ARTISTS

Nir Felder

DL Media Publicists:
Amy Miller
Don Lucoff

Current Contact:

Management:
David Passick

Booking:
The Windish Agency

BIO

REVIEWS

ASSETS

BIO

Called “the next big jazz guitarist” by NPR, hailed by the New York Times as a “whiz kid,” and dubbed “incredible” by the Montreal Gazette, Nir Felder is a new voice in jazz guitar. Growing up in the New York City suburbs, Felder spent his youth playing in rock bands while learning about jazz at the local record store, inspired by icons from John Coltrane to voodoo chile Jimi Hendrix. After attending Berklee College of Music on a full scholarship, Felder moved to New York City in 2006 and quickly became one of the city’s most highly sought after sideman, notching credits in bands led by Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, Jack DeJohnette, Greg Osby, Eric Harland, José James, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Cindy Blackman and performing with the New York City Opera, Dianne Reeves, Bobby McFerrin, Stanley Clarke, Lizz Wright, Matisyahu, Black Sheep and others at venues including Radio City Music Hall and the Village Vanguard and national television stations NBC and Fox.

Encouraged by praise for his unique sound and style and seeking a more personal creative outlet, Felder formed his own group in 2010, performing sold-out shows in New York City and around Europe. A year long biweekly residency at New York’s 55 Bar followed, where Felder was joined by much of the city’s greatest talent, including Kevin Hays, Aaron Parks, Aaron Goldberg, Uri Caine, Greg Osby, Chris Potter, David Binney, Ben Street, Matt Penman, Scott Colley, John Patitucci, James Genus, Tim Lefebvre, Nate Smith, Mark Guiliana, Shawn Pelton, Ali Jackson, Keith Carlock, Anton Fig, and members of Brazilian Girls, Dub Trio, Snarky Puppy and Kneebody among many others. Says Felder, “I felt like when we played, no matter who was in the band, the audience reacted in a way that let us know that what we were doing was something they felt was missing in their musical experience, something they thought was special. Whether they were commenting on the Stratocaster I played or the compositions or the improvisation, the response was always that this was something new and exciting for them, something they felt strongly about.”

Deciding to end the residency to focus on recording the music that had been developed, Nir brought Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, and Nate Smith into Sear Sound in September of 2011. The group had a strong chemistry and sound that was beautifully captured in two days of recording by engineer Chris Allen. Felder then tapped legendary engineer and producer Bob Power (The Roots, Erkyah Badu, D’Angelo, Tribe Called Quest, Meshell Ndegecello) to mix and master the new album. The highly anticipated release, Golden Age (Sony/OKeh), deals with the themes of political, cultural and technological upheaval, with ennui and redemption, with paradise lost and then regained, blurring the lines between jazz and the rock, hip-hop, and pop music Felder grew up listening to.

REVIEWS

ASSETS

GUITARIST NIR FELDER MERGES GENRES ON DEBUT ALBUM,

GOLDEN AGE, AVAILABLE JANUARY 21 VIA OKeh

For guitarist Nir Felder, the song’s the thing. His debut album Golden Age (OKeh), out January 21, puts his skills as a composer and songwriter at the forefront of his creative design, supported by virtuosic technique, not the other way around.

The guitarist recruited pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Nate Smith to help bring his unique musical vision to life. “They are musicians who understand the bigger picture of a song, and approach a song as a song, not just as a vehicle to express their own virtuosity,” explains Felder.

The album, as a whole, was not born of a concept, Felder notes. But the title does provide a unifying sentiment—one of ambiguity and duality. “The album is called Golden Age, and it’s more of a question than a statement,” he says. “We’ve seen a lot of change in recent years—in the music industry, in music technology, in our world, our country, and our city, New York. When I was writing this music, there was a lot of hope in the air, and excitement about change, but also a lot of insecurity and fear about the world post-2008 economic crisis. It looks bad for the arts in New York City at the moment, and some people are nostalgic for the 1980s and early ’90s, when times were rough and unsafe but art and culture were flourishing. Was that a ‘golden age’? Is this one? Has there really ever been one? The question is always, according to whom? So, there is a lack of clarity about whether things are going great or they’re really bad, and the music reflects that.”

To augment the band’s instrumental take on those questions, Felder studied dozens of legendary speeches by politicians, civil rights leaders, and cultural heroes and mixed spoken-word samples from Mario Cuomo, Barbara Jordan, Jesse Jackson, Hilary Clinton, Malcolm X, Richard Nixon, Lou Gehrig, Elie Wiesel, William Jennings Bryan, Russell Conwell, and others into “Lights” and “Sketch.” The results are sweeping, cinematic impressions of history brought into the present moment.

Felder, a native of Katonah, New York, began playing guitar at 13. In the beginning, it was the blues that drew him to jazz: Albert King, Albert Collins, Stevie Ray Vaughan—three masters of tone, with an exciting sound and the tradition of storytelling in their playing. Felder initially bought a $250 Mexican Stratocaster and put heavy strings on it “like Stevie Ray did.” He has played it ever since. Except for the acoustic guitar on “Bandits II,” that Strat is the only guitar on Golden Age.

In high school, Felder relied on guitar magazines, his imagination, and commercially available records for his musical education. In college, he caught the jazz bug, focusing on the roots of the music—Dexter Gordon, Charlie Christian—and falling asleep at night listening to Hank Mobley’s 1960 Blue Note classic Soul Station. By the time he graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and moved to New York City in 2005, he’d won the Berklee guitar department’s Jimi Hendrix Award and the Billboard Endowed Scholarship for musicianship and academic performance. In New York, he hit the ground running, gigging immediately at Small’s with saxophonist George Garzone and rapidly amassing credits that include sessions and performances with Greg Osby, Terri Lyne Carrington, Meshell Ndegeocello, José James, Esperanza Spalding, Jack DeJohnette, Eric Harland, and the New York City Opera. It was not long before NPR labeled him “the next big jazz guitarist.”

In finding his own voice as a jazz musician, Felder did not follow the common practice of abandoning the styles and techniques he had already mastered (such as “bending strings and playing open chords”). “You hear a lot of great advice to play jazz guitar like a horn, like a piano,” he concludes, “but I don’t think it’s necessary to reject what the electric guitar was meant to be—I’ve kept one foot where I came from. That said, I’m ready to explore new sounds, and I have a lot of ideas for new projects, while in the immediate future I hope to keep this band together and continue in the direction we started on Golden Age.”

Sony Masterworks comprises the Masterworks, Sony Classical, OKeh, Portrait, Masterworks Broadway and Flying Buddha imprints. For email updates and information please visit www.SonyMasterworks.com

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@nirfelder

Tracklisting