NEW RELEASE: Kristen Lee Sergeant’s ‘Falling’ is due out February 25, 2022 via Tiger Turn

Kristen Lee Sergeant presents magical concept album ‘Falling’ due out February 25, 2022 via Tiger Turn

Release show at Joe’s Pub on March 31, 2022

Watch the Lyric Video for First Single “Let’s Fall”

Tiger Turn Productions is delighted to announce the February 25, 2022 release of Falling, a new album by effervescent vocalist Kristen Lee Sergeant.  This wide-ranging new release further enhances the singer’s well-earned reputation for artistic versatility; here, she combines the roles of vocalist, composer, artist and curator in a striking departure from her previous two critically acclaimed albums. Accompanied by Jeb Patton (piano), Hannah Marks (bass), Jay Sawyer (drums), Jody Redhage Ferber (cello) and Ted Nash (soprano saxophone), Sergeant surrenders herself entirely to the concept of ‘falling’ in a daringly creative leap of faith. 

Based in New York City, both her debut and sophomore releases (Inside Out and Smolder) were awarded DownBeat Magazine ‘Editor’s Pick’ designations and she was praised for “moments of engaging drama, whether she’s seductively sliding into a note with a near-whisper, delivering a breathy revelation or belting out a lyric with full-throated muscularity”. That variety of musical color derives from Sergeant’s rich tapestry of influences that stretch far across artists (Dianne Reeves, Judy Garland, Joni Mitchell and Fiona Apple) and art forms (jazz, theater, opera and 1970s pop). 

Falling, her third studio album, sees a change of direction as Sergeant revisits her formative feel for musical drama. A wholly-immersive experience, Falling is a full-bodied concept album that brings listeners on an extraordinary musical journey, touching on numerous emotional high points along the way. Informed by the precarious times we’re in, but never bogged down by it, Sergeant’s latest is an exploration of the feeling, the state, and even the mythos surrounding the act, and the gravity, of ‘falling’. 

The aptly titled “Let’s Fall” sets the scene, as Sergeant drops headfirst into a dusky night-time landscape full of nocturnal thrills. It flashes through vaudevillian chansonnery and bristling quintet textures, where Patton emerges as a stellar soloist. Sergeant’s natural penchant for storytelling appears on the mythical cathartic journey of  “Sisyphus”, where she tells the age-old tale of “pushing that rock up that hill”. Perpetual resistance is eventually overtaken by a sense of acceptance, as the tune settles into a bobbing, lilting feel that transports the musicians higher and higher.

Sergeant composed “Infinity Blues” after meeting an astronaut, and this piece begins its flight with Nash’s searching soprano solo. “Swing doesn’t have to be retro,” Sergeant notes. She sings, “I’ve got the infinity blues / I want no weight in my shoes”, epitomising the song’s essential, existential drifting through life.

Kristen Lee Sergeant by Jordan Frey

“Chiaroscuro” is an allusion to Renaissance art captured in music, with well-crafted counterpoint featuring starkly lit moments that wax and wane throughout. Next up, the ingenuity of Sergeant the lyricist comes to the fore as “Honey” squeezes out a stream of rich, gooey imagery over a classic get-up blues, where bassist Hannah Marks really lays it down. 

More strong imagery flows out of the ensemble on the fluttering “Birdsong”, as Sergeant warns us of the dangers of settling for illusory comfort when freedom is still an option. “The prize isn’t worth the game,” Sergeant reflects on “Better Off”, but this is an altogether more personal affair, that’s fleetingly brief yet packed with lingering sentiment. “Aren’t I naked enough for you?” she sings, pointedly.

Myths and legends abound on this record – next is the bold, dramatic “Orpheus”. What might Hades sound like? Drummer Jay Sawyer gives us some sort of answer, grooving through triple time into a head-nodding pocket surrounded by Greek chorus-style vocal arrangements. “Autumn Nocturne” then takes it down a notch in a cool, elegant presentation of Sergeant the vocal technician. The energetic span of “Black Magic” is fuelled by Nash and Sergeant’s warring trades and vaults into unhinged surrender. 

With elements of jazz, musical theater, chamber music and 1970’s pop dotting her vast musical landscape, Sergeant paints a vivid musical portrait that is easy to get lost in. “From Greek myths to outer space, I hope to bring listeners on a rewarding and thoughtful journey in sound,” Sergeant reflects. “And I get to be their Virgil, stumbling down ahead of them.” Conceived as a rich multidisciplinary work, partnered with the recording is an immersive conceptual concert, scheduled to take place on March 31 at Joe’s Pub within The Public Theater in New York City.

1. Let’s Fall

2. Sisyphus

3. Birdsong

4. Chiaroscuro

5. Honey

6. Infinity Blues

7. Better Off

8. Orpheus

9. Autumn Nocturne (Josef Myrow, Kim Gannon)

10. That Old Black Magic (Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer)

All music by Kristen Lee Sergeant unless otherwise noted

Kristen Lee Sergeant (vocals, song, arrangement)

Jeb Patton (piano)

Hannah Marks (bass)

Jay Sawyer (drums)

Jody Redhage Ferber (cello)

and Ted Nash (soprano saxophone)

Kristen Lee Sergeant Website

NEW RELEASE: Glenn Close & Ted Nash Present TRANSFORMATION – New Album out May 7, 2021 via Tiger Turn

Iconic Emmy & Tony Award Winning Actress Glenn Close and Grammy Winner Ted Nash Present Collaborative Album Transformation: Personal Stories of Change, Acceptance, and Evolution

Due out on May 7, 2021 via Tiger Turn   

Featuring special guests Wayne Brady, Amy Irving,

Matthew Stevenson, Eli Nash and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

Tiger Turn is proud to announce the release of Transformation: Personal Stories of Change, Acceptance, and Evolution, a landmark recording of reedist Ted Nash and actress Glenn Close’s star-studded, multidisciplinary masterwork. Featuring Wayne Brady, Amy Irving, Matthew Stevenson, Eli Nash,  and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) with Wynton Marsalis. This groundbreaking new release will be available as a CD and digitally on all platforms on May 7, 2021. 

Nash and Close know a thing or two about transforming the stuff of life into art. Close, immortalized by all-consuming, Oscar-nominated roles in Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons, is just as much a cultural touchstone for children of the ’90s for playing the delightfully sinister Cruella de Vil of 101 Dalmatians. Nash, long a JLCO woodwinder, has been no less brilliant as a total immersionist, earning a reputation as a prolific composer for taking compelling subject matter and transforming it into arresting musical narratives. His last two JLCO-commissioned suites for big band—Portrait in Seven Shades (2010) and Presidential Suite (2016)—met with sterling results. Among the luminaries lending their voices to that latter, Grammy-winning project was Glenn Close.

With Transformation, Close has returned for another collaboration with Nash, this time taking on a co-leading role, curating the literary source material for accompanying spoken word performances and voicing some of it herself. The chosen pieces explore the many facets of transformation in the tangible and intangible sense. “Transformation is the highest expression of change. Transformation dictates a dramatic alteration of form or character — sometimes both. The highest compliment one can give a piece of music, or writing, is that it has been transformative for the one who experiences it,” comments Nash. 

About Transformation: 

From the start, Close’s literary selections prove to be compatible partners for Nash’s compositions. Actor and comedian Wayne Brady introduces “Creation, Part I” by reciting the opening lines to English poet Ted Hughes’ Tales from Ovid. Brady’s voice is so authoritative, it’s as though he’s relating Genesis as a first-hand account. Close, no less divinely commanding herself, joins Brady in alternating verses, while the orchestra colors the readings with expressionism steered by pianist Dan Nimmer and bassist Carlos Henriquez and punctuated by short bursts from Sherman Irby on alto saxophone and Wynton Marsalis on trumpet. 

“Creation, Part II” moves beyond meditations on man’s creation to his evolutionary journey, the beginnings of which are interpreted here as endearingly unsteady. Musically, this dynamic is communicated with clarity and levity, as drummer Obed Calvaire’s brushes serve as a foil for Paul Nedzela’s bass clarinet and Henriquez’s bass, which play the tune’s playfully mischievous opening theme in unison. The entrance of Chris Chrenshaw’s trombone announces a transformation is underway—from gawky and lovable to industrious and self-assured. By the time Nedzela enters with a baritone saxophone solo, man knows it’s the man. When, to close, there’s a restatement of the opening theme, the notes are the same but the music projects a more aggressive attitude; Calvaire’s ditched the brushes for sticks. 

The next two tracks, “Dear Dad/Letter” and “Dear Dad/Response” make for an emotionally affecting sequence. First, Nash’s son Eli, backed by the orchestra, reads the letter he wrote several years ago, when he first came out to his father as a transgender man. “I am not changing me,” Eli says, “just my physiology, just how people see me.” Nash’s response, with an opening vamp reminiscent of Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage,” is rife with pride and unconditional love. But words do not adequately capture Nash’s depth of feeling; that’s the music’s job. 

Languid and hypnotic piano from Nimmer introduces Nash’s interpretation of poet Conrad Aiken’s Preludes for Memnon. Close’s voice is flanked by Nimmer’s piano and Irby’s alto flute as she reads an excerpt about the timeless and inevitable cycle of destruction and generation of natural life. Irby and trumpeter Ryan Kisor lead woodwind and trumpet sections that recreate the imagery of the reader’s mind’s eye, while quartet work from Nimmer, Enriquez, Calvaire and Kisor leads the tune beyond the text’s blast radius. 

Next is “One Among Many,” a composition that accompanies the story of formerly imprisoned political radical Judith Clarke. Calvaire’s locomotive-sounding brushes and the on-the-move quality of Henriquez’s bass ostinato, followed by low woodwinds and Nimmer’s balletic piano, conjure the aural symphony of the subway system and frame Clarke’s words of gratitude—spoken by actress Amy Irving— for the mundane freedoms taken for granted until they’re taken away. Still, her crime and its fallout continue to haunt her; she yearns to be fully transformed. The orchestration contemplates being physically free yet still seeking psychological and emotional liberty, with solos from Nimmer and Elliot Mason on trombone before a drum solo from Colvaire links the composition’s cocktail of emotions together.

 On “Rising out of Hatred,” disc two’s opener, a noirish orchestration punctuated by piercing, plaintive calls from Tatum Greenblatt’s muted trumpet serves as score to the story of two college kids—one an observant Jew, the other the heir to a prominent white nationalist family— able to forge an unlikely friendship borne from their shared humanity. 

Brady returns as author and spoken-word performer on “A Piece by the Angriest Black Man in America (or, How I Learned to Forgive Myself for Being a Black Man in America).” Accompaniment is limited primarily to Henriquez and Calvaire who cultivate a coffeehouse poetry-slam vibe. Though carefully timed horn bursts, feathery dustings of flute riffs, and an abridged Brady rendition of an old Chaka Kahn tune find their way in here, as Brady reveals the tenuous relationship with his mother Tessa, and recounts her calling him an “ugly Black [expletive].” 

Ultimately forgiving his mother, Brady concludes by talking about how fatherhood has led him to prioritize forgiveness—of himself as well as others—for the sake of becoming a better role model. It’s on that note that we transition to “Forgiveness,” Nash’s fully instrumental interpretation of the concept. Marsalis, Nimmer, and Nedzela are featured generously here, on what is perhaps Transformation’s most symphonic piece, characterized by distinct movements, as forgiveness is not something one arrives at instantly but, instead, incrementally, in stages. 

Transformation closes with “Wisdom of the Humanities” and “Reaching the Tropopause.” On the former, Irving returns to read words written by biologist E.O. Wilson that offer a stern warning to humans. Wilson marvels at mankind’s but condemns “greed and ignorance” for threatening the environment, calling for a “new transformation in the human status” if we are to save our planet. The latter, borrowed from Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, sees both Brady and Close fittingly returning to lend their voices to the program’s culmination. Meanwhile, Nash’s musical response brings the words to life. Propelled by the rhythm section, Marsalis and Goines soar above the rest, first with individual solos on trumpet and tenor sax, respectively, then trading licks with each other before a dramatic ending.

It’s the type of ending that provides energy as well as the emotional and intellectual heft. It also motivates in a very immediate sense, making for a timely mixture of qualities to aid in the transformations we all seek this year. 

Ted Nash Quintet - Live At Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola (PLASTIC SAX RECORDS May 18, 2018)

Two-time Grammy winning composer and saxophonist Ted Nash releases his first live recording in over 25 years. Known for his larger works (Presidential Suite, Chakra, Portrait in Seven Shades) this much anticipated release provides an opportunity for Nash to share his improvisational side. His inspired solos are impassioned and interactive. On this album he finds new areas of expression that will excite and move you. Ted Nash - alto sax, clarinet, flute & piccolo, Warren Wolf - vibraphone, Gary Versace - piano, Rufus Reid - bass and Matt Wilson on drums. 'These three nights at Dizzy's were electric for me. I think you'll hear in it the combination of great players, with history letting loose on music that has grown with me over the course of my career. On this album we share not just a night of music but the history of collaboration. This performance was also a chance to revisit a couple original compositions in an entirely new context, and re-explore music by some of my favorite composers. ' - Ted Nash

1 Organized Crime

2 Windows

3 Spinning Song

4 Epistrophy

5 Emily (Intro)

6 Emily

7 Sisters

8 Baby Elephane Walk

The Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra (with Jon Batiste & Wynton Marsalis) - The Music of John Lewis (BLUE ENGINE RECORDS 2017)

Few captured the sleek, swinging sophistication of jazz better than pianist, composer, and bandleader John Lewis, who had a long, deep, personal relationship with Jazz at Lincoln Center. “He used to always call our program a miracle,” says Wynton Marsalis. “He used to always say, ‘Keep that miracle going.’” 

In 2013, when the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis set out to honor the legacy of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s maestro, they teamed up with New Orleans’ own Jon Batiste. The bandleader of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and a prodigious pianist in his own right, Batiste joined the JLCO to tackle some of Lewis’s most iconic tunes during a sold-out concert in Rose Theater, the House of Swing.

From the blistering bebop of “Two Bass Hit” to the down-home blues of “2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West”—from small group configurations to the big band might of the full JLCO—The Music of John Lewis captures the elegance and soulfulness of Lewis’s daring compositions. The record also includes a four-movement suite pulled from the Modern Jazz Quartet’s classic recording, The Comedy. 

“The depth of his belief makes his music timeless,” Batiste says of Lewis. “For artists, what remains impactful and meaningful in one’s art depends on the accuracy and intensity of your insights. Mr. Lewis's music is still with us, and it is an honor to place my artistry in the tradition of serving it. So put on this record, listen with your eyes closed, and engage your imagination.”

2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West (7:08)

Animal Dance (3:55)

Django (4:52)

Jon Batiste Introduces the Band (1:03)

Delaunay's Dilemma (5:23)

La Cantatrice (5:08)

Piazza Navona (6:35)

Pulcinella (4:07)

Spanish Steps (4:49)

Wynton Marsalis Discusses John Lewis (1:40)

Two Bass Hit (6:45)

Wynton Marsalis - Trumpet

Ted Nash - Alto saxophone

Chris Crenshaw - Trombone

Jon Batiste - Piano

Carlos Henriquez - Bass

Ali Jackson - Drums

&

The Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra

Chris Rogers - Voyage Home (2016) ART OF LIFE RECORDS

present

Chris Rogers - Voyage Home (2016)

About the Music

Art of Life Records is proud to present the debut release by trumpeter and composer Chris Rogers. "Voyage Home" features the late saxophonist Michael Brecker, guitarist Steve Khan, saxophonist Ted Nash, pianist Xavier Davis, bassist Jay Anderson, drummer Steve Johns, saxophonist Roger Rosenberg, trombonist Art Baron, keyboardist Mark Falchook, percussionist Willie Martinez and a digital sample of the late trombonist, Barry Rogers. Recorded at Sound on Sound Studios in New York City, New York on February 2nd & 4th, 2001. All songs were composed and arranged by Chris Rogers.

Liner Notes 

About "Voyage Home":

At its heart this music truly IS a voyage. Surely the songs here represent my debut as a solo performer and composer, but they also can be viewed as the spiritual and sonic offspring of some of the incredible musicians whom I have personally known my entire life. I am speaking specifically of Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Don Grolnick, Eddie Palmieri, Tom Harrell, Lew Soloff, Mike Lawrence, James Taylor and Barry Rogers. These unique artists - plus others like Hal Galper, Chick Corea, Woody Shaw, John Coltrane, Stevie Wonder, Igor Stravinksy, The Beatles, David Sanborn, Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis - make up much of my musical palette. The incredibly accomplished musicians on "Voyage Home" were handpicked for their value to me both as musicians and friends. Finally, in the true Jazz tradition ALL solos were tracked live.

In Honor of Michael Brecker:

Michael Brecker is commonly referred to as "the most influential tenor saxophonist since John Coltrane". His recorded legacy as a bandleader, co-leader (with brother Randy) and sideman, as well as his 15 Grammys tell only part of the story. Mike was a gifted human being who has profoundly touched peoples lives all across the globe. I am deeply grateful to Mike for his friendship and presence on this album. He is dearly missed but never forgotten.

Selected Quotations

This highly anticipated CD by Chris Rogers has finally hit the shelves! I've known Chris since he was 6 years old. His father, the great trombonist Barry Rogers, was a close friend and mentor to me and my brother Mike. I've watched his progress through the years and can categorically state that Chris is AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME on this CD, and it's so great to hear previously unreleased solos of Mike's (and Barry too!). So check this CD out: Just a heart-felt first-rate endeavor that is sure to bring Chris Rogers the critical and fan-based attention he deserves! ~ Randy Brecker

Chris Rogers: trumpet, keyboards

Michael Brecker: tenor saxophone

Ted Nash: tenor & alto saxophone

Steve Khan: guitar

Xavier Davis: piano

Jay Anderson: bass

Steve Johns: drums

Roger Rosenberg: baritone saxophone

Art Baron: trombone

Barry Rogers: trombone

Mark Falchook: synthesizer, keyboards

Willie Martinez: congas, percussion

Counter Change

Voyage Home

Whit's End

The Mask

Ballad for B.R.

Rebecca

Ever After

Six Degrees

The 12-Year Itch

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