Workshop

Jam With Paul Nash


One of the wonderful things of living in New York City is that you meet very interesting and self-driven individuals and artists. Paul Nash was one of such individuals. He was an orchestral composer and guitarist that founded the Manhattan New Music Project(you can read about Paul, here).


He came to my apartment in Brooklyn a couple of times and we jammed. Those were very spontaneous jams, as we were, for the most part, making things as we went along. I don't know why I recorded this session, but I am sure glad I did. I just pressed record in the DAT tape, so the sound is not polished, but it was a great jam. Remember, it is a jam so there are indeed mistakes, doubts, etc. and a lot of figuring out what the other was doing.


I came across these recordings when listening to all my old DAT tapes to prepare the material for this section of the website. I searched for Paul on the internet to ask him for permission to post these recordings here, and was very sad to learn of his death in 2005 from a brain tumor.


Paul plays a 7 nylon string guitar that is tuned all in fourths, so all the regular guitar fingering change, and I think he was still in the early stages of mastering this "new" instrument. He was also in the early stages of finding the proper amplification system, so his pick-up is really noisy. But music can certainly survive beyond all that, even though with today's technology we often forget. I play a steel string ovation guitar.


I am simply going to list the songs played. In most cases I can tell who is the author of the main idea, and it might be that we are even playing over some of his songs, but I can't ask him now.


  • Jam 1, Abe & Paul
  • Jam 2, Abe & Paul
  • Jam 3, Abe & Paul
  • Blues, Abe & Paul
  • Contemporary Jam, Abe & Paul
  • Last Jam, Abe & Paul