Nica’s Dream | Stories of Standards

Tune in to First Take with Lando and Chavis – weekdays from 6-9 am MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song all week long!

 

“Nica’s Dream,” free-flowing, exuberant and melodic, was written in 1956 by Horace Silver in celebration of his friend Pannonica (“Nica”) de Koenigswarter. Born in England in 1913, she married French diplomat Jules de Koenigswarter in 1935, worked for Charles de Gaulle in WWII and served in the Free French Army. In 1951 a friend introduced her to Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight;” she played it 20 times, missed her flight and shortly afterwards moved to New York, where she spent the rest of her life encouraging, supporting and befriending jazz musicians and their families. “She was like Joan of Arc and Mother Teresa rolled into one,” said Thelonious Monk’s son Toot.

 

Horace Silver (1928-2014) was introduced to Cape Verdean folk music by his Portuguese-born father; in high school, playing piano and saxophone, he encountered blues, boogie-woogie and bop. In 1950 Stan Getz played with a pickup trio that included Horace Silver on piano, Walter Bolden on drums and Joe Calloway on bass; he hired all three and they went to New York. After a year Silver began freelancing and in 1953 formed the Jazz Messengers as a cooperative with Art Blakey, greatly influencing the development of hard bop, while his style has been a model for pianists ever since. Rick Erben quoted Silver as saying “Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.”