Nick Mazzarella
What You Seek Is Seeking You
'Sometimes a piece of music seems to trigger a sense of déjà vu. I had that experience listening to the Nick Mazzarella Trio’s new recording. It was as if all the things that had caught my sincere attention for some years was suddenly distilled into one set of compositions. That was an illusion, as déjà vu always is; however, it was not without some substance. I heard traces of traces of Andrew Cyrille, Steve Lacy, and Fred Anderson. This recording hit me like some of those did. The beginning of…
Signaling
On Signaling, Nick Mazzarella and Tomeka Reid compress a wide slice of Chicago’s creative music history into intimate alto–cello dialogues, tracing a clear line from Hemphill/Wadud’s 1970s duets to a present tense that feels urgent and newly carved.