On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, June 5, 6 & 7, 2003 at 8pm in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, Jazz at Lincoln Center will present the Herbie Nichols project, led by pianist Frank Kimbrough and bassist Ben Allison, in an exploration of the late composers great body of work. Herbie Nichols Project members trumpeter Ron Horton, saxophonists Ted Nash and Michael Blake, and drummer Matt Wilson will participate in this highly anticipated concert. Tickets at $45 are available at the Alice Tully Hall box office, by calling CenterCharge at (212) 721-6500, or via
www.jazzatlincolncenter.org. All Jazz at the Penthouse concerts take place in the intimate, club-like setting of the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, where the audience enjoys candlelight and spectacular views of the city. This concert exploring Nichols' compositions will be the final Jazz at the Penthouse concert in the 2003-2004 season.
Herbie Nichols was born in New York City on January 3, 1919. A contemporary of Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, Nichols was a brilliant composer-pianist who was under-recognized in his lifetime. Despite having few opportunities to perform and record his music, and without the benefit of a working band, he managed to develop a strikingly original body of work. An oblique use of melody, an emphasis on groove, and a love of extended forms are all hallmarks of his compositional style. Although Nichols openly expressed his desire to hear his music scored for horns, his scant discography as a leader - comprised of three albums for Blue Note and one for Bethlehem Records - were all recorded in a trio format in the mid-1950s.
The Herbie Nichols Project is one of the many ongoing projects of the Jazz Composers Collective, a non-profit, musician-run organization dedicated to fostering and presenting original works and building new audiences for jazz. Formed in 1994, two years after the Collective's founding, the Herbie Nichols Project is somewhat of a departure for the Collective in that it focuses on the music of a composer from the past. In the mid-1990s, members of the Collective tracked down several dozen previously unrecorded works by Nichols at the Library of Congress. Since then the Collective has have had the good fortune to perform his music in groups ranging in size from quartet to octet for audiences across the U.S. and abroad, and to record three albums along the way: Strange City for Palmetto Records (2001), and Dr. Cyclops' Dream (1999) and Love Is Proximity (1996) both on Soul Note Records. Bassist Ben Allison and pianist Frank Kimbrough co-lead the Herbie Nichols Project. They are both founding members of the Jazz Composers Collective. The other esteemed members of the Herbie Nichols Project are trumpeter Ron Horton, saxophonists Ted Nash and Michael Blake, and drummer Matt Wilson.
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