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Florian Ross: Tunes & Explorations
by Jack Bowers
Variety and nostalgia are the essence of Tunes & Explorations, the twenty-second album by German-born composer/arranger Florian Ross who observes his fiftieth anniversary by dipping into the Great American Songbook to revive and reshape for his splendid octet a number of luminous evergreens from the Golden Age of American music. Ross underlines the contrast via jazz compositions from Bill Evans ("Fun Ride") and Horace Silver (the closing “Sister Sadie") and his own groovy curtain-raiser, “Baking Magels." The ...
read moreFlorian Ross Octet: Tunes & Explorations
by Pierre Giroux
Florian Ross is a German-born composer, arranger and jazz pianist who has a fondness for releasing albums with double names which began with his debut release Seasons & Places (Naxos Records, 1998). He has continued with that “idée fixe" in almost every year in which he has delivered a release. This year is no exception; the latest incarnation is Tunes & Explorations, an octet session given over (with one exception) to the exploration of some well-known compositions from the Great ...
read moreFlorian Ross: Reason & Temptation
by Jack Bowers
Midsummer 2019 was quite a busy time for Florian Ross. Apparently, the German-born pianist recorded the quartet date Reason & Temptation from June 29-July 2, then returned the following day to the same studio in Koln and added a wind ensemble to record Architexture for another label (Naxos). Reason & Temptation was self-produced on Ross's own label, Toy Piano Records. In each case the core group consists of the pianist's working quartet—saxophonist Sebastian Gille, bassist David Helm, ...
read moreFlorian Ross Trio: Pigs & Fairies
by Jack Bowers
As a composer, German-born pianist Florian Ross seldom strays from the musical basics: melody, harmony, rhythm. As a performer, however, he uses those same basics to fashion a broad palette of sound, coming at the listener from a variety of routes and angles cannily designed to deepen an over-all mood of singularity and anticipation. On Pigs & Fairies, his fourteenth recording since 1998 and third as leader of his trio, Ross uses every weapon at his disposal, ...
read moreFlorian Ross Quintet: Lines & Crosscurrents
by Jack Bowers
Although you'd be hard-pressed to pick Florian Ross' quintet out of a lineup, the German-based helmsman wrests as much color and contrast as can be envisioned from a group that includes himself on piano or synthesizer, Markus Segschneider on pedal steel guitar and Niels Klein on clarinet, bass clarinet or tenor sax. If the music on Lines & Crosscurrents veers at times toward smooth jazz, it never quite crosses that line, thanks mostly to Ross's perceptive charts and the quintet's ...
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