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Russ Lossing / John Hebert: Line Up
by Budd Kopman
Pianist Russ Lossing and bassist John Hebert have known each other a long time and have played together on a number of projects, including Lossing's own Phrase 6 (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2005), and, most recently, on the phenomenal “quasi-debut" of Michael Adkins, Rotator (HatOLOGY, 2008). After talking for a long time about making a duo recording, the two players finally did it, and the exceptional Line Up, is the result. As a player, Hebert's wide-ranging musical ...
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by Chris May
Modern bass playing, and the special relationship in jazz between bass and piano, could be said to have begun in the early 1940s, with the partnership of pianist Duke Ellington and bassist Jimmy Blanton.
In a series of duo recordings as impactful, among musicians, as saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's couplings a few years later, Blanton took his instrument beyond its role as a more or less lumpen metronomic device and, in intimate relationship with Ellington's ...
Continue ReadingRuss Lossing: All Things Arise
by Budd Kopman
Russ Lossing is a pianist of extreme depth and intensity whose music exists between jazz improvisation and modern classicism. All Things Arise will only cement this impression. His previous records include the marvelous Metal Rat (Clean Feed, 2006) with Mat Maneri and Mark Dresser, and the intense As It Grows (HatOLOGY, 2004) with Ed Schuller and Paul Motian. This time, however, Lossing is on solo piano, which only increases the intensity since every aspect of the sounds ...
Continue ReadingRuss Lossing - Mat Maneri - Mark Dresser: Metal Rat
by AAJ Italy Staff
Come riferito nelle note di copertina, il CD è il risultato di un'intensa seduta di registrazione di poche ore. Non si puo' che rimanere colpiti, quindi, dalla forte intesa tra i tre musicisti. Mark Dresser, con il suo arco trascinante e profondo, quando non percussivo, e con i suoi pizzicati solidi e incalzanti risulta essere il perno dell'opera per la bravuca con cui riesce a mettere in comunicazione la versatile viola di Mat Maineri e il pianoforte di Russ Lossing ...
Continue ReadingRuss Lossing / Mat Maneri / Mark Dresser: Metal Rat
by Troy Collins
A focused session of collective free improvisation conceived by pianist Russ Lossing, Metal Rat features the spontaneous interplay of three sympathetic musicians. Joined by violist Mat Maneri and bassist Mark Dresser, Lossing booked a recording studio for a mere four hours to instill a “real sense of urgency" to the proceedings. The ensuing session benefits from this pre-imposed constraint by lending an air of palpable tension to the work. Full of simmering intensity and dramatic flair, this is dark, intuitive ...
Continue ReadingRuss Lossing / Mat Maneri / Mark Dresser: Metal Rat
by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Much has been said about brevity by men who were anything but. Now, art benefits from aesthetic and compositional purity--no unnecessary lines, no superfluous words, no ostentatious displays of skill--but it is usually a byproduct of a brilliant work, not the sole purpose. Pianist Russ Lossing, violist Mat Maneri and bassist Mark Dresser manage dexterously to combine deliberateness and improvisation in Metal Rat, an album of established collaboration. In the liner notes, Lossing reveals that the album was recorded in ...
Continue ReadingRuss Lossing: Metal Rat
by Budd Kopman
Metal Rat is a triumph from beginning to end. Along with pianist/leader Russ Lossing, violist Mat Maneri and bassist Mark Dresser have created a work of terrifying intensity and concentration of purpose that is engaging at many levels, simultaneously manifesting a steely ferocity that is nevertheless almost unbearably beautiful. The ten tracks have but two actual compositions ("Turn" and “Is Thick With"), which are easy to distinguish as such. The other tracks are a mix of trio ...
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