NAtO Trio
In August of 2019, NAtO recorded our most recent album as a “traditional jazz" trio, after a series of concerts around Berlin, playing lots of wonderful songs from nearly 100 years ago. Our first instinct to call this collection “Brushstrokes” was because the drummer Ernst only used brushes, not sticks, on the entire album. But this album was also our most loosely arranged to date: spontaneous sketches of mostly old jazz standards, our focus on simply playing and enjoying each other’s musical company. That said, even the newer songs all seemed to fit in with the older ones.
In August of 2019, NAtO recorded our most recent album as a “traditional jazz" trio, after a series of concerts around Berlin, playing lots of wonderful songs from nearly 100 years ago. Our first instinct to call this collection “Brushstrokes” was because the drummer Ernst only used brushes, not sticks, on the entire album. But this album was also our most loosely arranged to date: spontaneous sketches of mostly old jazz standards, our focus on simply playing and enjoying each other’s musical company. That said, even the newer songs all seemed to fit in with the older ones.
Our name for the last 15 years has been the North Atlantic tonal Organization, or NAtO. Our group has existed not only as a trio but also a "collective" with any number of musicians from around the globe. The tongue-in-cheek name reflects the diversity of our past and present members, with the serious hope that such a loose coalition of countries might help us transcend our borders and find some common, humanistic ground. Over our history and even so more recently, it's become clear how broken our systems are. There cannot be a short term solution to such a fragmented world. Our hope as artists is that small gestures like making music will sow the seeds for greater understanding between people who think and experience life in different ways. With that in mind, this album is a simple dedication to our togetherness.
-Kevin McHugh, October 2020