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Jeff Cosgrove
Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area, Cosgrove developed a wide range of musical interests that continue to inform his output. He has worked extensively with blues and rock bands and singer-songwriters, citing B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, The Grateful Dead, Wilco, Andrew Bird, Jimi Hendrix and Phish as pivotal influences. His role models in jazz are Motian, Elvin Jones, Joe Chambers, Ben Riley and Roy Haynes. He’s also been fortunate to study with Andrew Cyrille, Matt Wilson, Joe Hunt (Bill Evans), Tony Martucci (Mose Allison/James Moody) and Mike Shepherd (Maynard Ferguson/U.S. Navy Commodores/Barney Kessel).
While Cosgrove has ample experience playing beat-driven music with strict time, he is drawn toward abstraction in his own work, summoning colors and textures on the drum kit, listening deeply to his colleagues as the music flows and evolves. As The Washington Post put it: “Cosgrove’s drumming doesn’t provide the music with an engine so much as a lighthouse.” According to the Frederick News-Post, “Cosgrove reaches so far beyond the parameters of mere beats and time signatures and groove that calling him a drummer is barely the beginning.”
Cosgrove has never lived in New York or any other big music hub, preferring to station himself in rural areas — something that he feels has affected his musical outlook and approach. For 18 years he lived in Shepherdstown, a town of 2,000 in the eastern corner of West Virginia. He currently resides in the slightly larger Middletown, Maryland.
Awards
2008/2009 West Virginia Professional Development Grant
Tags
Perelman / Shipp / Cosgrove: Live in Carrboro
by Mark Corroto
It is rare that we get a live recording from saxophonist Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Shipp. Of their 40-plus discs, the majority have been studio productions. This Live In Carrboro date from November 4, 2022 shares the same line-up as Live In Baltimore (Leo Records, 2017) with the addition of drummer Jeff Cosgrove. Recommended to Perelman by Shipp, Cosgrove is more of a colorist than a free player. He has previously released an album of Paul Motian covers and ...
read moreJeff Cosgrove / John Medeski / Jeff Lederer: History Gets Ahead of the Story
by Jerome Wilson
William Parker gets deserved acclaim for his abilities as a bassist and his activism and leadership in the avant jazz community but not as much for his composing. Drummer Jeff Cosgrove tries to correct that with this project that features Parker's music played by an organ trio with no bassist. Cosgrove's partners in this venture are John Medeski on organ and Jeff Lederer on various reeds. Both are adept at covering the wide variety of gut-bucket grooves, spiritual ...
read moreJeff Cosgrove, John Medeski, Jeff Lederer: History Gets Ahead of the Story
by Ian Patterson
The striking absence of a bassist on this organ-trio tribute to William Parker speaks volumes about the singular approach that Jeff Cosgrove, John Medeski and Jeff Lederer have taken to the compositions of a modern jazz great. Parker's music is so diverse, his output so vast, that a cohesive overview would be difficult to distil onto a single CD, so perhaps for this reason the trio narrows its focus to Parker's post-2000 small ensembles, and in particular the bassist's quartet ...
read moreJeff Cosgrove/John Medeski/Jeff Lederer: History Gets Ahead of the Story
by Troy Dostert
As he has been one of the most influential and prolific musicians in the jazz avant-garde since the 1980s, it is surprising that bassist William Parker hasn't gotten more credit as a composer. Perhaps due in part to the sheer volume of his recordings--including every imaginable context, from solo bass to small/medium-sized groups to big-band outings--it can be hard to keep up with his work, making it almost inevitable that some of his music gets lost in the shuffle, its ...
read moreJeff Cosgrove, Scott Robinson, Ken Filiano: Hunters & Scavengers
by Alberto Bazzurro
Nove brani a firma collettiva e la pagina più celebrata di Ornette Coleman compongono questo bell'album di un trio assolutamente paritario (anche se il merito di averlo riunito si deve al batterista Jeff Cosgrove) che propone un jazz in possesso dei sapori più veraci dell'avanguardia storica (peraltro senza particolari salti nel vuoto). In più di un episodio--e citiamo almeno “Don't Look" e “High, Low"--la parentela più evidente ci riporta ai gloriosi trii di Sam Rivers, ovviamente nei segmenti in cui ...
read moreJeff Cosgrove, Frank Kimbrough, Martin Wind: Conversations with Owls
by Maurizio Zerbo
La batteria è il polo di attrazione di questo trio ben affiatato, accomunato da personalità musicali che amano discostarsi dagli schemi fraseologici più comuni. Il drumming frastagliato di Jeff Cosgrove proietta la vena impressionistica un po' malinconica di Frank Kimbrough in un ambito più astratto ed accademico. La rielaborazione di “My Favorite Things" mette bene in luce le strategie musicali messe in campo, nel tentativo di mettere a nudo il cuore dei tre musicisti per svelarne le pieghe più profonde. ...
read moreJeff Cosgrove: Alternating Current
by Budd Kopman
Alternating Current is a completely entrancing recording that captures three master players listening and responding in real time. Both Matthew Shipp and William Parker thrive in the completely improvised arena, which is why drummer Jeff Cosgrove wanted them for this project. A second reason might have been that neither musician had ever played a composition by Paul Motian, who is one of Cosgrove's idols, along with Andrew Cyrille, who has connections with all three musicians and who helped ...
read more"...from the opening moments it's like stepping into the middle of a story about a dream." - Dave Sumner, All About Jazz
"For the Love of Sarah is brilliant!" - Jazz Notes SDP
"It was not intended but turned out one of the best tributes to our century's most outstanding drummer/composer, late Paul Motian. His genuine spirit is deeply reflected in their music." - Kenny Inaoka, Editor in Chief Jazz Tokyo & Editor of the ECM Catalog
