Tag: Herbie Nichols

on by

The response to the release of my Herbie Nichols tribute project, Life Is Funny That Way, has been so beautiful. Thank you so much.

A work that’s been a deep part of my heart and artistic work for more than the past decade. It means a lot to get this music into the world and experience the beautiful reaction from so many.

Life Is Funny That Way spawned features in magazines such as DownBeat, JazzWise UK and most recently in the Jazz Podium in Germany.  Herbie Nichols MUSIC is in the ether and consciousness again and I hope that if folks haven’t checked out his glorious melodies that you please do! It was also a way; a strange and beautiful way to reconcile my jazz roots and bonafides with the improviser and conceptualist that I’ve become. And I am extremely grateful to have met in the musicians of Anthony Coleman, Ratzo Harris, Michael Attias and Tom Rainey, great musicians and humans that were open and willing to explore.  It takes like minds and non-competitive spirits to arrive at the choices we have. What more could I ask for?

Thankful for Tao Forms (Whit Dickey/Steve Joerg), for willing to bring Life Is Funny that Way to – Life! Thankful for the artwork of Bill Mazza (see above), the informative and fantastic liner notes from Kevin Whitehead, the permissions given by the Nichols’ Family for work on the album, Andy Taub’s meticulous work at Brooklyn Recordings for the beautiful and rich sound, the crisp mastering of Paul Wickcliffe and all of YOU that expressed your love for what we put down.

So MUCH LOVE for Herbie Nichols SUNG this year – a sample of the ❤️❤️ below

*Top 18 Jazz Releases on Popmatters.com

*Wire Top 50 Albums of the Year

*Top Tribute albums of 2024 from the New York City Jazz Record

*Jerome Wilson’s Best Jazz Albums of 2024 from AllAboutJazz.com

*Wall Street Journal’s Martin Johnson’s Top Albums of 2024

*Bandcamp’s Best Jazz Recordings of 2024 – Honorable Mention

We’re at the Winter Jazz Festival on THURS January 9, 2025
Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street NYC 
6:30 PM Doors | 7:30 PM Show 

Herbie Nichols SUNG performs at 8:15PM (ONE SET ONLY), opening for Aja Monet!

Get TIX at the link
https://lpr.com/ 

https://artsfuse.org/303017/music-feature-the-best-jazz-albums-of-2024/

https://www.yearendlists.com/2024/the-wire-top-50-albums-of-2024

https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/the-wire-s-releases-of-the-year-2024

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/jerome-wilsons-best-jazz-albums-of-2024

https://livingtolisten.blog/2024/12/

on by
Narrowsburg, NY – New Year’s Day

I’m welcoming in 2025.

Can’t wait until it arrives

Will I live to see it through

Will all I care about survive?

I’m anxious with anticipation

as this number of this year gets left behind

and the new beckons in my compartmentalized consciousness

separating numbers/dates as if it means a thing

yet I look forward to the existential leap into the future that starts now

at midnight

everywhere in the world that carries this colonial calendar.

It’s what I’ve got to give definition to the line of past/future

Seeing the future in anticipation, 

will I live to see it through

Will you?

will all we care about survive?
========== fayvictor

I am so grateful to be here, still on the planet with you all. Bringing in this new year

2024 was a mixed bag of kryptonite and joy. Deeply painful and deliciously precious moments. I had highs in 2024 that I’ve never known and had lows I never knew I could handle. Still I’m here, healthy and mostly whole.

I’m humbled by my own jaded sense of ‘understanding’ life to realize that there is yet so much for me to learn and experience. The gamut of life is endless, even when we’re no longer here. 

I move in 2025 with a milestone birthday in the mix, with beautiful work ahead with folks that I love and admire and the promise to take care of myself and those I love better and with deeper intention. 

We all move into this year anxious of what’s to come. I feel that building your community is key to whatever transpires and get a passport, if you don’t have one already. Please. 

May you all find the peace, prosperity and joy you’ve been seeking this year. Just don’t hurt nobody doing it. LOL

Photo by Brian Hartley – at GIOFest woth Gerry Rossi, Clara Warnaar and FV

Some Experiences that Blew My Mind This Year

*Traveling through the night to visit a dying friend. The days spent with him were precious.

*Traveling to Jamaica to celebrate my aunt’s 75th Birthday. We had a ball and it was well timed. Just 4 days earlier, Jochem had a serious panic attack that we first thought was a heart attack. 

The resort stay was what the Doctor of the universe ordered.  He’s OK now.

*Composing and premiering an 8 bassoon piece called NURTURE for Rebekah Heller’s Bassoon ensemble at the Fridman Gallery

*Learning and performing the Psalm of Akhnaten; ca. 1365-1348 B.C. for Talib Rasul Hakim at the New York Performing Library/Lincoln Center with the International Contemporary Ensemble and Either/Or Ensemble

*Performing Bonita Oliver’s For Namesake, which asked the performers to search their own history around our names. This was a powerful work that took me on a journey through family history I didn’t know. especially about my great-grandfather’s successful shipping and design business in Guyana that spawned features in UK and American shipping magazines.  Bonita’s work spawned this discovery.

*Getting back out on the road for the first time since the pandemic. I was out for close to 2 months and it was amazing to be out there again and I want to do it more.  My body was yelling and screaming at me by the time I got home for Christmas, though. It’s clear I need to give my body more care if I want to keep performing on a touring schedule. Also, can we talk about how HARD travel is on our bodies? 

How lugging luggage causes us to twist our bodies in weird ways and the constant conforming to small spaces on planes (I don’t care WHAT class you fly in…) is truly a lot. Still, I want IN!

Performing Herbie Nichols Music at Dizzy’s and The Jazz Gallery in NYC + Industrie Salon in Berlin. Performing Herbie Nichols music IS a spiritual experience for me.

Working, performing and presenting a piece with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra! These are next level humans and great musicians.

Meeting and connecting deeply with vocal powerhouses Elaine Mitchener and Maggie Nicols.  These two vocalists made me feel seen and heard in a way I’ve never experienced before and singing with them both was a dream.

Artwork by Bill Mazza

Coming UP!

Herbie Nichols SUNG at the Winter Jazz Fest!

We’ll open up for Aja Monet on the opening night of the Festival at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, yall. 
Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street NYC 
6:30 PM Doors | 7:30 PM Show 
Herbie Nichols SUNG performs at 8:15PM (ONE SET ONLY)

Get your TIX at the link
Herbie Nichols SUNG
Fay Victor – voice, words, concept
Anthony Coleman – piano
Michael Attias – saxophone (alto/baritone)
Ratzo Harris – double bass
Tom Rainey – drums

on by

Friends,

Hoping this posting finds you well. These are hard and trying times. It’s difficult to feel good about so much in the world right now and I’m not sure the ability to share music is the answer for the urgent, acute matters of life or death right now. Because that’s where we are. We are watching massive death unfold all around the world and I feel powerless to stop it.

So, I try to hold on to the joy, any joy I experience right now, especially if I can experience that joy with others. One of my utmost joys at the moment is the response to ‘Life Is Funny That Way’ Herbie Nichols SUNG, my current release (see last post), out on Tao Forms.

The response has been extraordinary (check below), the emphasis on joy in Nichols music was what I wanted to expose more than anything. Not just how great his compositions are as compositions, but that they harness something more that make them part of the essence of what jazz is, what it means to me. My ideas around this and how I arranged the songs to reflect this very fact has been resonating with press and seems to review new avenues to explore Herbie Nichols’ music.

Press for Life Is Funny That Way

Fay Victor is the rare singer who can demonstrate and interact with the deep vocal tradition while also delving into the daring freedoms that have long been the province of instrumentalists to explore. She does all of this while telling stories with her lyrics as well. To top it off, her vocal tone and control have never sounded better.This is Fay Victor’s best recording to date, not because it encounters “the tradition” but because it looks at a great composer from the past and reimagines the tradition as part of the music’s daring vanguard.—Will Layman, Popmatters.com (9/10)

An avant-garde Nina Simone with the performance punch of Betty Carter, Victor’s unabashed acrobatics mesmerize… 4 STARS—Andy Cowan, MOJO Magazine

“In 2013, Victor formed Herbie Nichols SUNG, the first Nichols repertory project led by a black or female musician. It’s very much her vision – and the arrangements are as inventive as they are tight. In an inspired move,  Victor has set lyrics to Nichol’s compositions, adding new layers of meaning”–Steve Smith, The Wire

“He (Herbie Nichols) was not well known in his lifetime, but today he’s considered one of the great unsung jazz composers. Victor started writing lyrics for his tunes, performing them with the Herbie Nichols Sung band she put together in New York City in 2013. She’s now recorded 11 of these compositions and they’re outstanding.“
4 STARS –J. Poet, DownBeat Magazine

There are several fine Herbie Nichols tributes around, but this one has a unique soul and earthiness created by Fay Victor’s otherworldly singing and the adventurous spirit of her band. This is a superb album, one of the most delightful releases of the year so far.”–Jerome Wilson, All About Jazz

“Victor with her unique vocal approach somewhere between straight and quite free …and the band, this is a real collective excursion, has shed a great light on a treasure that has almost been forgotten – or that was almost never remembered. Fay Victor – and Herbie Nichols – certainly deserve another round of attention.”–Thor Hammerø, Nettavisen

“Life Is Funny That Way” offers a rich portrait of Nichols, and it highlights the contemporary aspects of his music. Ms. Victor’s versatile band includes saxophonist Michaël Attias, pianist Anthony Coleman, bassist Ratzo Harris and drummer Tom Rainey. Their range is a good fit, and her vocals embrace straightforward singing, scat, vocalese and poetic recitation; it’s a style that enables her to explore deeper meanings in songs and broaden their cultural connections. Her influences include both classic jazz singers like Betty Carter and late 20th-century innovators like Jeanne Lee.—— Martin Johnson, The Wall Street Journal

on by
Album cover for Life Is Funny That Way – Artwork: Bill Mazza, Photography: Deneka Peniston

This project started the day I became acquainted with the music of Herbie Nichols. The day I heard his music for the very first time, especially the composition ‘House Party Starting’ I was floored, curious. I hadn’t heard anything like it yet but it was  familiar too. I knew nothing about Herbie Nichols. I happened to stumble on a compilation of his in my then boyfriend’s music collection and pulled the album out based on his face, a warm face with cerebral eyes. 

The music I heard that day connected to my heart immediately as if he were an old friend. A few years later, I had learned House Party Starting and set it to lyrics. The words came like a flash. the whole thing written with the low Amsterdam sun on my shoulder. I sang it with my band. We let go of Nichols intro, started right on the head and used guitar instead of piano. I came out of the box wanting to find my own way with his music, never interested in an archival approach.

Bit by bit, I connected to his music song by song, living with these compositions in my head and heart until I found the words to tell that song’s story as I heard it. This organic process took some years. Around 2010 I started thinking of what group sound would work? I tried tuba,. saxophone and guitar for the Jazz Vault project which performed the music of Monk and Mingus too. There was a period where Misha Mengelbeeg spoke about doing a Monk/Nichols recorded project. That never happened but I did get to play Nichols’ music with ICP (instant composers pool) on a few occasions. 

I was going for something else too. Something I didn’t hear as much as I wanted to hear. Nichols’ music is harmonically complex. The forms can feel strange. There has been an effort to sound out all of these elements in other projects dedicated to his music. This is important.  For example, Misha Mengelberg and members of ICP flushed out these harmonies across 10 players of brass and strings.  Misha felt that was the natural progression for Herbie’s music. I wanted to also focus on the joy in his music. I wanted to channel the cultural connection that he and I share, which has roots in the Caribbean, specifically Trinidad and Tobago where both our mothers are from.  How that impacts expression. 

Thanks and gratitude to Whit Dickey and Steven Joerg of Tao Forms. They both took on and deeply embraced Life Is Funny This Way from beginning to end.  The attention, care and LOVE for this release is something I’ve never experienced in my recording career. This project was carried with love! Thank you to the design/artwork of Bill Mazza and the beautiful photography of Deneka Peniston. Thank you to Kevin Whitehead for the amazing words on Life Is Funny That Way.

To the band – Michael Attias, Anthony Coleman, Tom Rainey and Ratzo Harris. The journey to this day was built organically, gig after gig. Thank you for your patience toward the immersion and your love of Herbie’s music. A joy to have built this world with you all.

Life Is Funny That Way – Herbie Nichols SUNG drops This FRIDAY, April 5, 2024
Double LP and Double CD options available!
Available on all music outlets – tactile and digital from the Tao Forms Label
or via Bandcamp!

From Martin Johnson at the Wall Street Journal (March 30, 2024)

“Life Is Funny That Way” offers a rich portrait of Nichols, and it highlights the contemporary aspects of his music. Ms. Victor’s versatile band includes saxophonist Michaël Attias, pianist Anthony Coleman, bassist Ratzo Harris and drummer Tom Rainey. Their range is a good fit, and her vocals embrace straightforward singing, scat, vocalese and poetic recitation; it’s a style that enables her to explore deeper meanings in songs and broaden their cultural connections. Her influences include both classic jazz singers like Betty Carter and late 20th-century innovators like Jeanne Lee.

The album opens with the title track, which stuns with swaggering confidence, layered improvisations, and a puckish vibe that feels emblematic of the entire Nichols catalog. Ms. Victor also revisits “House Party Starting,” here retitled “Tonight,” and it is highlighted by wry solos and clever interplay by the ensemble.  Her take on “Lady Sings the Blues” adds a chapter to the song’s evolution. The composition began as a midtempo instrumental piece, “Serenade,” but Holiday slowed it to a dirge, her lyrics capturing both sorrow and resilience. Ms. Victor slows it still further, making both elements more visceral, and the song becomes bracing.”

Read full review HERE.