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Michael Moss

musician, psychologist, analyst

About Me

As a reed player and composer, Michael Moss has been actively involved in the music scene for many years, leading his own musical groups including Mike Moss/4 Rivers and Free Energy. Moss is President of 4th Stream Records and ERG Publishing, past-President of Free Life Communication (a musician’s cooperative in NYC), and former Music Director of Loft in the Sky Jazz Festival in Lexington, NY. Moss has been the recipient of numerous Meet the Composer and NYSCA grants. His label, 4th Stream Records, has produced multiple LPs, cassettes, and CDs. Moss just received a generous grant from the LMCC—Lower Manhattan Cultural Council—to produce three concerts of his Accidental Orchestra.

Multi-instrumentalist/composer Michael Moss, a veteran of New York’s free jazz scene, has assembled a new 22+-piece renaissance jazz orchestra—the Accidental Orchestra—comprised of string, reed, brass and rhythm sections. For this series of three concerts, Moss composed twelve movements based on the Kaballah exploring links between Eastern mythology and particle physics, quantum mechanics, and classical physics. Each movement musically expresses a limb of the Tree of Life.

ROOTS to SHOOTS (Warren Smith (vibes, drums), Alexis Marcelo (keys), Adam Lane (bass), Michael Wimberly (djembe, drums, shakers, shekere), Ismael Baiz (cajon, bongos, drums)) continues to grow by adding old and new original compositions of my own for this ensemble. Hot off two gigs at Little Island this summer to overflowing enthusiastic audiences, ROOTS to SHOOTS performs music stretching from straight-ahead jazz to gospel, the blues, rhythm and blues, and jazz-infused sounds of the Middle East, Brazil and Spain. We update Eric Dolphy’s work on bass clarinet playing pieces by Dolphy, Duke Ellington, Jaki Byard, Charles Mingus and Chick Corea by our jazz all-star group. Still floating from our performance of ROOTS to SHOOTS at Little Island. It was a real mix of covers and my original pieces. Pure magic—so much connection and chemistry among these extraordinary musicians.

The Accidental Orchestra is comprised of a pool of the most exciting improvising artists on the New York scene: Warren Smith, Badal Roy, Bob Meyer, Michael Wimberly, Chuck Fertal, Larry Roland, Ken Filiano, Dom Minasi, Billy Stein, Steve Swell, Peter Zummo, Vincent Chancey, Libby Schwartz, Waldron Mahdi Ricks, Brian Groder, Ralph Denser, Jason Hwang, Rosi Hertlein, Stephanie Griffin, Melanie Dyer, Carol Buck, Lenny Mims, George Crotty, Tanja Hoehne, Elliot Levin, Ras Moshe Burnett, Richard Keene, Michael Lytle, Dave Sewelson and Steve Cohn.

The NEW YORK FREE QUARTET is Michael Moss (tenor and soprano saxophones, Bb and bass clarinets, flute), Steve Cohn (piano, shakuhachi, trombone, shofar, Hichiriki), Larry Roland (bass, poetry / spoken word), and Chuck Fertal (drums, percussion).

Equally compelling, and exploratory in its emotional color and musical...Moss, Cohn, Roland, and Fertal have a strong sense of what they are going for. They sculpt the music with deep textures, and powerful statements. These men have access to a vast repository of musical knowledge to draw from; but also have a great deal of real life experience that breathes meaning into their music. Dawoud Kringle, New York Free Quartet on March 15, 2018.

...a fine, loft/free jazz vibe/sound. I love the way everything flows in almost dream-like, unforced organic way. All four members of this quartet play so well together, rarely soloing at length and never taking over completely. The balance of the elements, warm recording and organic flow make IN BETWEEN GIGS...CAN YOU DIG?!? one of the best free/jazz discs of recent memory. - Bruce Lee Gallanter,

My Jazz Story

I was first exposed to jazz when at about age 12 I checked out from the local library (Chicago, IL) John Coltrane's "Giant Steps." I couldn't play anything like that, and still cannot, but I began whistling extended lines all day every day. It just opened my mind to structured improvisation which is the foundation of much that I do today.