The new album project Dreams, Visions, and Illusions from Trombonist Nick Finzer is a culmination of over ten years of leading his sextet “Hear & Now” (whose first album, “Exposition” was released in January 2013) featuring Lucas Pino on Tenor Saxophone and Bass Clarinet, Alex Wintz on Guitar, Glenn Zaleski on Piano, Dave Baron on Bass, and Jimmy Macbride on drums.

The new album is the result of a Chamber Music America “New Jazz Works” grant received by the ensemble in 2020. The album set out to explore the role of the muse in a creative life. The ups and the downs, a sense of searching for the unknown, and navigating a world in which the future is so often veiled and confusing.

1. To Dream a Bigger Dream
2. Aspirations and Convictions
3. Intro to Follow Your Heart
4. Follow Your Heart
5. I Thought I Should Take the Road Less Traveled
6. But I Did What They Said
7. To The Top
8. Visions or Mirage
9. Waking Up
10. Now, Then, and When

This thoroughly embracing, wholly heartfelt new recording opens on the quietly boisterous To Dream a Bigger Dream and the slumbering melodies within Aspirations and Convictions and then brings us the ornately sculptured Intro to Follow Your Heart which, of course, leads us sweetly by the hand into the upbeat and fervent full-length Follow Your Heart, and then we get brought forth the deliciously layered rhythms within I Thought I Should Take the Road Less Traveled.

Along next is the mid-tempo, lushly-organic But I Did What They Said and the reaching yearn within To The Top, and they are in turn backed by the sheer elegance of Visions or Mirage, the album rounding out on the hopefulness within longing found on Waking Up, closing on the buoyant Now, Then, and When.

To Dream a Bigger Dream | Nick Finzer’s Dreams Visions Illusions [Official Video

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