Roy Jay Nathanson (born May 17, 1951) is an American
saxophonist
The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...
,
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Defi ...
,
bandleader
A bandleader is the leader of a music group such as a rock or pop band or jazz quartet. The term is most commonly used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or ...
,
actor
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...
and
teacher
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...
. He became the leader and principal composer of the
Jazz Passengers
The Jazz Passengers are an American jazz group founded in 1987 by saxophonist Roy Nathanson and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes.
The band grew out of a partnership between Nathanson and Fowlkes in 1987, after the two had played with John Lurie's band ...
, a six piece group that he founded with
Curtis Fowlkes
Curtis Fowlkes (born March 19, 1950) is an American jazz trombonist and singer. He is a founding member of The Jazz Passengers.
Career
In 1987, Fowlkes started The Jazz Passengers with saxophonist Roy Nathanson. He has also been a member of ...
in 1987. They have toured Europe many times and played at major festivals in Finland, Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland, as well as the J.V.C. Festival in New York, the
Du Maurier Festival in Canada and toured throughout the United States and Canada. The band has recorded eight albums since their debut release.
Life and work
In 1994, Nathanson composed a variety of songs for an original vocal album, ''Jazz Passengers in Love'', produced by
Hal Willner
Hal Willner (April 6, 1956 – April 7, 2020) was an American music producer working in recording, films, television, and live events. He was best known for assembling tribute albums and events featuring a wide variety of artists and musical sty ...
and Huge Dwyer. A number of guest vocalists were featured, including Jimmy Scoff, John Kelly,
Freedy Johnston
Freedy Johnston (born Frederic John Fatzer in 1961) is a New York City–based singer-songwriter originally from Kinsley, Kansas.
Johnston's songs are often about troubled loners, and cover topics like heartbreak, alienation, and disappointm ...
,
Bernard Fowler
Bernard Fowler (born January 2, 1960) is an American musician. He is known for a long association with The Rolling Stones, providing backing vocals since 1989 and on their studio recordings and live tours. Fowler has been a featured guest vocali ...
,
Jeff Buckley
Jeffrey Scott Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997), raised as Scott Moorhead, was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. After a decade as a session guitarist in Los Angeles, Buckley amassed a following in the early 1990s by ...
and
Deborah Harry
Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached on the US charts between 1979 and 1981.
Born in ...
, who is now functioning as a full-time member of the band. Since the summer of 1995 The Jazz Passengers, have toured Europe and America with Harry, and an occasional guest appearance by
Elvis Costello
Declan Patrick MacManus Order of the British Empire, OBE (born 25 August 1954), known professionally as Elvis Costello, is an English singer-songwriter and record producer. He has won multiple awards in his career, including a Grammy Award in ...
. With this configuration, the Passengers have released two albums. ''Individually Twisted'' (with Harry and Costello), and ''Live In Spain'' featuring Deborah Harry. The band performed orchestral arrangements of their repertoire with Harry and the
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra located in Buffalo, New York led by Music Director JoAnn Faletta. Its primary performing venue is Kleinhans Music Hall, which is a National Historic Landmark. Each season it p ...
in March 2001.
Nathanson also co-leads a duo with
keyboard
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
ist, composer
Anthony Coleman
Anthony Coleman (born August 30, 1955) is an avant-garde jazz pianist. During the 1980s and 1990s he worked with John Zorn on '' Cobra'', ''Kristallnacht'', '' The Big Gundown'', '' Archery'', and '' Spillane'' and helped push modern Jewish music ...
, with whom he has also toured the U.S. and Europe. Their third album, ''I Could've Been a Drum'' was released on
John Zorn
John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jaz ...
's
Tzadik Records label.
As an independent composer, he has scored the work of monologuist
David Cale
David Cale (born David Egleton) is an English-American playwright, actor, and songwriter, best known for his solo performance works.
Early life
Cale was born in England in 1958 or 1959 and grew up in the town of Luton, Bedfordshire. He faile ...
. Their work, ''Deep in a Dream of You'', premiered at Chicago's
Goodman Theatre
Goodman Theatre is a professional theater company located in Chicago's Loop. A major part of the Chicago theatre scene, it is the city's oldest currently active nonprofit theater organization. Part of its present theater complex occupies the lan ...
in 1990 and had its New York premiere at the
Knitting Factory
The Knitting Factory is a nightclub in New York City that features eclectic music and entertainment. After opening in 1987, various other locations were opened in the United States.
The Knitting Factory gave its audience poetry readings, perform ...
in 1992, later appearing at the Joseph Papp
Public Theater
The Public Theater is a New York City arts organization founded as the Shakespeare Workshop in 1954 by Joseph Papp, with the intention of showcasing the works of up-and-coming playwrights and performers.Epstein, Helen. ''Joe Papp: An American Li ...
in April 1993. This was their third collaboration. He has scored several works for
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
, and films by
Jacob Burkhardt
Carl Jacob Christoph Burckhardt (25 May 1818 – 8 August 1897) was a Swiss historian of art and culture and an influential figure in the historiography of both fields. He is known as one of the major progenitors of cultural history. Sigfri ...
and
Tamara Jenkins
Tamara Jenkins (born May 2, 1962) is an American filmmaker and occasional actress. She is best known for her feature films ''Slums of Beverly Hills'' (1998), '' The Savages'' (2007), and ''Private Life'' (2018).
Early life
Jenkins was born in ...
as well as numerous theater productions for playwright Ray Dobbins and others. He has written children's songs for the
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
series ''
Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child''. Several of his songs will be featured in
Karole Armitage
Karole Armitage (born March 3, 1954) is an American dancer and choreographer currently based in New York City. She is artistic director of Armitage Gone! Dance, a contemporary dance company that performs several times annually in New York City as ...
's adaptation of
Sheherazade
Scheherazade () is a major female character and the storyteller in the frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the '' One Thousand and One Nights''.
Name
According to modern scholarship, the name ''Scheherazade'' de ...
at the Florence Opera House, and songs that he has written or arranged have appeared in
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman ( ; February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was a five-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director and is considered an enduring figure from the New H ...
's film ''
Short Cuts
''Short Cuts'' is a 1993 American comedy-drama film, directed by Robert Altman. Filmed from a screenplay by Altman and Frank Barhydt, it is inspired by nine short stories and a poem by Raymond Carver. The film has a Los Angeles setting, whic ...
'' and
Chantal Akerman
Chantal Anne Akerman (; 6 June 19505 October 2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and Film studies, film professor at the City College of New York. She is best known for films such as ''Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 108 ...
's ''Histoires d'Amérique''. He scored the animated film ''Jay Street'' directed by
Suzan Pitt which premiered at the
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, it is ...
in October 1995. A film scene album of his
Klezmer
Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for l ...
- based scene for the 1997 feature film ''
Camp Stories'' featuring MIN Gould and
Jerry Stiller
Gerald Isaac Stiller (June 8, 1927 – May 11, 2020) was an American actor and comedian. He spent many years as part of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara with his wife, Anne Meara, to whom he was married for over 60 years until her death in 2015 ...
was released on Knitting Factory Works.
In 1997 he arranged a
Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg (; born Lucien Ginsburg; 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991) was a French musician, singer-songwriter, actor, author and filmmaker. Regarded as one of the most important figures in French pop, he was renowned for often provoca ...
song for the Jazz Passengers and Deborah Harry for a
Virgin France
Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), Tom Newman. It ...
compilation, and set a poem by
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...
which was released on a Poe compilation produced by
Hal Willner
Hal Willner (April 6, 1956 – April 7, 2020) was an American music producer working in recording, films, television, and live events. He was best known for assembling tribute albums and events featuring a wide variety of artists and musical sty ...
.
Nathanson received two grants from the
Meet the Composer
New Music USA is a new music organization formed by the merging of the American Music Center with Meet The Composer on November 8, 2011. The new organization retains the granting programs of the two former organizations as well as two media progra ...
organization funded by the
Carnegie Corporation
The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world. Carnegie Corporation has endowed or otherwise helped to establis ...
in 1996 and 1997 to create new work with children. The result, ''Dreams of Someday'' was co-written by the children of P.S. 188 in
Queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
, and performed by their chorus and band trained by Nathanson. It was also performed as part of the Texaco Jazz Festival in June 1997.
''The Fire at Keaton's Bar & Grill'', was Nathanson's CD released under his own name by
Six Degrees Records
Six Degrees Records is an independent record label noted for its catalog of recordings from international musicians and vocalists.
History
In 1996, former Windham Hill employees Pat Berry and Bob Duskis founded Six Degrees Records with the in ...
in March 2000. It is a story of a fire in a mythical bar and features performances by many of the collaborators he has worked with in his career, adding
Charles Earland to Elvis Costello and Debbie Harry. It has been performed at Arts at
St. Ann's Warehouse in New York City and at the
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,700-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a Grade I l ...
in London.
As an actor, he has performed in films by
Chantal Akerman
Chantal Anne Akerman (; 6 June 19505 October 2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and Film studies, film professor at the City College of New York. She is best known for films such as ''Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 108 ...
,
Jim Jarmusch and
Elaine May
Elaine Iva May (née Berlin; born April 21, 1932) is an American comedian, filmmaker, playwright, and actress. She has received numerous awards including an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and a Tony. She made her initial impact in the 1950s with her ...
, as well as a variety of downtown N.Y. theatre projects. He was featured in a starring role in the children's film ''Wasserman'' directed by
Peter Lilienthal
Peter Lilienthal (born 27 November 1929) is a German film director, writer, actor and producer. His 1979 film ''David'' won the Golden Bear at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival. His 1984 film '' Das Autogramm'' was entered into the 34th ...
.
He was also featured prominently in a digital/web content series called 'Troubadours', created by
Douglas Sloan (filmmaker). The series profiles artists with unconventional approaches to story telling through music.
His
sideman
A sideman is a professional musician who is hired to perform live with a solo artist, or with a group in which they are not a regular band member. The term is usually used to describe musicians that play with jazz or rock artists, whether solo ...
credits include four years recording and touring with
The Lounge Lizards
The Lounge Lizards were an eclectic musical group founded by saxophonist John Lurie and his brother, pianist Evan Lurie, in 1978. Initially known for their ironic, tongue-in-cheek take on jazz, The Lounge Lizards eventually became a showcase f ...
, work with
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot (;
born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.
His work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, rock, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Wait ...
's ''
Rootless Cosmopolitans
Rootless cosmopolitan () was a pejorative Soviet epithet which referred mostly to Jewish intellectuals as an accusation of their lack of allegiance to the Soviet Union, especially during the antisemitic campaign of 1948–1953. This campaign ...
'',
Charles Earland and
The Shirelles
The Shirelles were an American girl group formed in Passaic, New Jersey in 1957. They consisted of schoolmates Shirley Owens (later Shirley Alston Reeves), Doris Coley (later Doris Kenner-Jackson), Addie "Micki" Harris (later Addie Harris McFadd ...
. He has also performed in special projects including a recent saxophone quartet concert in Brussels with
Steve Lacy and
Ned Rothenberg
Ned Rothenberg (born September 15, 1956) is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer. He specializes in woodwind instruments, including the alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, and shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). He is known ...
in which each of the four musicians contributed an original composition.
He currently resides in
Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
Ditmas Park is a historic district in the neighborhood of Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York City. The traditional boundaries of Ditmas Park, including Ditmas Park West, are Ocean Avenue and greater Flatbush to the east, Dorchester Road and the Pros ...
, with his wife and son. He also teaches at the Institute for Collaborative Education, a public school in Lower
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, with which he has organised several overseas concerts including one in
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...
in March 2011, as well as organizing several bands, both middle school and high school.
Discography
* ''Little Fred'' (Les Disques du Crepuscule, 1990)
* ''The Coming Great Millennium...'' (Knitting Factory Works, 1992) with
Anthony Coleman
Anthony Coleman (born August 30, 1955) is an avant-garde jazz pianist. During the 1980s and 1990s he worked with John Zorn on '' Cobra'', ''Kristallnacht'', '' The Big Gundown'', '' Archery'', and '' Spillane'' and helped push modern Jewish music ...
* ''Lobster and Friend'' (Knitting Factory, 1993) with Anthony Coleman
*''Camp Stories: Music from the Motion Picture'' (Knitting Factory Works, 1996)
* ''
I Could've Been a Drum'' (Tzadik, 1997) with Anthony Coleman
* ''Fire at Keaton's Bar and Grill'' (Six Degrees, 2000)
* ''Sotto Voce'' (Aum Fidelity,2006)
* ''Subway Moon'' (Yellowbird, 2009)
*''Complicated Day'' (Yellowbird, 2014)
*''Nearness and You'' (Clean Feed, 2016)
With Jazz Passengers
* ''Broken Night/Red Light'' (Les Disques du Crepuscule - 1987)
* ''Deranged & Decomposed'' (Les Disques du Crepuscule - 1989)
* ''Implement Yourself'' (New World, 1990)
* ''Live at the Knitting Factory'' (Knitting Factory, 1991)
* ''Plain Old Joe'' (Knitting Factory Works, 1993)
* ''In Love'' (High Street, 1994)
* ''
Individually Twisted'' (32 Jazz, 1996)
* ''"Live" in Spain'' (32 Jazz, 1997)
With
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot (;
born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.
His work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, rock, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Wait ...
*''
Requiem for What's His Name
''Requiem for What's His Name'' is the second album by Marc Ribot & The Rootless Cosmopolitans which was released by the Belgian label Les Disques du Crepuscule in 1992.
Recording
The album was recorded in New York City at Sound on Sound Recordin ...
'' (Les Disques du Crépuscule, 1992)
Poetry books
*subway moon (
buddy's knife jazzedition, 2009)
References
*
*
*
*
*
Roy Nathanson video interview at allaboutjazz.comThe Jazz Passengers Interviews - "Reunited"
External links
Roy Nathanson MySpaceRoy Nathanson's "subway moon" at ''www.buddysknife.com''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nathanson, Roy
Living people
American jazz saxophonists
American male saxophonists
1951 births
21st-century American saxophonists
21st-century American male musicians
American male jazz musicians
The Lounge Lizards members
The Jazz Passengers members
AUM Fidelity artists
Tzadik Records artists
Windham Hill Records artists
Knitting Factory Records artists