Jazz Articles about Drew Gress

About Drew Gress

Album Review

Even though pianist Sylvie Courvoisier has bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen on hand for Chimaera, the six-piece band is a long way from being merely the storied threesome, which made Double Windsor (Tzadik, 2014), D'Agala (Intakt, 2018) and Free Hoops (Intakt, 2020), plus added guests. As she explains in the liners, the music was originally commissioned for the 2021 Sons d'Hiver festival in Paris and was inspired by the surreal works of French Symbolist artist ...

Album Review

Eva Novoa: Novoa / Gress / Gray Trio, Vol. 1

Read "Novoa / Gress / Gray Trio, Vol. 1" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
February 28, 2024

A vivid sense of drama and its intrinsic, minute shadings of light upon dark places animate pianistEva Novoa's work. Barcelona bred and keening with Brooklyn bravura, Novoa swaps the fore and backgrounds with uncompromised glee. Expressionistic, Impressionistic, and forthright, she aligns and upsets the edges to her liking. That, along with the crackling, crosstown chi of bassist/modular synthesist ((Drew Gress}} and drummer Devin Gray makes music like “Miss Celebrity," “Sushi at 6," in fact the whole of Novoa/Gress/Gray Trio, Vol. ...

Album Review

Sylvie Courvoisier: Chimaera

Read "Chimaera" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
December 5, 2023

It says something about pianist Sylvie Courvoisier's current profile in creative jazz that she could assemble such a distinguished ensemble for her latest release, Chimaera. Augmenting her usual trio of bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen are trumpeters Wadada Leo Smith and Nate Wooley, and with the always interesting Christian Fennesz completing the group on guitar and electronics, one would expect extraordinary results. And so they are--worthy of a lengthy, two-CD treatment, in fact. Courvoisier's work with ...

Liner Notes

George Colligan: Ultimatum

by C. Andrew Hovan
February 21, 2023

Unlike classical music, where so much of the performance is based on an authentic interpretation of the material, jazz has always been more about inventiveness and the musician's quest to find an original voice. Additionally, some of the most innovative artists in the genre have been known not only for their instrumental prowess, but also for great bodies of work that have substantially contributed to the jazz annals. Men like Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Thad Jones, to name only ...

Liner Notes

Yelena Eckemoff: I Am a Stranger in This World

by Mark Sullivan
January 22, 2023

Russian-born pianist/composer Yelena Eckemoff began setting verses from the Bible's Book of Psalms shortly after her conversion to Christianity, even before her emigration to the United States. But she waited until she had considerable experience working with jazz musicians before producing her jazz arrangements. They were first recorded on her album Better Than Gold and Silver [L&H Production, 2018], which presented ten Psalm settings in both vocal and instrumental versions. The detailed story of how Yelena Eckemoff came to set ...

Album Review

Marc Copland Quartet: Someday

Read "Someday" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 9, 2022

Marc Copland is a former saxophonist who found his instrument artistically confining for the purposes of expressing his vision. So he called on his childhood piano training (synaptic memories intact) to make the switch to the keyboard. The results have been magic. His artistry with the 88s is second only to the late Bill Evans, and an argument for his surpassing of Evans could be made. His discography boasts more than forty albums as a leader, beginning in 1988 with ...

Album Review

Yelena Eckemoff: I Am a Stranger in This World

Read "I Am a Stranger in This World" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
August 3, 2022

To feel estranged from one's own mind is among the quiet terrors of modern life. It is this condition, ancient yet urgently contemporary, that Yelena Eckemoff confronts on I Am a Stranger in This World, a double album that treats the Psalms of David not as scripture to be recited but as psychic terrain to be crossed. Following 2018's Better Than Gold and Silver (L&H Productions), Eckemoff returns to these texts with renewed gravity. Where the earlier album relied on ...