Many composers, jazz and otherwise, have tried to write pieces inspired by famous artworks, but Ted Nash is one of the few who pulls it off.
His new album with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Portrait in Seven Shades, lays out musical equivalents of paintings by Monet, Dali, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, Chagall, and Pollock—a conventional lot (MoMA 101, you might call it), but that makes his task more challenging because most people know these paintings, they know how they feel when they look at them, so they’ll know very quickly how Nash stacks up.
It’s good to see Nash…