| Jazz |
Nick Biello: A Composer Caught Between Eras, Playing Jazz for the Present With Echoes of the Past
Nick Biello is a rare breed in today’s jazz landscape: a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work bridges the often-elusive gap between history and innovation. At once rooted in the angular language of post-bebop and fully attuned to the eclectic rhythms of the 21st century, Biello’s music doesn’t simply nod to tradition, it weaves it into something unmistakably of the moment.
Over the years, Biello has earned the kind of reverence that is quietly built rather than loudly proclaimed. A seasoned performer, he has shared stages with giants of the genre, Slide Hampton, Cedar Walton, the Jimmy Heath Big Band, and bassist John Benítez among them. His sound has graced international jazz festivals from Pescara and Bussi in Italy to Taipei and Taichung in Taiwan, as well as a constellation of others around the globe. In New York City, arguably the most demanding proving ground in jazz, Biello has become a fixture in hallowed venues like Birdland, the Blue Note, Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Cellar Dog, Smalls, Mezzrow, Smoke, Zinc Bar, The Kitano, Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, and Sony Hall.
His latest project, New America, is a testament to his compositional ambition and interpretive daring. The album, comprised of six extended pieces, unfolds with the logic of a suite and the spontaneity of a jam session. The tracks are long, but never languorous. Each one passes like a lightning flash, thanks to a compositional architecture that is as intricate as it is immersive.
There is no easy entry point here: this is jazz that challenges as much as it rewards. Listeners with a taste for cerebral harmonies and dense arrangements will find much to admire; traditionalists hoping for swing-era comfort food may be left searching for solid ground.
There are even moments where Biello flirts with the dissonant textures of urban free jazz, sharp edges, restless rhythms, unexpected turns. And yet, the experience never feels academic. There is a sense of poetic intuition running through the music, as if Biello isn’t just composing, he’s storytelling. That narrative instinct is hardly surprising from an artist who has arranged music for a strikingly diverse list of collaborators, from Stevie Wonder to Dave Koz to Kelly Rowland. He is, in every sense, a musical polyglot.
Biello’s gifts were recognized early. In 2009, the prestigious Blue Note label selected the Nick Biello Quartet for its Thelonious Monk Emerging Artist Series, a program dedicated to spotlighting the next generation of jazz innovators. As part of that showcase, the group performed alongside legendary vibraphonist Gary Burton, a moment of institutional affirmation that confirmed what many in the jazz world already suspected: Nick Biello was an artist to watch.
On New America, his promise finds full bloom. These are compositions that feel both monumental and mysterious, pieces built to be revisited, each listen revealing new details hidden within the folds of the arrangements. The record doesn’t demand attention, it earns it. It invites the listener into a space where emotion and intellect converge, where beauty is not always immediate but always eventual.
In a musical era often obsessed with immediacy, Biello offers something far rarer: the kind of jazz that reveals itself slowly, that rewards patience and curiosity, that asks as much of the listener as it gives. It is not the sound of trend-chasing modernity. It is something older, deeper, and perhaps more enduring, a music that comforts as it provokes, that reassures even as it surprises.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, May 27th 2025
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Tracklist :
Bel Canto
Queen Of JordanSlightly Perilous
Before The Flood
A Long Way To You
New America