Postscript re: Oliver Nelson

Another element of his art

Recently in this space, we celebrated the arranging work of Oliver Nelson, who for years created dazzlingly inventive large-ensemble jazz projects while also cranking out (equally inventive) music for film and television.

This album, a 1970 release on Columbia/Sony in Japan that was never issued in the U.S., was mentioned. It’s got Nelson’s charts for the whipsmart band led by Japanese veteran Nobuo Hara, and features Nelson as a soloist. The above track, Nelson’s take on Johnny Mandel’s evergreen “The Shadow of Your Smile,” offers a window into another, lesser-appreciated aspect of Nelson’s art: His devotion to the infinite nuances of sound.

Nelson was commonly heard on tenor saxophone; he possessed a deep, cognac-lush tone that brought a sense of ease to the music, and he phrased as if he was in no particular hurry. In his writing for horn sections, he relied on the edgeless openness of his tone to add color and husky dimension to the interior voices.

On “Shadow” he’s playing soprano, which is known to sound thin and whiny, especially when it’s positioned at the center of a big band. As he does on tenor, Nelson defaults to warmth. His tone is round and pure throughout the playful opening iteration of the theme, and assured in that controlled manner associated with classical saxophonists. It sounds to me as though he “heard” his easygoing soprano voice while working on the orchestrations, and wrote to take advantage of it. He conjured extended voicings for brass knowing that his texture-forward soprano would transcend the score — smoothing out any rough edges while, crucially, sending waves of serenity through the music.