Florian Ross Octet: Tunes & Explorations

I love jazz octets. More than any other ensemble configuration, an octet shows off an arranger's stuff. Unlike a big band, an octet is fully exposed, with individual instruments coming and going rather than full sections broken into chords. In many ways, octets are little big bands—the skeletal version. As a listener, you get to hear the busy shifts of a chart more vividly than a big band's brass and horn sections. Because they're exposed, octet arrangements either sound great or they wipe out. There's no middle ground.

In 2009, when I interviewed Dave Pell, who maximized the octet sound in Los Angeles starting in the early 1950s, he talked about how eight musicians were the fewest you could use and still reproduce the big band feel. He said he formed his first octet to hold down overhead and be more portable, allowing the group to play many college dances and proms and still sound like a big band. Here's what he told me:

JazzWax: How about your octet's tight arrangements?

Dave Pell: That was Shorty Rogers’ idea to borrow ideas from Les Brown's big band arrangements written by Frank Comstock and Skippy Martin.

JW: What did Shorty do?

DP: When we were just getting together, Shorty was very excited. He said he’d write charts with the guitar on the bottom and trumpeter Don Fagerquist on top, with the rest of us voiced in between. He said, “We’ll do hipper stuff than the big band.” Two weeks later, Shorty finished the charts. The big idea was to take the new West Coast linear jazz sound and apply it in a more commercial format.

JW: How so?

DP: We kept the formula tight. We'd played a song's intro and then each horn would take a short solo. I didn't want 17 choruses. Just one solo each. It was very different for the time.

In the tradition of Dave's octet—and octets led by Bill Holman, Lennie Niehaus, Don Fagrquiest and others—Florian Ross has now taken a crack at the eight-musician group. His new album, Tunes and Explorations (Toy Piano), his 22nd—was recorded in March in Cologne, Germany, and features one original and 10 standards. The tracks are his Baking Magels, It Could Happen to You, I Should Care, Honeysuckle Rose, Send in the Clowns, Long Ago and Far Away, If I Should Lose You, Pure Imagination, Bill Evans's Fun Ride, Sweet and Lovely and Horace Silver's Sister Sadie.

Florian's octet features Bastian Stein (tp), Craig Brenan (tb), Matthew Halpin (ts, fl), Niels Klein (bs, bass-cl), Eliott Knuets (g), Leon Hattori (p), Dietmar Fuhr (b) and Tobias Backhaus (d), with Florian arranging and conducting. As he told me earlier this year, “I always wrote my own stuff, avoiding the American songbook. Then suddenly I felt like it was time to make my peace with the songbook and find some way I could honor its influence on me. I would certainly not have been able to do what I did without being exposed to this material, so it’s kind of backward." [Photo above of Florian Ross]

Florian is a German pianist, composer and arranger who fishtails effortlessly between traditional jazz writing and arrangements with a fusion feel. Album highlights include Long Ago and Far Away, If I Should Lose You, Pure Imagination, Fun Ride and Sister Sadie—all of which adhere to Dave Pell's rules of the octet road. The arrangements are terrific and the playing moves with contrapuntal intelligence and energy. Lovely music that's beautifully choreographed.

JazzWax clips: Here's Florian leading his octet in a promotional video...