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Michael Moss
musician, psychologist, analyst
About Me
As a reed player and composer, Michael Moss has been actively involved in the music
scene for many years,
leading his own musical groups including Mike Moss/4 Rivers and Free Energy. Moss is
President of 4th Stream
Records and ERG Publishing, past-President of Free Life Communication (a musician’s
cooperative in NYC), and
former Music Director of Loft in the Sky Jazz Festival in Lexington, NY. Moss has been the
recipient of numerous
Meet the Composer and NYSCA grants. His label, 4th Stream Records, has produced
multiple LPs, cassettes, and
CDs. Moss just received a generous grant from the LMCC—Lower Manhattan Cultural
Council—to produce three
concerts of his Accidental Orchestra.
Multi-instrumentalist/composer Michael Moss, a veteran of New York’s free jazz scene, has
assembled a new
22+-piece renaissance jazz orchestra—the Accidental Orchestra—comprised of string,
reed, brass and rhythm
sections. For this series of three concerts, Moss composed twelve movements based on
the Kaballah exploring
links between Eastern mythology and particle physics, quantum mechanics, and classical
physics. Each
movement musically expresses a limb of the Tree of Life.
ROOTS to SHOOTS (Warren Smith (vibes, drums), Alexis Marcelo (keys), Adam Lane
(bass), Michael Wimberly (djembe, drums, shakers, shekere), Ismael Baiz (cajon, bongos,
drums)) continues to grow by adding old and new original compositions of my own for this
ensemble. Hot off two gigs at Little Island this summer to overflowing enthusiastic
audiences, ROOTS to SHOOTS performs music stretching from straight-ahead jazz to
gospel, the blues, rhythm and blues, and jazz-infused sounds of the Middle East, Brazil
and Spain. We update Eric Dolphy’s work on bass clarinet playing pieces by Dolphy, Duke
Ellington, Jaki Byard, Charles Mingus and Chick Corea by our jazz all-star group. Still
floating from our performance of ROOTS to SHOOTS at Little Island. It was a real mix of
covers and my original pieces. Pure magic—so much connection and chemistry among
these extraordinary musicians.
The Accidental Orchestra is comprised of a pool of the most exciting improvising artists on
the New York scene:
Warren Smith, Badal Roy, Bob Meyer, Michael Wimberly, Chuck Fertal, Larry Roland, Ken
Filiano, Dom Minasi, Billy
Stein, Steve Swell, Peter Zummo, Vincent Chancey, Libby Schwartz, Waldron Mahdi Ricks,
Brian Groder, Ralph
Denser, Jason Hwang, Rosi Hertlein, Stephanie Griffin, Melanie Dyer, Carol Buck, Lenny
Mims, George Crotty, Tanja
Hoehne, Elliot Levin, Ras Moshe Burnett, Richard Keene, Michael Lytle, Dave Sewelson
and Steve Cohn.
The NEW YORK FREE QUARTET is Michael Moss (tenor and soprano saxophones, Bb
and bass clarinets, flute),
Steve Cohn (piano, shakuhachi, trombone, shofar, Hichiriki), Larry Roland (bass, poetry /
spoken word), and Chuck
Fertal (drums, percussion).
Equally compelling, and exploratory in its emotional color and musical...Moss, Cohn,
Roland, and Fertal have a
strong sense of what they are going for. They sculpt the music with deep textures, and
powerful statements.
These men have access to a vast repository of musical knowledge to draw from; but also
have a great deal of
real life experience that breathes meaning into their music. Dawoud Kringle, New York
Free Quartet on March
15, 2018.
...a fine, loft/free jazz vibe/sound. I love the way everything flows in almost dream-like,
unforced organic way. All
four members of this quartet play so well together, rarely soloing at length and never
taking over completely.
The balance of the elements, warm recording and organic flow make IN BETWEEN
GIGS...CAN YOU DIG?!? one of
the best free/jazz discs of recent memory. - Bruce Lee Gallanter,
My Jazz Story
I was first exposed to jazz when at about age 12 I checked out from the local library (Chicago, IL) John Coltrane's "Giant Steps." I couldn't play anything like that, and still cannot, but I began whistling extended lines all day every day. It just opened my mind to structured improvisation which is the foundation of much that I do today.