Acquired from his father, and filtered through the Moscow Conservatory and the Julliard, Simon Nabatov’s love of jazz and improvised music possesses a rare versatility...
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When he was three years old, Simon Nabatov began his musical education with his father, a former Soviet soldier who had fallen in love with jazz – and America – while stationed in Berlin after World War Two. Simon went on to study at the Central School of Music and the Moscow Conservatory. The family emigrated and settled in America in 1979 (‘My folks live in the hippest part of New York,’ Simon told journalist Mike Zwerin, ‘and they love it’) and Simon continued his studies at the Juilliard. By that time his interest and involvement in jazz and improvised music had grown strong enough to make them his main activity. Today he composes quite as much as he performs, inventing new forms out of past traditions. Nabatov’s music can be mighty strange – but mainstream jazz and classical influences are always there in abundance.
He has performed and recorded with many fine musicians. His own projects include solo recitals, a trio with the bassist Mark Helias and the drummer Tom Rainey (both based in New York), and the quartet Nature Morte with Frank Gratkowski, Nils Wogram and the British vocalist Phil Minton.
The composers Kenny Werner, Ronan Guilfoyle, and Daniel Schnyder have all written chamber works with Simon Nabatov in mind, and Simon himself wrote and recorded over six hours of music for a radio production project co-sponsored by WDR and Bayer AG. This included the 90-minute work A Few Incidents, based on the texts of Russian writer Daniil Kharms.
Since 1989 he resides predominantly in Cologne, Germany, but keeps an apartment and a part of his heart in New York.
Hayden Chisholm
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