Nir Felder

II

Release Date: June 12, 2020

One of the great things about guitar is that its sound is so infinitely malleable. It can be the purr of a kitten or the scream of a siren, the chirp of a cricket or the roar of a raptor. It can hum, sing, growl, buzz or thrum. In the hands of a master, the only limits are of the imagination. 

And yet there are those, particularly in jazz, who would deny that rainbow-like spectrum. They believe that the purity of the guitar’s palette derives from its limitations, and would define the only acceptable tone as a niche somewhere between Charlie Christian and Jim Hall. And that rigidity forces guitarists to choose between the way it’s always been done, and all the ways it could be done. 

Nir Felder doesn’t fall for that. “What I’ve found through a lot of my life is that people want you to pick a side,” he says. “They want you to decide if you’re on their team, or some other team. 

“But music is infinite. So, do you want to be loud, or do you want to be soft? Well, sometimes you want to be loud, sometimes you want to be soft. Sometimes you want to be in between. There’s no set number of ways to be along that infinite spectrum.” 

One way Felder has consistently been is critically-acclaimed. Upon moving to New York after graduating from the Berklee School of Music in Boston, he quickly became one of the most sought-after musicians in the city. Dubbed a “whiz kid” by The New York Times and “the next big jazz guitarist” by NPR, he was heard with the likes of Diana Krall, Brad Mehldau, Erykah Badu, Terri Lyne Carrington, Jack DeJohnette, Meshell Ndegeocello, John Mayer, Chaka Khan, Common, Dave Chappelle, Dave Matthews Band and others. In 2010, he formed his own quartet, and in 2014 released Golden Age, which was praised as “mesmerizing” (Boston Globe), “lofty and lyrical” (The New York Times) and as an Editor’s Pick, a “great record” (DownBeat). 

Six years later, Felder’s sophomore effort, II, finds the guitarist in a very different place, both musically and personally. “I felt like I was kind of stretched along these lines,” he says. “Lines between genres, lines between being a guitar player who plays melodically versus one who plays texturally. Or being into rock and pop versus being a jazz purist. Or looking towards the past versus looking towards the future. It felt less like I had to choose the exact point on the spectrum where I wanted to live, and more like I could embrace the fact that it is an infinite spectrum.” 

“People still like what they’re comfortable with,” he adds. “But with music, you get the most joy out of it — and you communicate the best — when you’re really honest about who it is that you are. With this record, I wanted to search inside myself and see what sounds I could pull out from deep within. What was waiting inside there that wanted to be expressed.” 

Part of that process was allowing himself the freedom to use the studio to make his music bigger, broader, deeper. Where many jazz musicians try to adhere to the in-the-moment aesthetic of live performance, for II, Felder has augmented his trio — double bassist Matt Penman and drummer Jimmy MacBride — with overdubs ranging from additional electric guitar to synthesizer, sampler, acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, Rhodes piano, and theremin. But the added tracks aren’t just pre-composed orchestration; each began as an additional improvisation, added by Felder to “get to the core” of each piece. 

“I can play these live, stripped down as a trio, and they’re still the songs,” he says. “In the studio, it was like, what can I add to this to tell the story of the song in greater depth? So I would visit each part as a new improvisation on top of the song, to find things that developed the core of the piece. Parts really tell a story, and to get those parts, I’m improvising.” 

For instance, take the album-opening “The Longest Star.” Behind the mournful, guitar melody and echo-laden counter melody there’s a churning banjo part that, strangely enough, tells the song’s origin story. “The song was written on the banjo,” Felder explains. “That droning high-G comes from a banjo part that I later expanded. I think of it as a traveling song, a textural thing that conveys movement to me.” 

On the other end of the spectrum is “Coronation,” which opens with Felder’s slightly overdriven guitar jangling an occasionally crunchy line over the warm growl of Penman’s bass and a shuffling jazz waltz MacBride plays on brushes. Here, the acoustic guitar overdubs are so subtle that they might easily be missed, but are central to the tune’s sense of stillness. “It’s less of a motion song and more of a reflective piece, written about being grounded in the places you are,” Felder says. 

“Big Heat,” with its swaggering, bluesy opening and brass samples, was named for a New York band Felder led in the aughts. “I would put together groups of improvisers, maybe six or eight people, usually with two drummers,” he recalls. “It would be people like Nate Smith, Mark Giuliana, Dave Binney, Chris Speed, Tim LeFebvre, Adam Rogers, and Uri Caine, and we would all just improvise a set or two sets of music.” Felder tries to capture the unbridled spirit of that band through shifting textures and tricky time signatures. “It’s time,” a vocal sample from the Dakota Sioux actor and musician Floyd Red Crow Westerman explains. “Nothing stays the same.” 

Penman’s bass is the most direct connection between II and Golden Age. “I’ve been playing with Matt for a long time,” Felder says. “We’ve played duo gigs together, he played on my last record, I played on his last record. I love his writing, I love his playing. He plays compositionally, and always just naturally fits right in. It’s never the same without him.” 

On “Fire in August,” the dry thump of Penman’s acoustic bass beneath the thrum of Felder’s Stratocaster is a key part of the textural tension that drives its itchy pulse, but the most surprising part of the track comes almost four minutes in, when Penman’s upright is somehow transformed into a Moog. “Matt improvised some stuff there,” explains Felder. “I transcribed it and played it on Moog bass, doubling his original acoustic bass part.” 

There’s also some synth and bass doubling on “Big Swim,” juxtaposed with furiously strummed acoustic guitar and MacBride’s relentless ride cymbal, but the key element here is the burbling keyboard figure that opens the tune. “That started with a synth keyboard I have, running through some delay pedals and stuff,” Felder says. “It has a cooler color palette to it; it reminded me of an ocean, something to swim on.” 

“War Theory,” which closes the album, alternates its melody between Felder’s guitar arpeggios and Penman’s bowed bass, but the glue that keeps the intricately layered rhythmic structures in place is MacBride’s drumming. “Jimmy’s great at understanding what I want for the music,” says Felder. “He can kind of figure out what's in your head very very fast, and make it come to life. He knows how to make someone else's vision come to life in a way that still sounds like him.” 

But that’s not really the end, because waiting in the wings is 2.1, the sequel/sibling to II. “There was a lot of music written for the trio,” Felder explains, “so I had to sculpt it in a way that told two complete stories.” Felder plans to release 2.1 on the other side of the global pandemic, and you can hear hints of that future in “The Longest Star,” which will turn up in a longer version on 2.1. Ultimately, the two albums are just further points on the creative continuum that is Felder’s artistic life. As he puts it, “We’re all sifting through time and space, finding our own truths, and figuring out where they lie along these infinite lines of possibility.”