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Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the trombonist/composer Nick Grinder felt a deep attachment to the Farallon Islands that lie just 30 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. Farallones were a constant presence to Bay Area residents, a far-off landscape always on the horizon, ever present but just out of reach. On his second album as a leader, Farallon [Outside In Music], Grinder reflects on the sense of place and reminder of home offered by even such an inaccessible locale.
“When you grow up in a place, you have these markers that end up having a special meaning and feeling that sneaks in and helps to define who we are,” Grinder says. “If you grow up in a city, it’s the streets that you walk on every day or the route you drive to work – inconsequential things that you don’t even think about until you move away. The Farallon Islands were a backdrop to my youth in the Bay Area. And I feel that music is like that, in a way: it has a visceral impact that can follow you throughout your life.”
Hailed by Slide Hampton as “an important future voice in jazz trombone”, Nick Grinder began playing professionally at age 15 in the California Bay Area. Grinder works as a sideman and leader in a number of diverse projects, including the big bands of Alan Ferber, Darcy James Argue, Arturo O’Farrill, John Daversa, Bobby Sanabria, and the Mambo Legends Orchestra, as well as with Wycliffe Gordon, Jimmy Owens, Ralph Alessi, Donny McCaslin, Marcus Printup and many others.
On Farallon, Grinder offers a set of new compositions (and one Thelonious Monk classic) that evoke the sentiments that he derives from his own favorite music. While decidedly modern in approach, the album hews closely to simple (though not simplistic) melodies and warm, welcoming emotions. To achieve the necessary depth of feeling, Grinder assembled a stand-out band of close collaborators: guitarist Juanma Trujillo, saxophonist Ethan Helm, bassist Walter Stinson, and drummer Matt Honor.
Venezuela native Trujillo was a classmate of Grinder’s at Cal State Northridge. The two founded the quintet Long Range, whose live show was documented on the digital-only release Live at the Blue Whale in 2014. Helm, a fellow Californian and gifted composer in his own right, frequently calls on Grinder for his own projects. Stinson and Honor had previously worked together in the band of saxophonist Kevin Sun; Stinson also works regularly with trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, while Honor took part with Grinder in a short-lived sextet called Mend.
With these musicians, Grinder navigates the tricky straits between complexity and virtuosity, a difficult balance that he strives to maintain. While his compositions provide plenty of material to inspire improvisational flights, they are focused with an emotional directness that Grinder hopes will speak to listeners’ hearts and their heads. “I’m trying to open myself up from the intellectual way that I began to think about music while studying it in school,” he says.
Line-Up:
Nick Grinder – trombone | Ethan Helm – alto Sax | Juanma Trujillo – guitar | Walter Stinson – bass | Matt Honor – drums
Track Listing:
1. New And Happy | 2. Potential Intro | 3. Potential | 4. 5 Steps | 5. Inaction | 6. Belly Up | 7. Deciduous | 8. Farallon | 9. Staged | 10. Reflections
Release Date: 22 February, 2019
Format: CD and Digital
Label; Outside In Music
Last modified: May 8, 2019
