Magic Numbers

... Nachoff's compositions are lush but labyrinthine. Interwoven string parts commingle with a rhythm section of astonishing dexterity for a dynamic session that veers from hushed whispers to an almost rock-like intensity. ...

No longer invoking the saccharine compromise of crossover accessibility, improvising jazz units augmented with strings are leading the forefront of new music collaboration. Quinsin Nachoff may be a relative unknown, but Magic Numbers should change all that.

Quinsin Nachoff's disc on Songlines is a strangely striped cat. It has classical music claws with its string quartet of improvising musicians, but with the groovy padded feet of the drums and bass duo of Mark Helias and Jim Black, a pair of killer rhythmists. The combination of jazz trio (Nachoff, saxophone, Helias, bass and Black, drums) with string quartet (Nathalie Bonin and Noémi Racine Gaudreault, violin; Jean René, viola; and Julie Trudeau, cello) makes for a very appealing cocktail, that goes down like a daiquiri, very subtle and elegant, but intoxicating nonetheless. Nachoff's soprano musings are earnest and whimsical, but I prefer the tenor, which he can play with a wider-ranging expressivity. The strings sound great; no surprise, since these are some of the best of the crossover musicians in Québec. The voicings for the violins, viola and cello are creative and fresh, with mannerisms from "classical" quartet writing seamlessly integrated into a more jazz-oriented context (i.e. rhythmically plastic and blues-informed). Some tunes, sound like re-workings of standard jazz repertoire-e.g. "October" sounds like "'Round Midnight." "How Postmodern of Me" is, to these ears, the strongest cut, with its frenetic yet spot-on cross-cutting between grooves, styles, meters, tempi and textures. Most of the disc is, on first hearing, rather startling, with the confluence of dry string textures, the keening saxophone and the urban beats and bass, but this is music that starts from very polished and controlled composition but, happily, does not end there and develops via some risk-taking, yet beautiful playing.

Look carefully at the album title and the instrumental lineup (sax, bass, drums plus string quartet), and consider yourself forewarned: saxophonist and composer Quinsin Nachoff is not writing straight-ahead jazz. Nor, thankfully, is he ginning up pseudo-intellectual third stream bloviation. Instead, he's working a complex but compelling fusion of harmonically complex, densely arranged music that manages to combine all the best energy of funk and hard bop with all the sophistication and intellectual incisiveness of modern classical music. When it works, the effect is electric: the combination of funky drumming, cool strings, and restrained sax blowing on "There & Back" is nothing short of brilliant, and "October" is one of the loveliest and most affecting modern jazz ballads in years. When it doesn't work so well, it sounds like Nachoff is playing more to his colleagues than to his listeners: "Circles & Waves," though aptly titled, comes across as unnecessarily smart-aleck, and the 13-minute-long "Sun-Day" never really gets interesting at all. But at all points on the album, Nachoff's ability to write engagingly and insightfully for strings is jaw-droppingly impressive, and his overall achievement on this album is equally so. Recommended.