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With Blues in Blueprint, bassist and composer Clovis Nicolas delivers his fifth album for Sunnyside Records and one of his most focused artistic statements to date. Framed by the subtitle Inch12 Variations on the Blues,Inch the album explores the blues not as a fixed form, but as a living blueprint-flexible, expansive, and deeply woven into the DNA of jazz.For this project, Nicolas set himself a clear challenge to record an entire program of blues and blues-related repertoire while drawing from a wide range of jazz eras, grooves, and formal approaches. The result is a cohesive yet adventurous journey, revealing the blues as both a historical foundation and an endlessly renewable source of expression.To bring this vision to life, Nicolas assembled an exceptional trio featuring Larry Goldings, heard here in a rare and welcome appearance on acoustic piano, and the masterful Carl Allen on drums. Recorded in New York and engineered by the legendary James Farber, the trio plays with deep rapport, elegance, and rhythmic authority throughout.The repertoire spans an unusually broad terrain. Traditional material such as InchOld Stack O'Lee Blues,Inch famously associated with Sidney Bechet, sits alongside modern classics by Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, Carla Bley, and Wes Montgomery, as well as a 19th-century hymn to close the album. Each selection reveals a different structural or emotional facet of the blues, from stop-time lyricism and bebop sophistication to free interplay and gospel-tinged introspection.Nicolas's original compositions are central to the album's identity. Pieces like InchHutch,Inch InchThe Bass Speaks,Inch and InchGroovy GlobyInch reimagine blues forms through unconventional structures, contrapuntal writing, and fresh harmonic language, highlighting Nicolas's distinctive voice as both composer and bassist. His warm, vocal tone and melodic approach-parti
