Work Space: Clovis Nicolas, Manhattan

Here’s the work space of bassist Clovis Nicolas.

The space is located in Manhattan, in the SoHa neighborhood of Harlem.

Some of the music originating from this work space ended up on Nicolas’s 2014 release Nine Stories.  It was one of my Wondering Sound recommendations back when it came out, and I find it no less enjoyable a few years later.  Of the album, I wrote (in part)…

Nice session from bassist Nicolas, who leads a sextet through a series of straight-ahead tunes.  Many of those tunes take a hard bop approach… some nice swing, some pleasant groove, lots of heat.  But a few of the tracks take on the mannerisms of modern straight-ahead, leading to strong melodies being allowed to roam further from home.  These instances, however, still provide plenty to appeal to the old-school crowd.

Re-listening to the album for the first time in a while, I find that those compositions with a modern sound still burn pretty strong.  That said, it’s also cool to hear a rendition of Sonny Rollins’ “The Bridge.”

Here’s one of my favorites, the track “Thon’s Tea,” which would fall under the modern category…

Your album personnel:  Clovis Nicolas (bass), Riley Mulherkar (trumpet), Luca Stoll (tenor & soprano saxes), Alex Wintz (guitar), Tadataka Unno (piano) and Jimmy MacBride (drums).

The album was released on Sunnyside Records, and you can listen to more of the album on their Bandcamp page.

You can explore more of Nicolas’s music on his Soundcloud page and his artist site.

The album Nine Stories is available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon | eMusic

On the horizon:  Nicolas is about the enter the recording studio for his next release.  It’ll be a quartet date with tenor sax, trumpet, drums and his bass.  He also appeared on the new release, Samora Pinderhughes’ The Transformations Suite, which is in my queue and seemed more than a little intriguing.  You can check it out for yourself on Bandcamp.

*****

Bird is the Worm had a Tumblr site.  It was titled Work Space.  Its raison d’etre was to present the areas where the artist is in the thick of their creativity, the places where the inspiration happens before a project makes its way to a recording studio.

Well, Work Space is still gonna happen, but we ditched the Tumblr site and post those photos directly on Bird is the Worm.  Get in touch if you’d like to be featured.  Here’s a post (LINK) that explains what we’re looking for (but ignore all references to Tumblr, as the previous paragraph already explains).