http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html John Nasshan's "Quintessence": News Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Sat, 19 May 2012 03:25:11 -0700 http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#61
The Henderson Symphony Orchestra’s 23rd Season (2009-2010)
"Sounds of the Season"
Guest Conductor: Geoff Neumann
Thursday, December 10, 2009 — 7PM
Henderson Convention Center — 240 S. Water St
FREE TO THE PUBLIC

Guest conductor Geoff Neumann will lead the Henderson Symphony Orchestra in this musical celebration of the season. This year’s concert features orchestral performances of Copeland’s An Outdoor Overture and Gershwin’s An American in Paris. An annual audience favorite, this winter concert, includes holiday classics showcasing choirs from Foothill, Green Valley and Silverado high schools. Give yourself and your loved ones the free gift of a beautiful musical experience this holiday season.

This Sounds of the Season Concert is part of the Henderson Symphony Orchestra’s 23rd season and is free to the public. Seating is on a first come first-served basis. The City of Henderson Cultural Arts and the Henderson Symphony Orchestra are sponsoring this performance. For information regarding this event, please contact the City of Henderson Cultural Arts Office at 702-267-2171 or visit the Henderson Symphony Orchestra’s website at http://www.hendersonsymphony.org
(Note: Programs are subject to change)

HSO friends, please share this message with your friends, family and others. Thank you, John...]]> http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#61 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#58 Las Vegas Sun
Mon, May 11, 2009

John Nasshan’s heart pumps music. Beats and tempos flow through his veins.

You might find the 53-year-old drummer performing with the Henderson Symphony Orchestra or with one of his three bands — Quintessence, The Monuments Trio and Coalition.

When he isn’t performing, he’s playing jazz and talking about it on KUNV 91.5-FM or interviewing local artists for his “Arts Alive” radio program.

“I knew I was going to be a professional musician from the time I was a little kid,” he says. “I never thought of doing anything but playing drums.”

Music was his destiny.

His grandfather was legendary percussionist Bobby Christian, who performed with Paul Whiteman, Sophie Tucker, the NBC and ABC radio orchestras and the Chicago Symphony. Nasshan sometimes would watch him rehearse on Sundays and learn.

But his grandfather never gave him lessons.

“He didn’t have the patience for it,” Nasshan says. “He was a perfectionist.” He sent Nasshan to study with his teacher, Roy Knapp, who also tutored Gene Krupa.

“My grandfather gave me one of his favorite snare drums and when I was in the second grade I was going to play a solo at a Christmas concert,” says Nasshan, who was born in Jamaica, N.Y., but later moved with his family to Chicago to live with his grandfather. “He lived in Chicago but happened to be in New York working at the time. Our house was a block and a half from school and he carried the drum and walked with me to the school and stayed for the concert.”

It was one of many defining musical moments in his life.

Nasshan got his first professional gig when he was 12 years old and joined the musicians union.

“I hooked up with a music act that played county fairs around the Midwest,” he says. “My grandfather had been writing their music for years. I went to correspondence school for the whole year.”

In high school Nasshan’s band director was a bass player who had worked with his grandfather’s band when Nasshan was a child. “He started using me at weddings and parties,” Nasshan recalls. “I wasn’t even driving yet, so my dad would drive me to the gig ... then he’d swing around and pick me up afterward.”

Before he was out of high school he was working in clubs in the Chicago area and doing recording sessions. He went to DePaul University and got a call to go on the road with “Gene Kelly’s Salute to Broadway,” starring Howard Keel, Ken Berry and Mimi Hines. “We did 75 cities in 84 days.”

After the tour he moved to Las Vegas in 1975 and transferred his union membership from Chicago. He was 20 years old. “Times were good,” he says.

His first couple of years he played in a lounge at the Sahara, backing up Penny France and Anne Sidney in an act called Penny and Annie.

“About that time I really got into jazz,” he says. “Vegas was full of jazz musicians. This was the jumping-off place for guys that had grown tired of being on the road with Woody Herman and Stan Kenton and Count Basie and Buddy Rich.”

After three years Nasshan quit the lounge scene to become a showroom player.

He’d go down to the union hall and play with “kicks” bands. Back then the union hall was at Tropicana Avenue and what is now Duke Ellington Way. It housed the union, a credit union and a private club where musicians played.

“They would start at 10 in the morning and play till 6 the next morning — all different bands, all day and night,” Nasshan says.

He started performing with the 10 a.m. band and eventually “graduated” to the 2 a.m. slot, when the hipper bands performed. He played there for eight months, selling musical instruments and giving lessons during the day.

Then he started getting calls to play showrooms of casinos such as the Sahara, Desert Inn and Golden Nugget. For about 15 years, he backed up vocalist and impressionist Bob Anderson.

“The funny thing about it is, all the work I was doing and I never had a permanent job in a house band,” he says. “I was running around town like a hired gun.”

He joined the announcing staff at KUNV nine years ago as a volunteer after surgery to remove a parotid tumor.

“They took it out and it upset my facial nerves. There was numbness and things and a bit of atrophy here and there,” Nasshan says.

Brian Sanders, who was the station’s programming director at the time, suggested he volunteer as an announcer because it would force him to speak clearly and help him to recover.

“I saw that as a chance to learn more about jazz while playing music for people,” he says.

About five years ago general manager David Reese made Nasshan a paid employee.

He never stopped working as a musician, performing with the likes of Jack Jones and Rich Little.

He is principal percussionist and timpanist with the Henderson Symphony Orchestra and plays with his own groups at local clubs and sometimes in elementary schools.]]> http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#58 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#56
Please check out the "Calendar" page of this website for complete details of this event....

"Coalition" is:
Tony Branco - piano
Jeff Davis - bass
John Nasshan - drums]]> http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#56 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#55
Pete and Linda are looking forward to playing with "Coalition"...and we are excited about this concert.

Please check out the "Calendar" page of this website for details.....

Pete and Linda Christlieb Coalition The Bootlegger Bistro = ONE GREAT NIGHT OF JAZZ!

"Coalition" is:
Tony Branco - piano
Jeff Davis - bass
John Nasshan - drums

Come join us for a GREAT evening at The Bootlegger on May 14th!]]> http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#55 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#54
For more info on this please go to the "Calendar" page of this website.]]> http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#54 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#53 www.kunv.org ... and you can hear the Best in Jazz on KUNV radio from Las Vegas, Nevada.

I am on KUNV Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2pm to 6pm...every Friday from 10am to 2pm... and every Monday from 6pm to 7pm.

Whether you listen at 91.5FM OR online at www.kunv.org you are listening to the Best in Jazz on KUNV, your Jazz source in Southern Nevada!]]> http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#53 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#52
Different genres find devoted caretakers at Black Label Bar and Lounge

It's 4 p.m. on Saturday and local jazz aficionado Marsha Ross has just greeted me at the door to Black Label Bar and Lounge -- a much tidier place than I'd expected from what was, until about a year-and-a-half ago, the Emergency Room Lounge. Not that that rock venue was such a complete mess, but it had started veering into disrepair by the end. It's a trend that's reversed itself under new management, and it's this weekend I'll find out just how lovingly the space is being used by those who need a home for whatever music they're making it their business to preserve.

From 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. every Saturday, Black Label is the domain of "Jazz Conversation," a three-hour session of unspoken word shared among practiced local musicians who rotate in and out of the gig. Today the stage is owned by drummer John Nasshan's Quintessence -- five guys who combine to make a languid Thelonius Monk-ish sound from piano, upright bass and the saxophone stylings of Dave Stambaugh who, at this moment, solos in a Sonny Rollins vein while standing in front of a mural of, um, Henry Rollins -- one-third of a massive, paint-on-brick pop art piece that also features John Lennon (his 1980 incarnation) on the left and, right in the middle, Jimi Hendrix in all his afro-explosive glory.

"I've been in Las Vegas for 15 years," says Ross, the promoter and producer behind this weekly event. "The jazz they used to have at Four Queens, the Riviera ... it's all stopped. We just wanted to keep all this alive."

She gestures back toward the band, where burly, mustached Nasshan just went double-time on the skins, accommodating a Tony Branco keyboard solo that had been asking for it. That's what Ross means by calling this thing a "conversation." This is how jazz players get eloquent. And for any fan who's witnessed the jazzy Friday night goings-on farther north up Decatur at Pogo's Tavern, this is a similar scene, but in an afternoon time slot that may be the answer to those post-work-week Fridays when going out is just too draining a proposition.]]> http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#52 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#51
"Coalition" is:
Tony Branco - piano
Jeff Davis - bass
John Nasshan - drums

There is a $10 cover charge for this series, and all the proceeds go to pay the band.]]> http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#51 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#50
I actually heard us as a ringtone on someone's cell phone in Philadelphia...that made my day!]]> http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#50 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#49 http://quintessencejazz.com/news.html#49 Creativity and professionalism live here! - John Nasshan's "Quintessence" - News