Russ Lossing: Alternate Side Parking Music

Pianist Russ Lossing is not one to let imposed downtime go to waste. The imposition comes from New York City's regulations concerning alternate side parking which requires, only one day per week, that cars park on one side of the street, for street cleaning purposes. The evening car-moving causes jostling. Sometimes open spots are not readily available. Parallel parking is often required, as is (temporary, we can assume) double parking. Time in the driver's seat results. Lossing put this time to use by writing the tunes for Alternate Side Parking Music.

This may seem odd fodder for an album theme—a full album, not just a single composition—but Lossing's pen, his piano playing and his top-shelf quartet— a piano-led rhythm section and a reed guy—make it work.

The odd fodder is one of the keys.

"Honk" opens the set; it is an angular tune with a stop-and-start rhythm evoking scenes of back-and-forth, reverse/forward chess game parking moves in the attempt to claim a curb spot. Impatient dashboard finger-drumming, on the piano work, may signify sitting still behind the wheel waiting for an opening. "Move It Over" opens ominously on Matt Pavolka's aggressive bass and drummer Dayeon Seok's warped military march. Adam Kolker's tenor sax sounds like a threat to kick somebody's ass—words certainly heard on these New York streets during the car-moving time. Lossing is on Fender Rhodes, his electric notes sounding like echos bouncing off metal fenders.

"Meter Maid" (it is probably not "Lovely Rita") seems at first tentative, the rhythm section untethered but searching, Seok's drums a jumble. But things gel when Pavolka's tenor arrives, Lossing chasing him up and down the street. Then Lossing switches to the Rhodes again and an insistent groove emerges—maybe the meter maid has slapped a few citations on the windshields and developed an attitude.

Attitude is another key. Lossing and his quartet have it, taking the tried-and-true sax-and-a-rhythm-section format into new territory.

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