Jazz Articles about Sal Mosca

About Sal Mosca

Album Review

Sal Mosca: For Lennie Tristano

Read "For Lennie Tristano" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
December 16, 2025

Sal Mosca was absorbed by the ideas of Lenne Tristano. The life force that is in the music of Tristano is not waning. The ascetic ideas and the edgy magnificence of the music continue to enthrall without press agents, advertising, PR consultants: just musicians who continue to be captivated by the purity of the music. Don Messina produced this Sal Mosca album together with Kathy Mosca. Messina completed a seven-year project to transfer all of Mosca's personal recordings to ...

Album Review

Sal Mosca: The Talk of the Town. Live at BimHuis

Read "The Talk of the Town. Live at BimHuis" reviewed by Maurizio Zerbo

by Maurizio Zerbo
October 26, 2015

Una lectio magistralis sull'esplorazione degli standard jazzistici. Si può definire così questo sublime set olandese del 1992, dove tutto sembra funzionare a meraviglia. A sedersi in cattedra è Sal Mosca, fedele discepolo di Lennie Tristano, per dispensare un caleidoscopio emozionante di note. Tra fitte destrutturazioni tematiche e sontuose sostituzioni armoniche, il pianista statunitense incanta per il modo in cui sa trarre riposte sfumature dai brani interpretati. Nel caso degli standard boppistici, emerge una fitta rete di ...

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Album Review

Sal Mosca Quartet: You Go to My Head

Read "You Go to My Head" reviewed by Stuart Broomer

by Stuart Broomer
July 12, 2008

Along with the saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh and guitarist Billy Bauer, pianist Sal Mosca was among the first wave of musicians to construct a personal style within the school of Lennie Tristano--in general a simultaneous commitment to the velocity of bop, the smoothly liquid lines of Lester Young and a linear exploration of harmony that expands on both. While he first recorded with Konitz in 1949, Mosca largely devoted himself to teaching, so that by the time of ...

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Album Review

Sal Mosca: Thing-Ah-Majig

Read "Thing-Ah-Majig" reviewed by Brandt Reiter

by Brandt Reiter
August 23, 2005

Often referred to as Lennie Tristano's prime pupil, 78-year-old Sal Mosca has spent the greater part of the last half-century teaching rather than performing or recording, so any new disc by the low-profile pianist is immediately something of an event. Thing-Ah-Majig, recorded in 2004 and especially noteworthy as Mosca's first trio recording since 1959, does not disappoint.The program is what you'd expect from a Tristano disciple: five warhorse standards (plus one Mosca original, the leisurely “Nowhere ), picked ...

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Album Review

Sal Mosca: Thing-Ah-Majig

Read "Thing-Ah-Majig" reviewed by Derek Taylor

by Derek Taylor
April 7, 2005

School spirit can sometimes be a liability in jazz, a genre where individuality remains a paramount attribute. Critics lumped drummer Shelly Manne in with the Cool clique early on, even though his flexibility in taste and technique embraced a host of styles from swing to hard bop to early free. Similarly, allegiance to one's mentors, while admirable, occasionally carries peripheral costs of association. Sal Mosca knows these predicaments all too well. As one of Lennie Tristano's most prodigious pupils, and ...

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Profile

Sal Mosca

by Elliott Simon
October 31, 2004

At the age of 12, pianist Sal Mosca was sitting on the curb on a hot summer day with some friends. He felt a cool breeze come at him and his next thought was that he wanted to take piano lessons. He acted on that impulse and began a journey that has thus far spanned seven decades. Along the way he has released influential solo and group recordings, had a recording label devoted to his music and played a major ...