Lou Grassi
Web Site
September 2000

Unsung Recordings
Reviewed By
Robert Spencer

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Photo ©
Karen Tweedy-Holmes

By Robert Spencer

Despite impressions to the contrary, Lou Grassi is an ordinary man with only two arms. But anyone who has heard him drum may be forgiven for thinking that he is in fact a group of people, or a multi-armed creature of some kind. Nor does his apparent multi-handedness extend only to the breathtaking facility of his playing - it also refers to his skills across the spectrum, as a composer, an ensemble leader, and a musician of wonderfully varied tastes and approaches.

Think I'm exaggerating? Try this: name one other drummer, besides Lou Grassi, who has performed with both ragtime pianist Max Morath and the peripatetic avant-garde piano artist Borah Bergman. Whose resume includes work with the Warren Vache Sr. Syncopatin' Seven and Sun Ra alumnus Marshall Allen. Who has performed with the Dixie Peppers and with Charles Gayle. Indeed, Lou Grassi is a man with a broad mind, a sweeping imagination, and the skills to carry him through virtually any situation that requires a drum.

This extraordinary musician hails from the green pastures of Summit, New Jersey, where he was born in 1947 (now he makes his home in Manhattan). He took up the drums early enough for it to be now approaching his fortieth year of experience with them, and it shows. He can make them whisper. He can make them keen. He can keep cool, detached time. He can rumble and roar. He can thunder, he can hiss. He can do more than you may think can be done with the drums. He has to be heard to be believed.

You can hear him with the Lou Grassi PoBand, a free-improv outfit he has guided through several thought-provoking recordings. You may, if you're lucky, be able to catch him performing for musical theater and maybe even playing and composing for modern dance groups. Even if you can't, all this experience goes into everything he does, so that his free improv recordings are startling and refreshing testimony to the fact that this kind of playing is not the sprawling exercise in chaos that some make it out to be. Instead, you find the music held together by Grassi's overarching architectonic sense, and steadily propelled in one direction or another by his sharply honed sensibility.

The military might be reluctant to admit it, but they had a hand in developing Lou Grassi's talent. While he played in the 328th US Army Band, Lou began to play freely (after hours, no doubt). This led, after his discharge, to work with Sheila Jordan and Jimmy Garrison in a mixed-media (music, dance, poetry, and visual art) project called the Innermost Society. Later he studied with the renowned drummer Beaver Harris and others. And he played and played, with (among many others): the jazz bassoon player Karen Borca, reedman Rob Brown, The Copascetics, Eddy Davis, the underground California multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia, ESP-veteran pianist Burton Greene, silk-tonsiled vocalist Johnny Hartman, angular saxophonist Chris Jonas, the towering bassist William Parker, and the monumental trombonist Roswell Rudd.

There's also the Lou Grassi Quintet, an eclectic outfit that Lou has been leading for many years. Not to mention the fact that he's active in the Improvisor's Collective (with whom he recorded Cadence Jazz's PoGressions). Lou Grassi seems to be everywhere, and from the sound of his work, that's a great boon for all of us. If you have ever appreciated what a good drummer can add to a jazz ensemble - or wanted to find out - don't miss the multifaceted work of Lou Grassi.

Familiar with Lou Grassi's music? We welcome your comments.