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Quinsin Nachoff

Stars and Constellations

Review by Gary Hill
This instrumental collection is unusual and very interesting. It’s set somewhere in a shared space between classical music, fusion and art music. The album is made up for three epic pieces. The instrumentation is all symphonic and jazz instruments, nothing one would consider as rock oriented. There are a lot of freeform and experimental vibes, but it’s effective from start to finish, even if it’s unpredictable. Or maybe, it’s effective in part because it’s unpredictable.

This review is available in book (paperback and hardcover) form in Music Street Journal: 2025  Volume 1. More information and purchase links can be found at: garyhillauthor.com/Music-Street-Journal-2025.
Track by Track Review
Stars and Constellations: Scorpio

This starts tentative and builds that way with sporadic and intermittent string pulls. It begins to coalesce gradually for a time before more of a full, but definitely freeform sounding arrangement takes over. This has classical instrumentation in an experimental and art-music based motif. The number works through plenty of twists and turns along the road. At points it’s much more of a freeform jazz excursion. At other times the classical elements take over. At around 19-minutes of music, this has plenty of room to evolve and explore. It does both of those things. There are varying moods, themes and volume levels. The track gets into some serious fusion-like territory at times. It gets really crazed at points.

Pendulum

At just over 14-minutes long, this is the shortest piece on the album. This comes in less tentative and rather jazzy. It’s still quite experimental and freeform, though. While there are some classical leanings and instrumentation built into this thing at times, it remains more full jazz in its construction. It’s definitely dynamic and packed full of twists and turns, though. This gets so powerful at times. If anything, I think this might be an even stronger track than the opener was.

Stars and Constellations: Sagittarius

This whole album is filled with three epics. At nearly 20 minutes long, this is the epic of the epics. The intro section to this has jabs of sound that are both dramatic and very weird. There is definitely a classical music vibe merged with more jazzy things as this gets underway. Dramatic jazz jamming ensues further down the road. It still has plenty of freeform elements, but also grooves pretty well. That gives way to a strange transition, and then some different concepts take over that seem more experimental. This just keeps evolving and changing as it goes. The strangeness that started this piece returns for a short time. They build back out into another energetic jazz groove from there. It turns very crazed and noisy as it approaches the half-way mark. Then it drops down to near silence and symphonic string instrumentation tentatively rises back up from there. This is classical, but also weird in an almost science fiction way as a bass line is delivered with other elements over the top. This builds upward gradually and eventually gives way to an extensive percussion solo that gets pretty crazed. Powerhouse classically tinged jazz takes over from there. That section works through and naturally transitions to take it to the somewhat mellower closing movement.

 
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