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There are rolling, wide open spaces in the music of Russ Lossing. Much of this is traversed in the seemingly sprawling beauty of Oracle, an album that meanders in the absorbing colors and textures of what that which the trio offers up for seduction. It is easy to be swept up in the diaphanous gusts of sound that sweep across the terrain, which, in turn, opens up with Lossing's gorgeously cadenced arpeggios that skitter and ramble startlingly across the interminable ...
Haunting, meditative, solemn and high-impact are descriptors that bear pianist Russ Lossing's approach and sensibilities. While Oracle denotes his trio's debut effort for hatOLOGY records, it's been a working unit for several years, largely based in New York City. The program is architected via disparate levels of pitch amid a capacious vibe, but the trio often picks up steam and executes through a vast plane of propositions, where gravitational pull and heavy-artillery counterattacks balance the flowing contours. Drummer ...
Pianist Russ Lossing's trio evokes a dreamlike state on Oracle, by communicating an atmosphere of unearthly elegance through trance-inducing energy. Lossing, bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Billy Mintz commune at this level because they'd been a working trio for six years when this studio recording was made in 2007. Besides that, all three bring experience from the fertile jazz world: Lossing, as a member of bands led by Paul Motian, Dave Liebman, and Mat Maneri; Kamaguchi, with Frank ...
The profound depth of the interactions between pianist Russ Lossing and bassist John Hebert on their new duo recording bears the mark of a shared history and mutual respect and enthusiasm. Hebert and Lossing have both worked with many great artists who have shaped the history of jazz, including Paul Motian, Andrew Hill, Dave Liebman and John Abercrombie, as well as many more recent innovators like Mat Maneri, Uri Caine, Fred Hersch, Greg Osby and Mark Dresser. There may be ...
Pianist Russ Lossing and bassist John Hebert have known each other a long time and have played together on a number of projects, including Lossing's own Phrase 6 (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2005), and, most recently, on the phenomenal “quasi-debut" of Michael Adkins, Rotator (HatOLOGY, 2008). After talking for a long time about making a duo recording, the two players finally did it, and the exceptional Line Up, is the result. As a player, Hebert's wide-ranging musical ...
Modern bass playing, and the special relationship in jazz between bass and piano, could be said to have begun in the early 1940s, with the partnership of pianist Duke Ellington and bassist Jimmy Blanton.
In a series of duo recordings as impactful, among musicians, as saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's couplings a few years later, Blanton took his instrument beyond its role as a more or less lumpen metronomic device and, in intimate relationship with Ellington's ...
Russ Lossing is a pianist of extreme depth and intensity whose music exists between jazz improvisation and modern classicism. All Things Arise will only cement this impression. His previous records include the marvelous Metal Rat (Clean Feed, 2006) with Mat Maneri and Mark Dresser, and the intense As It Grows (HatOLOGY, 2004) with Ed Schuller and Paul Motian. This time, however, Lossing is on solo piano, which only increases the intensity since every aspect of the sounds ...
A focused session of collective free improvisation conceived by pianist Russ Lossing, Metal Rat features the spontaneous interplay of three sympathetic musicians. Joined by violist Mat Maneri and bassist Mark Dresser, Lossing booked a recording studio for a mere four hours to instill a “real sense of urgency" to the proceedings. The ensuing session benefits from this pre-imposed constraint by lending an air of palpable tension to the work. Full of simmering intensity and dramatic flair, this is dark, intuitive ...
I love jazz because I hear musicians being in the “now”, creating on the spot.
I was first exposed to jazz by my father. He doesn't play (though he has dabbled with piano in the past), but apparently jazz runs in the family blood
I love jazz because I hear musicians being in the “now”, creating on the spot.
I was first exposed to jazz by my father. He doesn't play (though he has dabbled with piano in the past), but apparently jazz runs in the family blood. My grandfather, a professional jazz pianist, once accompanied Judy Garland when she strolled into the Chicago hotel where he played; one of the songs they performed was, of course, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I never got to hear my grandfather play, because he gave up “the life” when he moved to California, when my dad was still in high school. However, my grandpa remains an inspiration, so I wrote an arrangement of “Somewhere” in Latin Jazz style, and dedicated to my father and to the memory of my grandfather.
The first jazz record I bought was McCoy Tyner, “Dimensions.” McCoy is a great influence on my piano playing to this day.
My advice to new listeners is, have an open mind; let the music develop, let the artists take you on a journey. Jazz is human, personal, and carries great immediacy. In an age where technology replaces the human element in much art, jazz in general is all about the performance. Even in recording, it is a moment of spontaneity frozen in time. So support live music, support live jazz! Keep us human in the modern world.
