Select Facts:
Composer/guitarist Nathan Clevenger was born in Oakland, California, and has been obsessed with music from the moment he was able to reach the keyboard of his parents’ piano.
While living in Brooklyn, Nathan began composing a book of tunes for a quintet which would become the first edition of the Nathan Clevenger Group in 2001. The band performed a handful of gigs and, more crucially, was able to rehearse regularly. When Nathan moved back to the Bay Area in 2003, he immediately organized a west coast version of the band, initially featuring Aaron Novik, Mitch Marcus, Sam Bevan, and Ches Smith. In 2007, the band expanded to a sextet, with the addition of saxophonist Kasey Knudsen. Since forming, the Group has worked steadily at Bay Area venues such as the Revolution Cafe, The Make Out Room, Cafe Royale, the Jazz House, the Ivy Room, and Cafe Van Kleef.
In 2010, the Nathan Clevenger Group released their debut album, The Evening Earth, on Evander Music. The current edition of the band features Clevenger (guitar), Aaron Novik (clarinets), Kasey Knudsen (saxophones), Sylvain Carton (reeds), Sam Bevan (bass), and either Jon Arkin or Eric Garland (drums). Mitch Marcus, having recently moved to New York, is Saxophonist Emeritus.
Besides many gigs with the musicians in his Group, Nathan has been honored to work with assorted Bay Area jazz luminaries, including Lisa Mezzacappa, Patrick Cress, Darren Johnston, Aram Shelton, Cornelius Boots, and Eric Perney, among others. Nathan was a member of composer/clarinetist Aaron Novik’s Cutting Guard and the large ensemble that performed and recorded Novik’s extended work The Samuel Suite (released on the Evander label in 2008). He has also composed & performed original music for theater and played guitar, keyboards, bass, vibraphone and drums on the occasional rock session. He has studied guitar and theory with Morris Acevedo and John Schott. Nathan’s vast personal fortune is no doubt explained by his BA in Modern Literature.
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PRESS:
“(Clevenger is a) fascinating composer. Long-form, dreamy, sectional without being rigid, and bluesy — albeit in a non-traditional way.” - Rachel Swan, East Bay Express
Clevenger’s writing takes a lot from the swing era, but it’s packed with odd time signatures, twisty compositions, and passages of improvisation that go well beyond the old concept of a solo. You don’t get the breakneck tempos of bebop, but neither is the music frozen in the ’40s; the writing is fresh, and the musicians are given free rein to turn things upside-down. Peppy, often pretty, and just a little weird. - Craig Matsumoto, Memory Select
Have you ever gotten a foreign film that maybe you weren’t sure about, but then it ripped your face off, and it was the coolest thing you ever saw, and it somehow synthesized straight-up literary frumpiness with avant-gardeness and unexpected twists and you were at the edge of your seat the whole time but then, afterwards, you couldn’t find anyone else who had ever heard of it? That’s pretty much what their music is like. – Rick Stinson, The Little Black Egg
Abject Prattle:
“Classifying yourself is like punching yourself in the face. It’s hard to get any power behind it.” – David Berman
If forced to label my music, I would say that it’s Modern Jazz (if some sad polemicist doesn’t feel that my music adequately conforms to their personal definition of “Jazz”, I suppose it’s pistols at dawn…). Of course, my music is informed and marked by a fairly pan-stylistic set of influences, which is probably inevitable, given the listening habits of my generation. I’ve tried to fight the pull of excessive fragmentation or compartmentalization by generally focusing my compositional energies on an evolving repertoire created for a single project – my Group — with as much consistency of personnel as possible. I find the inherent “limitations” inspiring and the resultant perspective enlightening. I’m trying to build a city here, not a house, if you will, and I want each piece to comment on and clarify the other pieces in our book.
I aim to make music that is melodic and narrative, though I am inclined to fight the trend toward excessive overt programmatic conceits, preferring to work from more abstract sources. My music is often inspired by language, chains of association, and words themselves.
I am preoccupied with close harmony and a tangled style of counterpoint and I enjoy pushing what one might call tight, precise Chamber Jazz harmonic/melodic elements through a volatile jazz ensemble.
