge Lizards), when, he explained, "non-professionalism and professionalism were very blurred."

"It was always about story-telling through the music," he said. "Through the theater and through the words."

With that in mind, the string of performances he's curating at The Stone in the East Village through Sept. 30 seems like a partial throwback to that downtown world. Nathanson's booked a bunch of interesting and serious and playful sets—some of which he's involved in—exploring the nature of language and the connection between music and poetry.

This Saturday, for instance, Gerald Stern, the former Poet Laureate of New Jersey, will read his poetry accompanied by Sotto Voce, which incorporates beatboxing into its music. (Nathanson told me that he's scored one of the poems in imitation of the way Stern speaks.) Next Thursday, the jazz bassist Henry Grimes, also a poet, will perform with the pianist Dave Burrell and the drummer Tyshawn Sorey. And two days later, the vibraphonist Bill Ware is set to lead a group with the Nuyorican poet Tato Laviera.

Wednesday night, Nathanson played music in a sextet over which the poetry critic David Orr recited a series of centos—poems composed entirely of lines from other texts. Orr wrote the poems himself, basing them entirely on pop songs.

"For hundreds of years, poetry has been without a song," Orr said by way of introduction, couching a lecture in performance as the sextet riffed behind him. He went on to explain that the ancient Greeks used the same word for poetry as they did for music, but that today, the relationship between poetry and music is like a "lover's quarrel between siamese twins." He added, however, that at base, poetry and music have form as their common ground.

Orr said that the poems he wrote probably wouldn't make sense, and that they were intended just to be amusing. He added, dryly: "They sound to me like John Ashbery on methamphetamines."

I jotted down some snippets. And he was right; it was best not to read into them. Over a rockabilly beat, Orr read:

I've been working on the railroad,
Where it comes where it goes.
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for,
When I wore a younger man's clothes.

Sometimes the stolidity of Orr's phrasing seemed out of sync with the music itself, especially Nathanson's earthy solos. But it was all in the service of levity.

The band included Nathanson, playing soprano, alto, and baritone saxophone (he sounded best on alto); Dave Schraam on guitar; Lloyd Miller on bass; Ely Levin on drums; Chris Johnson on piano; and Andy Laster on baritone saxophone.

For the last and loveliest song of the set, Miller sang a country-inflected version of "Who Goes With Fergus," a poem by W.B. Yeats. As the band had been doing the entire set, it went down to a hushed volume as Orr read:

At first I was afraid, I was petrified,
Because your friends don't dance.
And if they don't dance,
I know that somebody's watching me.

If the first set felt slightly didactic—albeit tongue-in-cheek—the second set asked you to draw your own connections.

Nathanson played in a duo with the guitarist Marc Ribot in which the focus was old jazz standards. Nathanson wrote poems inspired by the songs, which he recited solemnly throughout the set over Ribot's spare and spooky acoustic lines.

Nathanson spoke abruptly and with a knowing tone. In "All The Things You Are," he said: "All the things you are are not enough to forestall the financial crash of headaches." And in "Darn That Dream": "Darn that nightmare breathing dream beneath the street lamps and maples."

Ribot and Nathanson played the song's melodies obliquely; at times, you had to cock your ear to catch what tune they were on. And the music swung back and forth between tenderness and wild intensity, creating a sort of narrative arc. At one moment, Nathanson was playing some hushed whispers on his baritone and at another he was belting it out on his alto with earthy, gutbucket yowls.

He was finding his way, telling a story in the language he knows best.
- Capital New York

The saxophonist Roy Nathanson considers himself more a jazz musician than a poet. But as he told me on the phone from his home in Brooklyn last week, he feels most like a storyteller.

Nathanson, 61, who leads the Jazz Passengers and another jazz group called Sotto Voce, likes to incorporate spoken word into his music. He's published one book of poetry, Subway Moon, which dwells on things like family, nostalgia, Brooklyn, politics, and words themselves. His poems are gritty and urban, and so is his music. He was a part of the downtown music, art, and theater scenes in the 1980s (he was a member of the Lounge Lizards), when, he explained, "non-professionalism and professionalism were very blurred."

"It was always about story-telling through the music," he said. "Through the theater and through the words."

With that in mind, the string of performances he's curating at The Stone in the East Village through Sept. 30 seems like a partial throwback to that downtown world. Nathanson's booked a bunch of interesting and serious and playful sets—some of which he's involved in—exploring the nature of language and the connection between music and poetry.

This Saturday, for instance, Gerald Stern, the former Poet Laureate of New Jersey, will read his poetry accompanied by Sotto Voce, which incorporates beatboxing into its music. (Nathanson told me that he's scored one of the poems in imitation of the way Stern speaks.) Next Thursday, the jazz bassist Henry Grimes, also a poet, will perform with the pianist Dave Burrell and the drummer Tyshawn Sorey. And two days later, the vibraphonist Bill Ware is set to lead a group with the Nuyorican poet Tato Laviera.

Wednesday night, Nathanson played music in a sextet over which the poetry critic David Orr recited a series of centos—poems composed entirely of lines from other texts. Orr wrote the poems himself, basing them entirely on pop songs.

"For hundreds of years, poetry has been without a song," Orr said by way of introduction, couching a lecture in performance as the sextet riffed behind him. He went on to explain that the ancient Greeks used the same word for poetry as they did for music, but that today, the relationship between poetry and music is like a "lover's quarrel between siamese twins." He added, however, that at base, poetry and music have form as their common ground.

Orr said that the poems he wrote probably wouldn't make sense, and that they were intended just to be amusing. He added, dryly: "They sound to me like John Ashbery on methamphetamines."

I jotted down some snippets. And he was right; it was best not to read into them. Over a rockabilly beat, Orr read:

I've been working on the railroad,
Where it comes where it goes.
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for,
When I wore a younger man's clothes.

Sometimes the stolidity of Orr's phrasing seemed out of sync with the music itself, especially Nathanson's earthy solos. But it was all in the service of levity.

The band included Nathanson, playing soprano, alto, and baritone saxophone (he sounded best on alto); Dave Schraam on guitar; Lloyd Miller on bass; Ely Levin on drums; Chris Johnson on piano; and Andy Laster on baritone saxophone.

For the last and loveliest song of the set, Miller sang a country-inflected version of "Who Goes With Fergus," a poem by W.B. Yeats. As the band had been doing the entire set, it went down to a hushed volume as Orr read:

At first I was afraid, I was petrified,
Because your friends don't dance.
And if they don't dance,
I know that somebody's watching me.

If the first set felt slightly didactic—albeit tongue-in-cheek—the second set asked you to draw your own connections.

Nathanson played in a duo with the guitarist Marc Ribot in which the focus was old jazz standards. Nathanson wrote poems inspired by the songs, which he recited solemnly throughout the set over Ribot's spare and spooky acoustic lines.

Nathanson spoke abruptly and with a knowing tone. In "All The Things You Are," he said: "All the things you are are not enough to forestall the financial crash of headaches." And in "Darn That Dream": "Darn that nightmare breathing dream beneath the street lamps and maples."

Ribot and Nathanson played the song's melodies obliquely; at times, you had to cock your ear to catch what tune they were on. And the music swung back and forth between tenderness and wild intensity, creating a sort of narrative arc. At one moment, Nathanson was playing some hushed whispers on his baritone and at another he was belting it out on his alto with earthy, gutbucket yowls.

He was finding his way, telling a story in the language he knows best.
- Capital New York

On a Sunday night in July, saxophonist Roy Nathanson was speaking from what might be called the stage—actually more like the corner—of the basement room at the Sycamore Club, a small, friendly bar near his home in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. Working with a scaled-down version of Sotto Voce, the band that has backed him on his last two albums, he introduced songs by neighborhood. “We’re gonna do a local Ditmas Park song,” he said before one; “These are all Flatbush tunes in a sense,” before another. “I grew up on E. 19th Street.”


Photo: Charna Meyers.
At a Soto Voce show, even jazz standards are played as memoir. As the band vamped on “Slow Boat to China,” Nathanson recollected hearing his dad play the song; he recalled trying to dig a hole to China in the backyard as a kid—a job he didn’t finish, he explained, because of his own “cultural revolution” on the streets of Brooklyn.

Nathanson’s three-decade career in music has stretched from the Knitting Factory to National Public Radio, from John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards to his own Jazz Passengers to his recent work merging his often autobiographical poetry and prose with his unusual, never-quite-on-kilter compositions. He’s a musician who knows what it means to be an entertainer. He has channeled Groucho on stage, and can mention Sonny Stitt and Italo Calvino in the same breath. As a saxophonist and bandleader, he handles the O’Jays as easily as he does Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and has a considerable songbook of his own as well.

It’s rare to find an artist reinventing himself 30 years into his career, finding a new voice within an aesthetic he’s long since established. But the last five years have seen Nathanson chasing a new muse, earning a master’s in poetry (his work was first published in the Rail), and moving back to the old neighborhood. Those factors are the combined impetus for two of the strongest records of his career.

“Secretly I guess I always wanted to move back here, but I didn’t realize how much I wanted it,” he said, sitting on the second-floor terrace of the house he shares with his wife and son, a black dog, and a black cat. “I see it as urban archeology.” From such a modest height, he can’t quite see the faded advertisement painted on the side of a building, no longer readable, but he remembers what it once said. He can’t quite see the streets where he ran and played as a young boy, but as he speaks he points outward as if he could.

“I loved it here,” he said wistfully of the old Jewish/Italian neighborhood, now equally populated by Haitian, Jamaican, and Indian immigrants. “I played clarinet. I hung around playing basketball in the schoolyard.” His father, too, played clarinet, and performed in a brother act called “Artie and Marty” in the Catskills. (Uncle Artie studied piano with Willie “the Lion” Smith.) His mother was a singer. But neither of his parents quite made their living at it, and the family packed up for Florida when Roy was thirteen.

Nathanson made his way back to the city in the seventies. He studied saxophone with Jimmy Heath, played in Charles Earland’s band, and began working his way into the nascent Downtown scene, composing for experimental theater productions. He got a gig playing in the Big Apple Circus band, where he met trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, who remains his closest musical partner. And as a member of the well-dressed jazz-noir outfit the Lounge Lizards, one of the defining bands of the early Knitting Factory scene, he began to think about image and presentation on stage. Before long he was looking to present his own stage persona, something closer to his father’s vaudeville than Lurie’s Hollywood cool. In 1987 he put together the Jazz Passengers, with many of the same musicians (including Fowlkes and guitarist Marc Ribot) that he was playing with in the Lizards.

“John was this sexy guy; it was all about distance, and that was the opposite of what me and Curtis felt,” Nathanson said. “It should be funny! We wanted to have more of a direct relationship to jazz history and sort of a goofball thing. It was a more nerdy, more weirdo, more oddball thing. Our showman thing was everyman, but it wasn’t every man, it was every weird man, every oddball.”

Over the next couple of decades the Passengers, with some changes in lineup (but never without Fowlkes’s smooth voice and horn), would release a string of inventive records, combining unusual, slightly-off arrangements with a classic New York humor. They eventually caught the attention of Hal Willner, who all but invented the tribute-album trend by producing records dedicated to the music of Charles Mingus, Kurt Weill, and classic Disney films. Willner paired the Passengers with Deborah Harry and Elvis Costello, among others, on the 1994 album In Love. Harry soon became the band’s first full-time singer, bringing out a new aspect in Nathanson’s writing and bringing the band to much wider attention, for better and worse.

“We were known to be thi - Brooklyn Rail

On a Sunday night in July, saxophonist Roy Nathanson was speaking from what might be called the stage—actually more like the corner—of the basement room at the Sycamore Club, a small, friendly bar near his home in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. Working with a scaled-down version of Sotto Voce, the band that has backed him on his last two albums, he introduced songs by neighborhood. “We’re gonna do a local Ditmas Park song,” he said before one; “These are all Flatbush tunes in a sense,” before another. “I grew up on E. 19th Street.”


Photo: Charna Meyers.
At a Soto Voce show, even jazz standards are played as memoir. As the band vamped on “Slow Boat to China,” Nathanson recollected hearing his dad play the song; he recalled trying to dig a hole to China in the backyard as a kid—a job he didn’t finish, he explained, because of his own “cultural revolution” on the streets of Brooklyn.

Nathanson’s three-decade career in music has stretched from the Knitting Factory to National Public Radio, from John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards to his own Jazz Passengers to his recent work merging his often autobiographical poetry and prose with his unusual, never-quite-on-kilter compositions. He’s a musician who knows what it means to be an entertainer. He has channeled Groucho on stage, and can mention Sonny Stitt and Italo Calvino in the same breath. As a saxophonist and bandleader, he handles the O’Jays as easily as he does Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and has a considerable songbook of his own as well.

It’s rare to find an artist reinventing himself 30 years into his career, finding a new voice within an aesthetic he’s long since established. But the last five years have seen Nathanson chasing a new muse, earning a master’s in poetry (his work was first published in the Rail), and moving back to the old neighborhood. Those factors are the combined impetus for two of the strongest records of his career.

“Secretly I guess I always wanted to move back here, but I didn’t realize how much I wanted it,” he said, sitting on the second-floor terrace of the house he shares with his wife and son, a black dog, and a black cat. “I see it as urban archeology.” From such a modest height, he can’t quite see the faded advertisement painted on the side of a building, no longer readable, but he remembers what it once said. He can’t quite see the streets where he ran and played as a young boy, but as he speaks he points outward as if he could.

“I loved it here,” he said wistfully of the old Jewish/Italian neighborhood, now equally populated by Haitian, Jamaican, and Indian immigrants. “I played clarinet. I hung around playing basketball in the schoolyard.” His father, too, played clarinet, and performed in a brother act called “Artie and Marty” in the Catskills. (Uncle Artie studied piano with Willie “the Lion” Smith.) His mother was a singer. But neither of his parents quite made their living at it, and the family packed up for Florida when Roy was thirteen.

Nathanson made his way back to the city in the seventies. He studied saxophone with Jimmy Heath, played in Charles Earland’s band, and began working his way into the nascent Downtown scene, composing for experimental theater productions. He got a gig playing in the Big Apple Circus band, where he met trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, who remains his closest musical partner. And as a member of the well-dressed jazz-noir outfit the Lounge Lizards, one of the defining bands of the early Knitting Factory scene, he began to think about image and presentation on stage. Before long he was looking to present his own stage persona, something closer to his father’s vaudeville than Lurie’s Hollywood cool. In 1987 he put together the Jazz Passengers, with many of the same musicians (including Fowlkes and guitarist Marc Ribot) that he was playing with in the Lizards.

“John was this sexy guy; it was all about distance, and that was the opposite of what me and Curtis felt,” Nathanson said. “It should be funny! We wanted to have more of a direct relationship to jazz history and sort of a goofball thing. It was a more nerdy, more weirdo, more oddball thing. Our showman thing was everyman, but it wasn’t every man, it was every weird man, every oddball.”

Over the next couple of decades the Passengers, with some changes in lineup (but never without Fowlkes’s smooth voice and horn), would release a string of inventive records, combining unusual, slightly-off arrangements with a classic New York humor. They eventually caught the attention of Hal Willner, who all but invented the tribute-album trend by producing records dedicated to the music of Charles Mingus, Kurt Weill, and classic Disney films. Willner paired the Passengers with Deborah Harry and Elvis Costello, among others, on the 1994 album In Love. Harry soon became the band’s first full-time singer, bringing out a new aspect in Nathanson’s writing and bringing the band to much wider attention, for better and worse.

“We were known to be thi - Brooklyn Rail

The first question one has to ask after hearing Roy Nathanson's Sotto Voce all the way through, letting the stereo move along into silence, is "Where does music like this come from?" And then one has to note that there is no other record to be played on this day, because in Sotto Voce is everything music should be and often is. Here is a "jazz" band that features saxophones (Nathanson), trombone (Curtis Fowlkes), violin (Sam Bardfeld), bass (Tim Kiah), and a human beatbox (Napoleon Maddox). Every member of this band recites Nathanson's words or sings them. This is art, but it doesn't belong in the National Gallery or even the Museum of Modern Art. It belongs in the street, in the gutters, and in the living rooms and basements of every house in America where funky-butt street rhythms, foot-stomping joy, and wacky childlike singalongs are important matters of everyday life -- and perhaps more importantly, it should be in those places where these things are not. Take a listen to the reading of "Sunny," the old Bobby Hebb nugget, previously done best by Jack McDuff and David "Fathead" Newman on Double Barrelled Soul back in the '60s -- but theirs had no vocal! It begins with feet on the floor and Nathanson's bluesed-out soul wail on the alto before they dig into the verse and chorus as a band, with Bardfeld playing the violin like a guitar and Fowlkes accenting the rhythmic intensity of Maddox. But then, Nathanson starts singing! He gets it, the Hebb vision of the blues, and adds funk and beat-hop to the bottom. This is no novelty; it is song itself. The evidence is in the reading of Roland Kirk's "The Inflated Tear," introduced by a classicist's violin and poetry, where spoken words get to Kirk's grief and determination before becoming sung call-and-response choruses in the jazz idiom. It doesn't give up Kirk's intensity either, as Nathanson double-tracks his alto. The flipout is that it is immediately followed by a noir-ish reading of "Sunrise, Sunset" that sounds like none in the American canon. This baby isn't all covers, however, as the final three cuts are all originals. The big organic FONK on "It's Alright" ushers in a plainspoken short story that is both immediate, reminiscent, and angular. Meaning is trotted out between the words themselves and the various instrumental passages -- and the call and response between Nathanson and Fowlkes is a fingerpopper's wet dream. This bad boy is essential for anybody who digs musical surprise, creativity, and the impulse of originality. - allmusic

The first question one has to ask after hearing Roy Nathanson's Sotto Voce all the way through, letting the stereo move along into silence, is "Where does music like this come from?" And then one has to note that there is no other record to be played on this day, because in Sotto Voce is everything music should be and often is. Here is a "jazz" band that features saxophones (Nathanson), trombone (Curtis Fowlkes), violin (Sam Bardfeld), bass (Tim Kiah), and a human beatbox (Napoleon Maddox). Every member of this band recites Nathanson's words or sings them. This is art, but it doesn't belong in the National Gallery or even the Museum of Modern Art. It belongs in the street, in the gutters, and in the living rooms and basements of every house in America where funky-butt street rhythms, foot-stomping joy, and wacky childlike singalongs are important matters of everyday life -- and perhaps more importantly, it should be in those places where these things are not. Take a listen to the reading of "Sunny," the old Bobby Hebb nugget, previously done best by Jack McDuff and David "Fathead" Newman on Double Barrelled Soul back in the '60s -- but theirs had no vocal! It begins with feet on the floor and Nathanson's bluesed-out soul wail on the alto before they dig into the verse and chorus as a band, with Bardfeld playing the violin like a guitar and Fowlkes accenting the rhythmic intensity of Maddox. But then, Nathanson starts singing! He gets it, the Hebb vision of the blues, and adds funk and beat-hop to the bottom. This is no novelty; it is song itself. The evidence is in the reading of Roland Kirk's "The Inflated Tear," introduced by a classicist's violin and poetry, where spoken words get to Kirk's grief and determination before becoming sung call-and-response choruses in the jazz idiom. It doesn't give up Kirk's intensity either, as Nathanson double-tracks his alto. The flipout is that it is immediately followed by a noir-ish reading of "Sunrise, Sunset" that sounds like none in the American canon. This baby isn't all covers, however, as the final three cuts are all originals. The big organic FONK on "It's Alright" ushers in a plainspoken short story that is both immediate, reminiscent, and angular. Meaning is trotted out between the words themselves and the various instrumental passages -- and the call and response between Nathanson and Fowlkes is a fingerpopper's wet dream. This bad boy is essential for anybody who digs musical surprise, creativity, and the impulse of originality. - allmusic

If the expression "renaissance musician" existed in the dictionary, it would probably show a picture of saxophonist Roy Nathanson. The leader of the Jazz Passengers has undergone numerous artistic rebirths throughout his career as a member of The Lounge Lizards, performing with Debbie Harry, Elvis Costello, and Marc Ribot, composing for film and theater, acting, teaching, and even hosting a radio drama. He also holds a degree in poetry, which is put to splendid use on Subway Moon. Inspired by his daily commutes on New York's subway, this release is Nathanson's observations of people, transportation and life, articulated through music and spoken word, like jazz graffiti come to life.

With his band, Sotto Voce, consisting of Jazz Messengers co-leader Curtis Fowlkes (trombone) and Sam Bardfeld (violin), along with other players including Bill Ware (vibes), Napoleon Maddox (human beatbox) and Marcus Rojas (tuba), they extend the street vibe from the previous Sotto Voce (AUM Fidelity Records, 2006), where jazz, hip-hop, and dialogue flourished into an eclectic urban stew.

An appropriate departure call begins with the cover of the O'Jays 1973 smash hit "Love Train," as Nathanson and the band provide some street corner vocal harmonies. The next annex is "Subway Noah" where, unlike Wynton Marsalis' poetic exploits on He and She (Blue Note, 2009), the poetry here is interwoven into the compositions; words that are interspersed with sampled sounds, singing horns, swinging bass walks, human beat boxing, and violin.

Nathanson and Sotto Voce illustrate the experience of the Brooklyn "Q" train. A gorgeous Russian girl's 4 AM cell phone conversation in "Party," the saxophonist's beautiful abstract solo silhouetted against the sounds of rainfall and machines on "Alto Rain," and memories of post 9/11 paranoia on "Orange Alert." The compositions are resplendent—Maddox's styling beats dance with Brad Jones' slick bass line on "Party" and Fowlkes' muscular trombone scorches on "Dear Brother," with sampled looped voices, and Nathanson's exquisite prose:

"You've been gone so long
I had to search for you
among the ruins of words
And when I found you
that poem flew off the "Q"—
a "You Memorial Paper Airplane"
twisting over the tracks
in the whoosh of fall."
Augmented by a companion book of poetry and short stories of the same title, the final call for Subway Moon ends with "Safer End of Subway Moon," painted with angry outcries, voice harmonies, and Rojas' funky tuba swagger. Like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's "Take The 'A' Train," Subway Moon is an invitation to new sonic destinations that are well worth the ride.

Track Listing: Love Train; Subway Noah; Party; Alto Rain; Dear Brother; Orange Alert; Two Horn Rain; New Guy to Look at; Stand Clear; Safer End of Subway Moon.

Personnel: Roy Nathanson: vocals, alto and soprano saxophone; Curtis Fowlkes: vocals, trombone; Brad Jones: bass; Bill Ware: vocals, organ, vibraphone; Tim Kiah: vocals, bass; Napoleon Maddox: vocals, human beatbox; Sam Bardfeld: violin; Sean Sondregger: flute, tenor saxophone; Marcus Rojas: tuba; Hugo Dwyer: keyboard sampler; Gabriel Nathanson: trumpet.
- All About Jazz

If the expression "renaissance musician" existed in the dictionary, it would probably show a picture of saxophonist Roy Nathanson. The leader of the Jazz Passengers has undergone numerous artistic rebirths throughout his career as a member of The Lounge Lizards, performing with Debbie Harry, Elvis Costello, and Marc Ribot, composing for film and theater, acting, teaching, and even hosting a radio drama. He also holds a degree in poetry, which is put to splendid use on Subway Moon. Inspired by his daily commutes on New York's subway, this release is Nathanson's observations of people, transportation and life, articulated through music and spoken word, like jazz graffiti come to life.

With his band, Sotto Voce, consisting of Jazz Messengers co-leader Curtis Fowlkes (trombone) and Sam Bardfeld (violin), along with other players including Bill Ware (vibes), Napoleon Maddox (human beatbox) and Marcus Rojas (tuba), they extend the street vibe from the previous Sotto Voce (AUM Fidelity Records, 2006), where jazz, hip-hop, and dialogue flourished into an eclectic urban stew.

An appropriate departure call begins with the cover of the O'Jays 1973 smash hit "Love Train," as Nathanson and the band provide some street corner vocal harmonies. The next annex is "Subway Noah" where, unlike Wynton Marsalis' poetic exploits on He and She (Blue Note, 2009), the poetry here is interwoven into the compositions; words that are interspersed with sampled sounds, singing horns, swinging bass walks, human beat boxing, and violin.

Nathanson and Sotto Voce illustrate the experience of the Brooklyn "Q" train. A gorgeous Russian girl's 4 AM cell phone conversation in "Party," the saxophonist's beautiful abstract solo silhouetted against the sounds of rainfall and machines on "Alto Rain," and memories of post 9/11 paranoia on "Orange Alert." The compositions are resplendent—Maddox's styling beats dance with Brad Jones' slick bass line on "Party" and Fowlkes' muscular trombone scorches on "Dear Brother," with sampled looped voices, and Nathanson's exquisite prose:

"You've been gone so long
I had to search for you
among the ruins of words
And when I found you
that poem flew off the "Q"—
a "You Memorial Paper Airplane"
twisting over the tracks
in the whoosh of fall."
Augmented by a companion book of poetry and short stories of the same title, the final call for Subway Moon ends with "Safer End of Subway Moon," painted with angry outcries, voice harmonies, and Rojas' funky tuba swagger. Like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's "Take The 'A' Train," Subway Moon is an invitation to new sonic destinations that are well worth the ride.

Track Listing: Love Train; Subway Noah; Party; Alto Rain; Dear Brother; Orange Alert; Two Horn Rain; New Guy to Look at; Stand Clear; Safer End of Subway Moon.

Personnel: Roy Nathanson: vocals, alto and soprano saxophone; Curtis Fowlkes: vocals, trombone; Brad Jones: bass; Bill Ware: vocals, organ, vibraphone; Tim Kiah: vocals, bass; Napoleon Maddox: vocals, human beatbox; Sam Bardfeld: violin; Sean Sondregger: flute, tenor saxophone; Marcus Rojas: tuba; Hugo Dwyer: keyboard sampler; Gabriel Nathanson: trumpet.
- All About Jazz

If the expression "renaissance musician" existed in the dictionary, it would probably show a picture of saxophonist Roy Nathanson. The leader of the Jazz Passengers has undergone numerous artistic rebirths throughout his career as a member of The Lounge Lizards, performing with Debbie Harry, Elvis Costello, and Marc Ribot, composing for film and theater, acting, teaching, and even hosting a radio drama. He also holds a degree in poetry, which is put to splendid use on Subway Moon. Inspired by his daily commutes on New York's subway, this release is Nathanson's observations of people, transportation and life, articulated through music and spoken word, like jazz graffiti come to life.

With his band, Sotto Voce, consisting of Jazz Messengers co-leader Curtis Fowlkes (trombone) and Sam Bardfeld (violin), along with other players including Bill Ware (vibes), Napoleon Maddox (human beatbox) and Marcus Rojas (tuba), they extend the street vibe from the previous Sotto Voce (AUM Fidelity Records, 2006), where jazz, hip-hop, and dialogue flourished into an eclectic urban stew.

An appropriate departure call begins with the cover of the O'Jays 1973 smash hit "Love Train," as Nathanson and the band provide some street corner vocal harmonies. The next annex is "Subway Noah" where, unlike Wynton Marsalis' poetic exploits on He and She (Blue Note, 2009), the poetry here is interwoven into the compositions; words that are interspersed with sampled sounds, singing horns, swinging bass walks, human beat boxing, and violin.

Nathanson and Sotto Voce illustrate the experience of the Brooklyn "Q" train. A gorgeous Russian girl's 4 AM cell phone conversation in "Party," the saxophonist's beautiful abstract solo silhouetted against the sounds of rainfall and machines on "Alto Rain," and memories of post 9/11 paranoia on "Orange Alert." The compositions are resplendent—Maddox's styling beats dance with Brad Jones' slick bass line on "Party" and Fowlkes' muscular trombone scorches on "Dear Brother," with sampled looped voices, and Nathanson's exquisite prose:

"You've been gone so long
I had to search for you
among the ruins of words
And when I found you
that poem flew off the "Q"—
a "You Memorial Paper Airplane"
twisting over the tracks
in the whoosh of fall."
Augmented by a companion book of poetry and short stories of the same title, the final call for Subway Moon ends with "Safer End of Subway Moon," painted with angry outcries, voice harmonies, and Rojas' funky tuba swagger. Like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's "Take The 'A' Train," Subway Moon is an invitation to new sonic destinations that are well worth the ride.

Track Listing: Love Train; Subway Noah; Party; Alto Rain; Dear Brother; Orange Alert; Two Horn Rain; New Guy to Look at; Stand Clear; Safer End of Subway Moon.

Personnel: Roy Nathanson: vocals, alto and soprano saxophone; Curtis Fowlkes: vocals, trombone; Brad Jones: bass; Bill Ware: vocals, organ, vibraphone; Tim Kiah: vocals, bass; Napoleon Maddox: vocals, human beatbox; Sam Bardfeld: violin; Sean Sondregger: flute, tenor saxophone; Marcus Rojas: tuba; Hugo Dwyer: keyboard sampler; Gabriel Nathanson: trumpet.
- All About Jazz

If the expression "renaissance musician" existed in the dictionary, it would probably show a picture of saxophonist Roy Nathanson. The leader of the Jazz Passengers has undergone numerous artistic rebirths throughout his career as a member of The Lounge Lizards, performing with Debbie Harry, Elvis Costello, and Marc Ribot, composing for film and theater, acting, teaching, and even hosting a radio drama. He also holds a degree in poetry, which is put to splendid use on Subway Moon. Inspired by his daily commutes on New York's subway, this release is Nathanson's observations of people, transportation and life, articulated through music and spoken word, like jazz graffiti come to life.

With his band, Sotto Voce, consisting of Jazz Messengers co-leader Curtis Fowlkes (trombone) and Sam Bardfeld (violin), along with other players including Bill Ware (vibes), Napoleon Maddox (human beatbox) and Marcus Rojas (tuba), they extend the street vibe from the previous Sotto Voce (AUM Fidelity Records, 2006), where jazz, hip-hop, and dialogue flourished into an eclectic urban stew.

An appropriate departure call begins with the cover of the O'Jays 1973 smash hit "Love Train," as Nathanson and the band provide some street corner vocal harmonies. The next annex is "Subway Noah" where, unlike Wynton Marsalis' poetic exploits on He and She (Blue Note, 2009), the poetry here is interwoven into the compositions; words that are interspersed with sampled sounds, singing horns, swinging bass walks, human beat boxing, and violin.

Nathanson and Sotto Voce illustrate the experience of the Brooklyn "Q" train. A gorgeous Russian girl's 4 AM cell phone conversation in "Party," the saxophonist's beautiful abstract solo silhouetted against the sounds of rainfall and machines on "Alto Rain," and memories of post 9/11 paranoia on "Orange Alert." The compositions are resplendent—Maddox's styling beats dance with Brad Jones' slick bass line on "Party" and Fowlkes' muscular trombone scorches on "Dear Brother," with sampled looped voices, and Nathanson's exquisite prose:

"You've been gone so long
I had to search for you
among the ruins of words
And when I found you
that poem flew off the "Q"—
a "You Memorial Paper Airplane"
twisting over the tracks
in the whoosh of fall."
Augmented by a companion book of poetry and short stories of the same title, the final call for Subway Moon ends with "Safer End of Subway Moon," painted with angry outcries, voice harmonies, and Rojas' funky tuba swagger. Like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's "Take The 'A' Train," Subway Moon is an invitation to new sonic destinations that are well worth the ride.

Track Listing: Love Train; Subway Noah; Party; Alto Rain; Dear Brother; Orange Alert; Two Horn Rain; New Guy to Look at; Stand Clear; Safer End of Subway Moon.

Personnel: Roy Nathanson: vocals, alto and soprano saxophone; Curtis Fowlkes: vocals, trombone; Brad Jones: bass; Bill Ware: vocals, organ, vibraphone; Tim Kiah: vocals, bass; Napoleon Maddox: vocals, human beatbox; Sam Bardfeld: violin; Sean Sondregger: flute, tenor saxophone; Marcus Rojas: tuba; Hugo Dwyer: keyboard sampler; Gabriel Nathanson: trumpet.
- All About Jazz