Drew Gress

New York bassist Drew Gress became increasingly visible in contemporary improvised music throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the late ’80s, he co-founded the quartet Joint Venture, which released three albums on Enja spanning 1987-1994. Later, Gress led his own N.Y.-based quartet, Jagged Sky, who released their debut, Heyday, in 1998 on Soul Note. The late ’90s also found Gress performing and recording in Paraphrase, an improvising trio with Tim Berne and Tom Rainey. Paraphrase released two CDs during the 1990s on Berne’s Screwgun label: Visitation Rites in 1997, and 1999’s Please Advise. Gress has performed across Europe; Asia; and North, Central, and South America. He has served as artist-in-residence at University of Colorado-Boulder and Russia’s St. Petersburg Conservatory, and has received grants from Meet the Composer and the NEA. In addition to the groups already mentioned, Gress also performs in many other projects, including Erik Friedlander’s Chimera, the Fred Hersch Trio, the Don Byron Quartet, and Dave Douglas’ string group, which released an album on Soul Note entitled Convergence in 1999.
Joslyn Layne, All Music Guide

Special thanks to Jazz Times and the New York Times for their support:

New York Times Year End Best of List
Nat Chinen
Steve Lehman - Travail, Transformation & Flow #1
Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To Vol.1, #3
Ben Ratliff
Steve Lehman - Travail, Transformation & Flow #5

Jazz Times Top 50 Releases of 2009
Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To Vol.1, # 4
Steve Lehman - Travail, Transformation & Flow #11

PopMatters.com Best of Jazz 2009
Steve Lehman - Travail, Transformation & Flow #6
Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To Vol.1, #7

posted on December 21, 2009 by Intern

Year end polls are starting to come in. We would like to thank the following critics for their support:

Bill Milkowski
Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To, Vol. 1, # 1

Steve Feeney
Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To Vol.1, # 3

Jason Crane
Steve Lehman - Travail, Transformation & Flow, # 9

Michael J. West
Steve Lehman - Travail, Transformation & Flow, # 7

Howard Mandel
Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To, Vol. 1, # 1
Steve Lehman Octet - Travail, Transformation, and Flow, # 5

Hank Shteamer
Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To, Volume 1, # 6

David R. Adler
Steve Lehman Octet - Travail Transformation & Flow, # 5

Christian Broecking Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To, Vol. 1, # 2
Steve Lehman Octet - Travail, Transformation, and Flow, # 3

We would also like the thank Nate Chinen for choosing Travail, Transformation, and Flow, and This Brings Us To, Vol. 1 as his number one and two picks. Click here to check out the ongoing conversation.

Finally, a special thanks to Seth Colter Walls for citing Travail, Transformation, and Flow in his Newsweek article, Jazz Is Dead. Long Live Jazz.

posted on December 14, 2009 by Intern

Steve Lehman’s Travail, Transformation, and Flow was featured in an enthusiastic review on NPR’s Fresh Air today. Critic Kevin Whitehead said “In Jazz like any art form, there are historical moments when it seems like all the angles have been covered and there’s nothing left to explore. And then someone comes with a new idea or a new influence that points out a fresh direction.” Thanks, Steve for paving a new way for the music!

Now back to our Henry Threadgill sale. Make sure you pick up a copy of Travail while you’re at it! (See below for details)

posted on September 23, 2009 by Yulun

We never get tired of support from the New York Times, especially when it is as positive as Nate Chinen’s review of Steve Lehman’s On Meaning. From the most recent Critic’s Choice column Nate describes the results of the recording date as “The layered complexity of his music attests to some careful calibration, but the playing reflects something else: a spirit of lunging abandon constrained by collective purpose.” Regarding other label favorites, “The album’s chief relationship is between Mr. Lehman and Tyshawn Sorey, an impulsive yet exacting drummer; together they make up two-thirds of Fieldwork, a separate group that has made a science of rhythmic convolution.” Further wets our appetite for 2008, as Fieldwork goes into the studio this Friday to start work on their third recording.

From the pages of Jazz Times, Chris Kelsey’s review of Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers appropriately sums up Amir and the recording with these lines, “ElSaffar’s band (Rudresh Mahanthappa, alto sax; Nasheet Waits, drums; Carlo DeRosa, bass; Tareq Abboushi, buzuq and percussion; Zaafer Tawil, oud, violin, dumbek) has nary a weak link… There’s not the faintest hint of dabbling here; ElSaffar knows from whence he came, in every respect.”

posted on December 19, 2007 by Seth