Jazz Articles about Drew Gress

Drew Gress: 7 Black Butterflies

by Rex Butters
September 2, 2005

Drew Gress throws his contender for year's best in with 7 Black Butterflies, a crackling collection uniting a stellar cast of players who live up to their collective reputation. With Tim Berne, Ralph Alessi, Craig Taborn, and Tom Rainey fully engaged, Gress holds an all-aces hand. His multifaceted compositions provide the tracks for this ride, while the quintet provides the vivid scenery. While Berne, Alessi, and Taborn usually inhabit worlds of sonic phenomena, the simple acoustic setting here spotlights the ...

Drew Gress: Where My Ear Leads Me

by Paul Olson
July 22, 2005

WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=270>Bassist Drew Gress isn't the busiest bassist ever ("I don't think so, man. What about Ron Carter?, he asked me), but he's probably playing somewhere tonight. He's played as a sideman with Don Byron, Tim Berne, Marc Copland, John Hollenbeck and Uri Caine. But his three albums under his own name--Heyday (Soul Note, 1998), Spin & Drift (Premonition, 2001) and his fantastic new Premonition CD 7 Black Butterflies--are ample evidence that Gress' own compositions and bands are as ...

Drew Gress: 7 Black Butterflies

by John Kelman
June 13, 2005

Along with Scott Colley, Drew Gress must be the most ubiquitous bassist on the New York scene. Gress' broad stylistic reach has allowed him to support artists including pianist Fred Hersch, trumpeter Dave Douglas, and saxophonist Tim Berne since arriving on the scene in the late '80s. Capable of bringing an unerring sense of tradition to mainstream acts and a free-spirited sense of adventure to those from left of centre, Gress has also been gradually emerging as a composer of ...

Drew Gress: 7 Black Butterflies

by Sean Patrick Fitzell
June 12, 2005

Bassist Drew Gress consistently delivers, whether he's playing straight-ahead or outwardly adventurous music. He maintains a vigorous touring and recording schedule with a swath of the jazz community. Though creatively challenging, this approach has limited the time he has to develop his own music. With 7 Black Butterflies, his third CD as a leader, Gress makes a compelling musical statement with structured and purposeful composition, supported by focused improvisation. While the tunes are often complex, both rhythmically ...

Drew Gress: 7 Black Butterflies

by AAJ Staff
May 31, 2005

Most of the music on this exhilarating record defies easy description. Much of it is lyrical, even beautiful. There's some driving, fiery swing. The improvising is of a consistently high order throughout. And Gress contributes his inventive compositions, with structures that challenge the improvisers with knotty harmonies and tempo changes. On 7 Black Butterflies, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and the parts are extraordinarily good.

Tim Berne's contribution is obvious. The alto saxophonist ...

Drew Gress: 7 Black Butterflies

by Mark F. Turner
May 24, 2005

Music that reveals beauty even in the Rhinoceros... To say that Drew Gress may be one of today's premier bassists/composers is a bold statement, but one with considerable merit. The veteran player has profoundly enhanced numerous recordings by names like Uri Crane, Don Byron, and Ravi Coltrane with his distinct sound, dynamic playing, and writing abilities. But his most revealing work has been on his own recordings, of which 7 Black Butterflies is simply a cut above ...

Bill Carrothers: Armistice 1918

by Chris May
January 19, 2005

As we approach the hundredth anniversary of the start of “the war to end all wars," international conflict blights the planet like never before, and unilateral might-is-right aggression is increasingly replacing diplomacy and consensus. Bad karma rules and history sometimes seems, like the poet said, to be “one fucking thing after another." So Bill Carrothers' Armistice 1918--a deeply affecting creative jazz suite about the horror and waste of the First World War, and by extension any war, performed ...