Nathan Hiltz – Guitar
Pat Collins – Bass
Morgan Childs – Drums
It’s been ten years since jazz guitarist Nathan Hiltz released his first and only solo album Your Love Is A Plane Crash (2007). He’s spent that decade touring Canada several times in addition to lending his immense talent to a wide variety of recording projects, including Jill Barber, Hawksley Workman, The Griffith Hiltz Trio, Melissa Lauren, and many others.
At long last, Hiltz finally hit the studio to record his second solo project Songs Poetic. The setting is an intimate guitar trio, the songs are choice standards, and most importantly this live-off-the-floor session is swinging.
Songs Poetic, recorded in August 2015 in Toronto, is a collection of songs that represent the real Nathan Hiltz: an open-eared guitarist steeped in the bop tradition. Hiltz makes each musical moment count. He offers every audience his very natural, organic melodic instincts. In tandem with bassist Pat Collins and drummer Morgan Childs, Hiltz and company create multi-dimensional improvisations together. Throughout this record of original arrangements of classic tunes, the band supports each other with the ‘give and take’ that makes small group jazz so exciting.
Hiltz says that this record “highlights the immediacy of the moment when we are on stage taking risks together.”
To a jazz musician, being ready for everything in the moment is everything. There is no big break. There’s the being at the right place at the right time, where preparation meets opportunity.
On a Saturday afternoon in 2014, Nathan was about to go on stage in downtown Toronto when he got an urgent phone call asking him if he’d be able to play the guitar chair that night at Koerner Hall with the legendary Boss Brass: Ted Quinlan couldn’t make it at the last minute. Nathan managed to sub out his gig for later that night, finish his afternoon gig, and get a cab home to retrieve his concert blacks and then back to Koerner Hall 30 minutes before downbeat. Playing Ed Bickert’s parts on Rob McConnell’s masterful arrangements to a sold out audience was an inspiring and transformative experience for Hiltz.
“It was a whirlwind of a gig that was over before it even felt like it started” said Hiltz.“To play with the Boss Brass was a lifelong dream that I thought was never going to happen since the passing of Rob.”
These great masters of Canadian jazz recorded and performed their art through the framework of jazz standards. After putting out several critically acclaimed albums of original music with The Griffith Hiltz Trio and Organic, Nathan had to finally record a standards album.
“It was important for me to finally address the jazz canon in a classic trio setting. I’ve been a part of a number of grant funded recordings which stress original music, but this isn’t what I do night after night on gigs. I play standards. After so much time invested in the great American songbook, I thought that it was important to document what I do night in, night out.