Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project comes to town
With trumpeter Wayne Tucker, reedist Xavier Del Castillo, guitarist Rafael Rosa, bassist Eduardo Belo, & drummer Ben Zweig
Ben Rosenblum is a composer and accordionist-pianist coming from New York to the west coast for four dates with his Nebula Project.
On Friday, March 7, he plays Tyrant Studios; then, on consecutive days, he traverses the province to play the Vernon Jazz Club on Saturday, Nanaimo's Simonholt on Sunday, and Courtenay's Sid Williams Theatre on Monday.
The Nebula Project has two albums: Kites and Strings (2020) and A Thousand Pebbles (2023). The core sextet on both records is Rosenblum with trumpeter Wayne Tucker, reedist Jasper Dutz, guitarist Rafael Rosa, bassist Marty Jaffe, and drummer Ben Zweig. The touring band this week has Eduardo Belo on bass instead of Jaffe and Xavier Del Castillo on reeds instead of Dutz. (Del Castillo does play on part of A Thousand Pebbles.)
My favourite thing I've heard so far from the group is "Sheridan's Reel", played from Lancaster, South Carolina in that compilation above. Anyone who commits to playing Celtic folk in a jazz ensemble wins me as a fan right away.
"Sheridan's" is the second-last tune in the video; the last is "Song of the Sabiá", an Antonio Carlos Jobim composition that appears on A Thousand Pebbles as the only non-original. Appropriately enough, the night before Rosenblum's Friday Jazz at Tyrant, he joins a Brazil-oriented ensemble billed as "Choro & Forró" at the same venue for a Thursday-night early set that should be equally fun and eclectic. Rosenblum has extensive experience as a side musician in those two Brazilian styles, as well as in other folk traditions.
The two Nebula Project albums are Rosenblum's third and fourth as a leader overall; his first two are piano trio records: Instead (2017) with bassist Curtis Lundy and one of my favourite living drummers, Billy Hart; and River City (2018) with bassist Kanoa Mendenhall (who joined Dayna Stephens at Jazz at the Bolt 2024, Vancouver folks) and the Nebula drummer Zweig.
For some more musical preview, here's the group playing "Somewhere" by Leonard Bernstein, which is a track on Kites and Strings – this February 2020 video dates from just before that album's release:
Here's "The Bell from Europe" from the same time, which later became a cut on A Thousand Pebbles:
After visiting us in BC, the band continues to Japan for over a week's worth of dates.
