Skip to content

Breaking News

Trombonist Nick Finzer: Moving From Showstoppers To Music That Tells A Story

Author
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:

Brooklyn-based trombonist and composer Nick Finzer, 27, will bring his sextet to Connecticut on Saturday, Jan. 16, for a debut gig at the Side Door in Old Lyme.

Finzer’s most recent album, “The Chase,” collected pieces composed after he’d moved to New York City from Rochester, N.Y., where he attended the Eastman School of Music and had completed studies at Juilliard. His first record, “Exposition,” came out in 2013.

“I was trying to focus on writing about something, or envisioning something in mind [on “The Chase”],” Finzer says. “Some of the tunes on the first album were just experimenting with writing different kinds of sounds and textures and seeing what happens, just writing tunes for tunes’ sake.”

Finzer was an early member of Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, a New York-based chamber-sized vocal-jazz group known for recasting pop songs — by Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Ke$ha and many others — into genre-bending show stoppers, ranging stylistically from swing to doo-wop to cabaret torch songs. PJ’s videos have racked up millions of YouTube views and have led to high-profile gigs and international tours.

“When I moved to New York, I was calling everybody I knew,” Finzer says. On an off night, a trumpet-playing friend hooked him up with Bradlee to shoot a video. “That project just took on a life of its own.”

Finzer’s regular sextet, called Hear & Now, includes tenor saxophonist Lucas Pino, pianist Glenn Zaleski, bassist Dave Baron, guitarist Alex Wintz and drummer (and West Hartford native) Jimmy Macbride. At the Side Door, guitarist Andrew Renfroe and drummer Allan Mednard will sit in for Wintz and Macbride, who have other commitments that evening.

As a sextet, Hear & Now focuses on group dynamics, the near-intuitive interaction between players and wringing moods and emotions from Finzer’s melodies.

“The Chase,” the blistering-fast title track, elegantly plays with meter, shifting from a blazingly fast 4/4 head to a loose-fitting 12/8. “Acceptance” alternates between 5/8 and 6/8; so does “Why Aren’t You Excited?” There’s also plenty of gorgeous ballad playing, with subtle changes in tone color; Finzer’s speech-like, muted trombone makes an appearance on “While You’re Gone,” while “Search for a Sunset” features some woody bass-clarinet lines from Pino. “Just Passed the Horizon” adds fast swing and some altered-blues soloing, while “Steadfast” settles into a choppier groove and some winding, chromatic changes.

“These all had an emotional story or related to an event or person in my life,” Finzer says. “It was definitely more of a conscious effort to write music that was about something, at least for me. It was a new approach, something I wanted to move toward.”

The positive response to “The Chase,” which was released on Origin Records, encouraged Finzer to book more sextet gigs. “I’m trying to get the music out there,” he says.

In addition to playing music, Finzer is the author of “Get Ahead! A Practical Guide for the Developing Jazz Trombonist.” He’s an active blogger. A few years ago, he started a record label, called Outside in Music, to release “Exposition”; it now helps his friends launch their own music.

“When I did the first record, I didn’t want to wait and see how many record labels would tell me ‘no’ before getting a ‘yes,'” Finzer says. “I wanted to get it out there and get my feet wet and see what needed to happen on the industry side, to get it into the hands of the right people.”

Along the way, Finzer has assembled a sort of musical collective around Outside in Music, which overlaps with some of the players (Macbride, Baron, Zaleski) who play in Hear & Now.

“A lot of us are friends from Juilliard or other schools,” Finzer says. “There have been some relationships that have been around for a long time. … I don’t like to see my friends get taken advantage of.”

The business side, Finzer adds, comes fairly naturally to him.

“As a trombone player, sometimes we feel underutilized,” Finzer says. “We search for other opportunities to be involved in the scene, because not everyone needs a trombone player in a band, like they need a drummer or a bass player. I’ve always sought different ways to be involved and to contribute value to my friends, and hopefully the industry at large.”

NICK FINZER’S HEAR & NOW performs at the Side Door in Old Lyme on Saturday, Jan. 16, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $32.64. Information: thesidedoorjazz.com.