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Michael Ross

Get a good sound, swing hard and play the bass like a bass.

So says Michael Ross about his one and only instrument: double bass. Ross has been living those words for some 37 years, and speaks them with conviction as his fourth album, Ginger, is released.

Ginger is a tight 41 minutes of top-quality, (mostly) acoustic jazz. Ross is joined (in quintet, quartet and trio settings) by a stalwart lineup of players that include some of the best in Florida and elsewhere: saxophonist/flutist Danny Jordan, pianist William Evans, guitarist LaRue Nickelson and drummer Walt Hubbard.

Ginger puts Ross’ bedrock musical qualities on vivid display: his far-reaching talents as a composer; an ability to incorporate his own playing, a sublime blend of muscle and fluidity, into an ensemble concept; and, when called for, to take center stage as a fleet and inventive soloist. Through it all, Ross never loses track of his instrument’s primal function — to provide the bass, the bottom end.

Ross mined his most lyrically melodic side for a large portion of the program: The ballads “Mahatma” and “Ginger” and the samba-esque “Life of Riley” are all unabashedly gorgeous tunes. “Cone of Uncertainly” showcases a stately classical vibe. A piano-trio treatment of “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” is slow and probing. Ross and company get unruly on “Yak Attack,” a frenetic workout that calls to mind Jack Johnson-era Miles Davis (with Evans moving to Fender Rhodes).

The bassist started out in a garage band. It didn’t last. After logging a few months playing blues-rock tunes with his cousins in his hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Ross fell under the thrall of jazz. By age 17, “I did not want to double on electric,” he recalls. “I wanted to be a specialist. I loved the sound, the smell, the feel, everything about the upright bass. I guess it was my version of rebel without a clue.”

By his senior year in high school, Ross was gigging regularly in a Harrisburg piano trio and, on Thursdays and Fridays, traveling three hours each way to New York to study with Cecil McBee. At night, he’d hit the jazz clubs before sleeping on the floor of a friend’s dorm room at NYU. (During that time, Ross even had a couple of pleasant conversations with Charles Mingus.) He also began to write. “When I was in high school, a guy taught me composition by having us work together on a string quartet,” Ross says, still bemused by the idea. “But at heart, I’m a songwriter.”

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Album Review

Michael Ross Quartet: Dog Eat Dog

Read "Dog Eat Dog" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Dog Eat Dog opens up with the song "Wee Zee"; and the high energy sound is a bit akin to a power rock trio (with very overqualified musicians, for that genre) who went out and found themselves an inspired, hard-blowing sax man. Power jazz. Driving rhythms that jiggle the marrow in your bones; urgent, full-bodied rhythms, beefy, dark, in-your face tenor sax work, piercing soprano reed work, a foray into bass clarinet land that sounds dangerous, foreboding, some stratospheric electric ...

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Performance / Tour

Jazz with an unrivaled intimacy

Jazz with an unrivaled intimacy

Source: Ken Franckling's Jazz Notes

There is nothing quite like the intimacy and congeniality at a jazz house party. That was clear on Thursday, March 1, when bassist Michael Ross and his wife, Amanda, welcomed about 40 friends and jazz lovers into their Sarasota FL home for an evening of music. The band for the one-hour-plus set of music included Ross, singer-percussionist Fred Johnson and reed player Danny Jordan, who performed on tenor sax and several flutes. This was like having jazz in your living ...

158

Performance / Tour

Dr. Michael Rossi Jazz Clinic and Concert Series at Long Island University Brooklyn Campus Thursday, February 8, 2007, 4:00 - 6:00 PM

Dr. Michael Rossi Jazz Clinic and Concert Series at Long Island University Brooklyn Campus Thursday, February 8, 2007, 4:00 - 6:00 PM

Source: Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services

Jazz Clinic and Concert Series at Long Island University Brooklyn Campus Thursday, February 8, 2007, 4:00 - 6:00 PM Dr. Michael Rossi, woodwind specialist and Associate Professor in the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, will lead a jazz seminar on South African Music as part of Long Island University's Jazz Clinic Series. The series features musicians and music professionals with extraordinary links to jazz history in addition to being outstanding in their ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Dog Eat Dog

Cooper Alport Records
2002

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