Out February 27, 2026, on Whirlwind Recordings
For Patterns from Nature, his vibrant and innovative album out February 27 via Whirlwind, composer/saxophonist Quinsin Nachoff brought together a physicist and four filmmakers to create a powerful 45-minute suite featuring a chamber orchestra and improvising soloists including Nachoff, pianist Matt Mitchell, trombonist Ryan Keberle, clarinettist François Houle, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, bassist Carlo De Rosa, and the Molinari String Quartet.
“Patterns from Nature is a beautifully executed recording and film. What I particularly love is that there is so much room for the fantastic improvising soloists to stretch, while the through-composed chamber-group music remains clearly organised and continually moving. Kudos to the supporting cast of musicians and conductor JC Sanford, who seamlessly shift between a contemporary-classical and a jazz phrasing mindset!” – Ingrid Laubrock
Composition, improvisation, scientific experimentation, and artistic creation: all are parallel methods for discovering and shaping order from the constant state of flux that surrounds us. With his most ambitious work to date – Patterns from Nature (out February 27, 2026 on Whirlwind Recordings) – Brooklyn-based saxophonist-composer Quinsin Nachoff has crafted a large-scale work that investigates the structuring process while existing as a vibrant and innovative example of it.
Created in partnership with physicist Stephen Morris and filmmakers Tina de Groot, Lee Hutzulak, Gita Blak, and Udo Prinsen, Patterns from Nature integrates music and film in a single evolving structure. The work draws on Morris’ research into pattern formation, transforming natural processes into musical form. Developed in parallel with four filmmakers, the project brings sound and image into a single architectural framework from its inception. For Nachoff, Patterns from Nature is the culmination of ten years of exploration into the ways that design and spontaneity can animate one another – an architecture built for freedom.
The 45-minute suite brings together chamber orchestra and improvising soloists including Nachoff, pianist Matt Mitchell, trombonist Ryan Keberle, clarinettist François Houle, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, bassist Carlo De Rosa, and the Molinari String Quartet, whose written parts carry the spark of improvisation.
Premiered as a multimedia work at Hunter College (New York) and the Isabel Bader Theatre (Toronto), Patterns from Nature was developed across New York, Toronto, Vancouver, and the Netherlands, linking musicians, filmmakers, and scientists in a collaboration rare in contemporary music.
The groundbreaking work is the culmination of a decade of exploration and boundary-stretching composition for Nachoff. Through that process, the saxophonist has built a singular language for large-form jazz. Each major work has refined that relationship of architecture and freedom: Path of Totality (2019, the double album that earned a DownBeat★★★★½ review), Pivotal Arc (2020), and Stars and Constellations (2023), leading to the compositional summit of Patterns from Nature.
Each movement of the suite centers on a featured soloist: Mitchell in Branches; Takeishi and the Molinari Quartet in Flow; Houle and De Rosa in Cracks; Nachoff and Keberle in Ripples. The music is detailed in construction yet alive in performance: freedom animated by architecture.
The recording also includes Winding Tessellations (2017), a saxophone concerto that premiered at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, beginning Nachoff’s long collaboration with physicist Stephen Morris and setting the stage for Patterns from Nature.
“I bring together disciplines that don’t usually intersect—physicists, filmmakers, classical and jazz musicians—and let their differences drive the work,” Nachoff says. “When so much gets flattened into dullness, I want to build music that resists easy answers and leaves room for mystery.”
The liner notes come from author Philip Ball (The Music Instinct, Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does), whose writing bridges art, music, and science: “Nachoff’s music takes us beyond the literal…opening us to new ways of experiencing and, in some sense, of knowing.”
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Quinsin Nachoff
New York-based saxophonist/composer Quinsin Nachoff gained early recognition as an award-winning tenor saxophonist, establishing a name as a formidable player “parsing shimmers of Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter and Mark Turner” (DownBeat). He has since carved out a unique career connecting the worlds of jazz and classical music. A consistently impressive output of albums, projects and commissions demonstrate his ability to explore both with equal conviction, whether through his saxophone concerto Winding Tessellations with contemporary chamber group Turning Point Ensemble, his 2018 commission for the Molinari String Quartet, or his remarkable group Flux, which features the stellar talents of David Binney, Matt Mitchell, Kenny Wollesen and Nate Wood. Their JUNO-nominated second release, Path of Totality (Whirlwind Recordings), thrives in the spaces between genres, styles and inspirations, and garnered spots on numerous year-end best-of lists including DownBeat’s The Year’s Top Rated Albums (4.5 stars), which said “Path of Totality is a stunning, deep dive of an album, the sort of music in which one could spend hours submersed.” Nachoff’s 2020 release Pivotal Arc (Whirlwind Recordings) brought together virtuoso violin soloist Nathalie Bonin with a jazz-inflected unit featuring two established giants of the NY scene, bassist Mark Helias and drummer Satoshi Takeishi, and a wind and string ensemble. Nachoff’s most ambitious project yet: a multimedia work collaborating with physicist Dr Stephen Morris, whose area of research is Emergent Patterns in Nature, along with filmmakers Udo Prinsen, Gita Blak, Lee Hutzulak, and Tina de Groot. For this project Nachoff composed a score for a modern chamber orchestra with unique improvisers that bridges the jazz and classical worlds that will premiere at Hunter College, NYC in October 2023.
Quinsin Nachoff – Patterns from Nature
Whirlwind Recordings – Catalog Number WWR4848
https://quinsin.com/
www.quinsin.bandcamp.com
www.whirlwindrecordings.com
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