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Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

ALBUM REVIEW December 6, 2020

Russ Lossing: Traces: Two Song Cycles

Read "Traces: Two Song Cycles" reviewed by Mark Corroto

There is an HBO television series, A World of Calm, which delivers thirty-minute vignettes on subjects from trees to snowfall to the vastness of the universe. The unhurried series is designed to elicit restfulness while at the same time provoking deep concentration. The same can be said of Traces, a quartet project by pianist Russ Lossing. Lossing is probably best known as a former sideman to the late drummer Paul Motian, plus he has series of recordings on ...

RADIO August 26, 2020

Mark Harvey Group, Thumbscrew & Rez Abbasi

By Maurice Hogue

No matter who pianist Russ Lossing chooses for his various trio projects, they always work! His new Mood Suite, with Mark Helias on bass and Eric McPherson on drums is excellent. Although Lossing has played with Helias and McPherson over the past two decades, they've never played as a trio before. Musical osmosis must work, because they held no rehearsals. Look for this terrific recording; you'll find it on Steeplechase. Another feature recording on this show is A Rite for ...

ALBUM REVIEW December 1, 2019

Russ Lossing Trio: The Ways

By Mark Corroto

The Russ Lossing Trio should record more. Ways, which follows the excellent Oracle (hatOLOGY, 2011), is just the second recording this longstanding trio has released. More music from them would allow fans to study the development of the chemistry between Lossing, bassist Masa Kamaguchi, and drummer Billy Mintz. The instantaneous telepathy between piano, bass, and drums is evidence of this chemistry. Where does it come from? While that question may never be answered, we do have proof of ...

RADIO April 11, 2019

Russ Lossing, Adam Kolker and Paul Motian's "Jack of Clubs"

By Bob Osborne

This time around we focus on Russ Lossing and Adam Kolker, and feature tracks from Paul Motian's seminal album Jack of Clubs, with some fellow travellers in between, Playlist Russ Lossing “Jack of Clubs" from Motian Music (Sunnyside) 00:00 Paul Motian Quintet “Hide and Go Seek" from Jack of Clubs (Soul Note) 07:16 Gordon Grdina “Apocalympics" from Inroads (Songlines) 12:41 Joe Lovano “Alone Together" from Joyous Encounter (Blue Note) 22:40 Russ Lossing “Dance" from Motian Music (Sunnyside) 28:20 ...

ALBUM REVIEW February 11, 2019

Russ Lossing: Motian Music

By Peter J. Hoetjes

The late drummer Paul Motian left quite an imprint on the jazz world, with over one hundred compositions to his name, and numerous artists releasing covers of his songs, as well as tribute albums and performances since his passing in 2011. Some of those have included Jeff Cosgrove's self-released 2012 album For the Love of Sarah, the Carl Michel Group's Music in Motian (Play on Records, 2018), a string quartet release by Joel Harrison titled String Choir: The Music of ...

RADIO February 6, 2019

Russ Lossing, Jasper Blom and More

By Maurice Hogue

Sometimes a recording catches you by surprise. Such is the case with Swedish bassist Thomas Markusson's Open. Only one of the musicians was familiar, the pianist Naoko Sakata who moved from Japan to Sweden where she could play the kind of music that wasn't popular in Japan. Sakata definitely found the right company. Markusson is a very strong bassist who writes music that took me back to those ECM recordings of Kenny Wheeler and Tomasz Stanko, thanks to the playing ...

ALBUM REVIEW June 3, 2011

Russ Lossing Trio: Oracle

By Raul d'Gama Rose

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 ...