Nels Cline: Lovers

A visionary guitarist and member of the superstar band Wilco, Nels Cline has brilliantly balanced his career as a major pop music figure and a boundary-breaking exploratory musician. With a background encompassing experimental rock with iconoclasts Mike Watt and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore as well as the fringes of jazz and improvised music with Julius Hemphill and Wadada Leo Smith, Cline was dubbed “the Avant Romantic” by Rolling Stone, who placed him among their 2007 "Top 20 New Guitar Gods" and 2011 list of "Greatest Guitarists of All Time." In addition to his innumerable collaborations, including an audacious 1999 revisiting of John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space with drummer Gregg Bendian, Cline leads a number of stimulating ensembles including The Nels Cline Singers, featuring bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Scott Amendola. For this night, he performs music from his expansive new Blue Note album Lovers, a suite of music inspired by Bill Evans, Gil Evans, and Jim Hall that is built around the themes of love and intimacy, with a band including guitarist Julian Lage, violinist Carla Kihlstedt, and trumpeter Steven Bernstein. Cline describes the project this way: “I have been dreaming about, planning, and re-working my rather obsessive idea of this record for well over twenty-five years. I hope Lovers offers something of an update of the “mood music” idea and ideal, while celebrating and challenging our iconic notion of romance.”

ARTIST PERSONNEL
Nels Cline guitar
Michael Leonhart conductor, trumpet
Carla Kihlstedt violin
Marika Hughes cello
JD Parran woodwinds
Charles Pillow woodwinds
Doug Wieselman woodwinds
Sara Schoenbeck bassoon
Steven Bernstein trumpet
Taylor Haskins trumpet, valve trombone
Alan Ferber trombone
Julian Lage guitar
Yuka C Honda keyboards
Devin Hoff bass
Alex Cline drums, percussion
Kenny Wollesen vibraphone, marimba, percussion

Guitarist Nels Cline On 'Lovers,' An Album 25 Years In The Making (via NPR Music)