Roxy Coss, “Don’t Cross the Coss”
Speaking of strong voices on the tenor saxophone, Roxy Coss recently announced a new video album, Quintet, to be released by Outside In Music on Aug. 23. The quintet in question is a corker, with Coss on tenor, Alex Wintz on guitar, Miki Yamanaka on piano, Rick Rosato on bass and Jimmy Macbride on drums.
The first available track from the album is “Don’t Cross the Coss,” which has been a kind of theme song for the group for the last few years. The song, which has a familiar bebop chord progression and a melody that winks at the Tristano school, has become a sort of signature for this group. (It originally led off Coss’s 2016 album Restless Idealism.) As on the rest of Quintet, there’s a crackling, in-the-moment spark to the performance, and it’s captured well on film.
The Roxy Coss Quintet will celebrate the release of Quintet at Smalls on Sept. 6 and 7.