Given its world premiere on 30 January 2020 in NYC's Rose Theatre, this collaboration between actress Glenn Close and sax player Ted Nash is a follow-up to Nash's Grammy-winning Motema recording, Presidential Suite: Eight Variations On Freedom, a work in which Close featured as one of eight readers. Commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center, Close curated the literary texts and spoken word performances, while J@LCO member Nash composed and arranged all of the music. With its central theme of transformation, the mythic landscape of Ovid's Metamorphoses provides the suitably epic opening, with Close and actor Wayne Brady intoning the opening lines of Ted Hughes' retelling of humankind's birth from Tales from Ovid ("Before sea or land, before even sky/Which contains all/Nature wore only one mask/Since called Chaos."), with Nash's score offering understated interjections. Nash's ‘Creation, Part II’, a feature for trombonist Chris Crenshaw and bari sax player Paul Nedzela, sees drummer Calvaire switching from brushes for the initial statement of the theme, to sticks for its forceful recapitulation. The touching ‘Dear Dad/Letter’ and ‘Dear Dad/Response’ sees Nash's son, Eli, read the letter he wrote when he first came out to his father as a transgender man, followed by Nash's beautiful musical response, with an opening vamp that recalls Herbie Hancock's ‘Maiden Voyage’. Other highlights include Brady's brilliant reflection on race and compassion, ‘A Piece by the Angriest Black Man in America (or, How I Learned to Forgive Myself for Being a Black Man in America)’, the stunning playing of Marsalis, Nimmer and Nedzela in the purely instrumental ‘Forgiveness’, plus the final blaze of orchestral colour in ‘Reaching the Tropopause’, which opens with a segment from Tony Kushner's Angels in America, as the J@LCO metaphorically breaks free from its earthbound condition and launches itself into the stratosphere. It brings to a close a dazzling, powerful and beautifully written work.