Nashville Minimalism Unit

Kurt Newman pedal steel guitar
Patrick O'Reilly guitar
Brodie West alto saxophone
Andrew Furlong bass
Blake Howard drums

Nashville Minimalism Unit is the brainchild of improvising guitarist Kurt Newman, who has played pivotal roles in the Toronto and Austin creative music scenes. A co-founder of Toronto’s Ulterior Music Series in the late 1990s, around the same time Newman established a long-running musical friendship with the composer Martin Arnold, holding down the steel guitar chair in Arnold’s chamber ensemble Marmots.

Moving to Texas in the early 2000s found Newman playing with Sarah Hennies, Sandy Ewen, and Aaron Russell in the Weird Weeds and working with Chris Cogburn to get the No Idea Festival up and running. Upon his recent return to Toronto Newman has revived old partnerships and explored brand new ones, playing often with Brodie West, Nick Fraser, Rob Clutton, Karen Ng, Mira Martin-Grey, Andrew Furlong, Blake Howard and the many brilliant denizens of the wider Tranzac Club-based weird music community. He is a member of Eucalyptus, the Dun Dun Band, Helicopter Money, and the Alison Cameron Trio.

Nashville Minimalism Unit—much like Newman's other project Country Phasers—posits an open-ended freeform exploration of the country music palette with oblong twang oozing atop iterative figures that groove, obsess or mesmerize.