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Rebecca Nash is a pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and educator from Bristol, England. Her wide-ranging original music draws on influences from soul-jazz, electronica, rock, drum'n'bass, and more. She is an integral part of Bristol's wildly diverse and collaborative music scene, and London's, too: She's been he keyboardist in the vanguard jazz project Dee Byrne's Entropi since 2010, pianist and arranger for the ten-piece Paradox Ensemble, a core member of the Nick Walters' Quintet, and a collaborator with vocalist/songwriter Sara Colman. Nash released The Peaceful King, her leader debut, in 2018 and followed it with 2022's Redefining Element 78.
Nash was born and raised in Bristol. She began studying classical piano while in school and was a pop enthusiast early on. At 12, a family member gave her a copy of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue as a birthday gift and the jazz floodgates opened. Shortly thereafter she heard Bill Evans' solo piano version of "Waltz for Debby." Completely under the spell of these recordings, Nash continued her piano studies. At 15, her uncle took her under his wing and taught her jazz piano, harmony, theory, and the basics of improvisation. Between 2003 and 2007, Nash attended the Welsh Royal College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, Wales, and earned her Bachelor of Music degree. She completed her Master's at Trinity College of Music in London in 2010 and formed her own trio.
In 2011, she joined trumpeter Nick Walters' Paradox Ensemble. In 2013 she appeared on their debut EP Entanglement. She also collaborated with jazz singer Rosalie Genay on the album Realms, offering unique arrangements of songs by Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, and served as pianist/keyboardist on Benin City's debut album Fires in the Park. The following year, Nash joined the London-based folk-jazz ensemble Flekd, who released its eponymous debut. She also joined saxophonist and composer Dee Byrne's Entropi project.
Nash is an active composer for radio and theater. She has written for BBC radio, SWAN Theatre Company, and The Dena Lague Dance Company. In 2015, Nash and her trio backed jazz singer Josephine Arthur on her debut album, Break Free and Entropi released their debut, New Era. In addition to her playing and performing, Nash is also an educator; she has served in that role for the Cheltenham Festivals, Birmingham Jazzlines, and at Birmingham Conservatoire (where she is artist-in-residence). She is currently the chief instructor for B: Music's Rise Up program, mentoring six female musicians between the ages of 16 and 25 individually and collectively.
In 2017, after working the U.K. circuit and playing her share of festivals, Entropi recorded their sophomore album, Moment Frozen. Nash also formed Atlas, a sextet that included Walters on electronics, longtime associate and fellow Entropi member Matt Fisher on drums, Nick Malcolm on trumpet, bassist Chris Mapp, and guitarist Thomas Seminar Ford. In October she brought them into Birmingham's Highbury Recording Studio and cut six of her own compositions and two by Julian Siegel. Three tunes included vocals, so she enlisted jazz vocalist Sara Colman as a guest. Though the Nash-produced album was completed in 2017, it wasn't released for almost two years. In 2018, she joined vocalist/songwriter Sara Colman's band for live gigs and the critically acclaimed ballads collection What We're Made Of. She also made Honorary Associate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
While cementing her role with Colman, Nash often played live with Atlas. When the album Peaceful King was finally issued by Whirlwind Recordings in July 2019, it won critical praise across the globe for its graceful, elegant meld of modal and spiritual soul-jazz, electronica, fusion, and pop. Further, its seamless approach to wedding precision to spontaneity was celebrated. The band won a few prime slots playing the We Out Here and London SpiceJazz Soho, the Manchester and Glastonbury Festivals, and the best London clubs including Ronnie Scott's. Nash was also hired to compose the inaugural Rising Star Commission for the Bristol Jazz Festival.
That summer, Nash joined Colman and her band and a string section at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios and emerged with Ink on a Pin, a collection of revisioned songs by Joni Mitchell (the album title was drawn from a lyric in her song "Blue").
In August 2020, during the first break in the COVID-19 pandemic, Nash and Colman holed up in a cabin for ten days at Sage Summer Studios Artist in Residency in Gateshead. Their only company --besides one another -- was chickens. They set about writing music, around a song they'd co-written called "Ribbons," and issued it and "Turning Over Stones" as singles with an album in the works.
In April 2022, Nash and a current version of Atlas that included new guitarist Jamie Leeming and American alto saxophonist John O'Gallagher (whose book Twelve-Tone Improvisation had a profound influence on the music she was composing) recorded the nine-track Redefining Element 78, a work commissioned by the Bristol Jazz Festival. The digital version appeared in December to celebratory reviews. Physical releases appeared in February 2023. ~ Thom Jurek
