Verbs by Simon Nabatov 3+2

Verbs in and by themselves are substantival and have significance, for he who uses such expressions arrests the hearer’s mind
(Aristotle, On Interpretation)

Language becomes a spellbinding repository for intoxicating revelation and cryptic imagery on Verbs, the latest full-length from the remarkable Russian-American pianist Simon Nabatov, a stunning release augmenting an already notable Clean Feed catalogue including this year’s Tender Mercies with German reedist Frank Gratkowski.

Spearheading his augmented Cologne-based 3+2 quintet, featuring new recruits Leonhard Huhn and Phillip Zoubek, alongside familiar trio members Stefan Schönegg and Dominik Mahnig, Nabatov interprets a series of urging semantics as programmatic springboards for glorious spontaneous invention, a lexical calls-to-arms instigating disparate, virtuosic responses; titular signifiers doubling-up as mood-indicators, signalling variances in tempo, pitch, tone and timbre.

Each of the album’s seven dynamic cuts – all collective improvisations, with the exception of Nabatov’s ‘Breathe’ – harbours an enigmatic sting in the tale,
the quintet scrying for inscrutable layers of additional meaning behind their original impetus, setting in motion a succession of curve-balling epiphanies, alternating between splendid repose and febrile animation.

From the flickering embers of the plaintively purring ‘Prayer’ and hyper-kinetic, fragmented urgency of ‘Race’, to ‘Evolve’’s mangled retro-futurist bustle and the tentative blooms of the shuffling, ever-ripening ‘Reveal’, Nabatov and his fearless crew of cryptographers set out their mystery-laden credos like a kabbalistic bill-of-fare to be incrementally decoded with each successive listen.

Spencer Grady

Simon Nabatov, pianist and composer, was born in Moscow in 1959.
In 1979 he emigrated to the USA, spent in NY next 10 years and 1989 he moved to Germany.
Simon Nabatov played with the "who's who" of the jazz and improvised music community, gave concerts in over 60 countries, appeared on the numerous international festivals, received prizes and documented his music on 30 CD's under his own name.