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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 ...

Russ Lossing: Motian Music

By Peter 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Russ Lossing Trio: Oracle

By Glenn Astarita

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 ...

Russ Lossing Trio: Oracle

By Mark Corroto

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 ...

Russ Lossing / John Hebert: Line Up

By Wilbur MacKenzie

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 ...

Russ Lossing / John Hebert: Line Up

By Budd Kopman

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 ...

Russ Lossing / John Hebert: Line Up

By Chris May

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: All Things Arise

By Budd Kopman

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 ...

Russ Lossing / Mat Maneri / Mark Dresser: Metal Rat

By Troy Collins

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 ...

Russ Lossing / Mat Maneri / Mark Dresser: Metal Rat

By Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Much has been said about brevity by men who were anything but. Now, art benefits from aesthetic and compositional purity--no unnecessary lines, no superfluous words, no ostentatious displays of skill--but it is usually a byproduct of a brilliant work, not the sole purpose. Pianist Russ Lossing, violist Mat Maneri and bassist Mark Dresser manage dexterously to combine deliberateness and improvisation in Metal Rat, an album of established collaboration. In the liner notes, Lossing reveals that the album was recorded in ...