Jazz at Lincoln Center’s newest project, Portrait in Seven Shades, composed by reedman Ted Nash has released a web-cast of Nash playing at the MoMA.  With each day dedicated to a different artist, Nash can be seen playing a piece from Seven Shades in front of the respective works of the artist du jour.

Portrait in Seven Shades tells a story about seven painters—not through words, as in a museum description, but through music. Many parallels can be drawn between art and music. Like painters, musicians talk of colors, layers and composition. Several stylistic descriptors—impressionistic, abstract, pop—are common to both fields. And of course there is the blues.

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A few years ago, saxophonist and flutist Ted Nash received a commission from Jazz at Lincoln Center, in cahoots with the Museum of Modern Art. The result was Portrait in Seven Shades, a program that premiered at Frederick P. Rose Hall. A companion studio album is due out a week from today. (It’s available for preorder through Amazon, where you can preview tracks.)

A few recent spins of the album — Jazz at Lincoln Center’s first release in conjunction with the Orchard, and its first new release of any sort in nearly four years — reconfirmed my enthusiasm for the music. Nash, whose solo career, while always mindful of traditions, reaches well outside a “traditional” nexus, features the orchestra in its most flattering light. The playing is strong, the writing robust. I imagine it will go over just as well next week (Feb. 4 to 6) as it did two years ago.

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