Nick Sanders is a New Orleans native whose body of work as a pianist and composer continues to draw national acclaim. After graduating from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, he went on to study at the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he met saxophonist Logan Strosahl. The duo released Janus, an album “which mines centuries of compositions to create music entirely of the present moment,” in October on Sunnyside Records. Featuring everything from 14th-century compositions to Thelonious Monk and original pieces, the album will take center stage at Snug Harbor on Thursday, November 30 when Sanders and Strosahl perform two sets.
As a child, Sanders lived in Metairie and attended Catholic school, where he was cast in a play written by his second-grade teacher. It was called Of Mice and Mozart and he credits it with helping him define his life’s path at an early age.”That really exposed me to a lot of classical music It was a real moment for me where I was, like, ‘Wow, I love music.’ And then, I started playing piano.” He continues, “I went to the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts for high school and got to study under Mike Pellera, who’s an incredible pianist.”
He continued to hone his chops and made the move to the Northeast for continued studies. “I met Logan when I was a second-year [student] at New England Conservatory of Music,” Sanders tells OffBeat.com. “He’s a year younger than me; we met up and started playing together. We found that we had really great chemistry pretty early on. I’ve now known him for 10 years and we both now live in New York City. We’d talked about making a record for a long time and we finally did it.”
Strosahl echoes his sentiment about the chemistry, saying the recording process for Janus was really easy. “We love to joke with each other, sometimes at the other’s expense. That’s something that sets our sound apart.” Together, they collected swaths of music representing different epochs. “We were trying to build something unique because we’re not just confined to the jazz language,” he explains. “We have an eclectic approach.” But the relatively seamless creative process wasn’t without momentary doubts. “When we talked to the team at Sunnyside [about the concept behind Janus], eyebrows raised because it sounded a little gimmicky that we were going to play all this music from different genres. But for us it was more about playing music that we’re really passionate about,” Strosahl says.
Janus is Sanders’ third release on Sunnyside, the first two comprising albums featuring his piano, bass and drum trio and primarily his original music (both were produced by Fred Hersch). As such, he says putting Janus together provided him with ample opportunity to expand in new ways. ” I was exposed to playing on different types of music; I really enjoyed doing Janus because I have more responsibility because I’m the pianist and have control of the bass and the rhythm. I had more responsibility but a lot of freedom, too. The main artistic difference is that we’re doing such different music, and we look at it as we can kind of improvise on anything. It definitely pushed me in different directions and I learned a lot,” he shares.
Tickets for Nick Sanders and Logan Strosahl’s Snug Harbor 13+ shows (8 p.m. and 10 p.m.), are available here for $15. Of the evening, Nick says “It’s going to be a really fun and a lot different from what most people that play at Snug Harbor do. There’s gonna be a lot of material that people aren’t used to hearing there.”
