With her band Smashing Humans, violinist Sana Nagano seeks to break down the deeply human thought processes we can get stuck in. In an interview with Jazz Speaks, Nagano described the way the music for Smashing Humans grew into itself:

I have a strong background of jazz, bebop kind of stuff, and classical music. I love both of them, and I also just kind of wanted to come out of tradition a little bit and merge all the different elements musically, and try out different stuff. To me, there’s not such a strong boundary between music that I have to study, and noise, and sounds that are around. I didn’t want to discriminate or categorize one music, one sound over the other. So I just thought, why do I stay with one kind of jazz, one kind of classical music. I love all of them, as well as many other things I’ve just played as a freelance violinist—fiddle music, Pop music, Rock music, Latin music. I wanted to approach my music more that way, as sound itself, also as vibration itself. I guess we call it free jazz, but that’s just a name.

I speak two languages, Japanese is the first and English is the second. I learned English when I was sixteen, in Oregon, when I was an exchange student. So either language I speak, I’m still the same person. I came from that idea: of course I will have to choose some kind of language—which is maybe some kind of style of music, more or less—but let’s see how far I can break it down, let’s see how much of myself I can be using whatever musical language that I’m using. In a way the stuff I do, especially Smashing Humans, is like a merge. A cocktail of noise music, some kind of classical music, definitely jazz, a little bit of rock, or whatever you want to call it. I think it all should be in it, naturally, not that I tried to put them together. I guess we call it free jazz or noise jazz, but the name is maybe not the most important thing.

This week, Smashing Humans returns to The Jazz Gallery for two sets of performances. They are likely to draw from their 2021 debut album (which you can check out below); however, the band is nothing if not full of surprising twists and turns.

Sana Nagano’s Smashing Humans play The Jazz Gallery on Thursday, February 9, 2023. The group features Ms. Nagano on violin/voice/fx, Peter Apfelbaum on saxophone, Jonathan Goldberger on guitar, Ken Filiano on bass, and Danny Sher on drums. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. $20 general admission (FREE for members), $30 reserved cabaret seating ($20 for members), $20 livestream access (FREE for members) for each set. Purchase tickets here.