Drummer, percussionist and composer Marlon Simon has traveled myriad different paths over the course of his nearly four-decade career. There is the personal journey that has led him from a small town in his native Venezuela to pursuing jazz in Philadelphia, New York, and now his current home in Katy, Texas, a small city near Houston.

Then there are the parallel musical paths in which he’s excelled – playing straight-ahead swing with pianist Hilton Ruiz, traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms with the Fort Apache Band and Chucho Valdes, Latin jazz grooves with Dave Valentin, and progressive jazz propulsion with Bobby Watson.

With On Different Paths, his seventh and most ambitious album to date, Simon merges those disparate trajectories into a single new pathway that stretches far off into a hybrid future.

Due out January 26th, 2024 via Truth Revolution Records, On Different Paths is Simon’s fifth outing with his eclectic band The Nagual Spirits and one that vaults forward from the venturesome fusion of pan-Latin jazz and classical influences on its predecessor, 2007’s In Case You Missed It.

1. Searching
2. On Different Paths
2. Walking
3. Above Thoughts
4. Straight Ahead
5. Un Canto Llanero
6. On Different Paths
7. Missing Them
8. Pa
9. Rumba pa Andy
10. Variations on Erika’s Theme
11. August 17th, 2017

With the stellar music captured here representing the meeting place of multiple journeys: musical, emotional, personal and cultural, whilst at the same time leading down promising new paths, it opens on the enraptured, Baroque-hued Searching, and then comes the impassioned On Different Paths, and they are followed by the gently fervent Walking, the languishing beauty within Above Thoughts and the jaunty Straight Ahead.

Along next is the low slung Pa (itself dedicated specifically to Hadsy) and the vibrant hipsway of Un Canto Llanero (a Venezuelan merengue if ever there was) and they are in turn followed by the genuinely heartfelt ballad Missing Them (dedication to Simons’ late parents, father Hadsy Simon and mother Daisy Morillo), and then we get vibrantly alive Rumba pa Andy, the album rounding out on the triumphant Variations on Erika’s Theme, coming to a close on the gorgeous Venezuelan folkloric rhythms combining supremely with some earnest progressive jazz harmonies within August 17th, 2017 (the date of his death providing the title).

The album, funded in part by Simon’s 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, features the percussionist’s acclaimed younger brothers, pianist Edward Simon and trumpeter Michael Simon, along with bassist Boris Kozlov, trumpeter Alex Norris, saxophonist Peter Brainin, and percussionist Roberto Quintero. They’re supplemented on several tracks by bassoonist Monica Ellis and French horn player Kevin Newton, expanding the group into a chamber ensemble.

“I think with this record I’ve finally found the authentic voice for this band,” says Simon. “In the past, although the Nagual Spirits has explored a lot of different territory, I’ve always played strictly authentic Latin jazz with a touch of Venezuelan folkloric rhythms. For On Different Paths, I took elements from a number of countries, rhythms and traditions and blended them into a mixture that’s specific to this band.”

Marlon Simon & The Nagual Spirits: On Different Paths (TRAILER)