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Disparate Parts
Outside In Music
Street Date: March 25, 2022

Disparate Parts, the new album from the Roxy Coss Quintet, features familiar personnel in a brand new context: Coss on tenor and soprano saxophone, Alex Wintz on guitar, Miki Yamanaka on piano and keyboards, Rick Rosato on bass and Jimmy Macbride on drums. Known for their conversational expression, the artists approach fresh ideas with a sacred connection to their tradition-informed identity. Together, they navigate new harmony, rhythmic modulations and wildly diverse textures across 14 tracks of original music framing the impetus for the album: Coss’ four-movement suite, “The Body,” “The Mind,” “The Heart” and “The Spirit.”

Recorded by Chris Sulit at Trading 8s Studio, and mixed, mastered and associate produced by Johannes Felscher, Disparate Parts creates a kaleidoscope of sound that serves the quintet’s bold, ever-refining expression. Distinct gestures join together to form extended ideas and permutations without surrendering their respective characters. Throughout the writing process, Coss remained inspired by a steady stream of micro and macro adjustments — in her life and the lives of those around her — centered around loss, resilience and renewal. Often navigating the unknown and unexpected, she would return again and again to thoughts around our daily rituals of compartmentalizing, and sought to explore how she and her fellow artists might communicate those ideas through music.

“Everything for me goes back to being a woman in jazz [laughs],” says Coss, who also serves as album producer. “That is my identity. And, oftentimes, the different things that I do in my life are either for a certain part of me or accessing a certain part of me, and they’re not integrated. And each of these pieces of the suite are the disparate parts. As the project progressed, I went through the life changes of being pregnant and, now, being a new mom, and felt that concept manifesting itself even more so in my own life.”

Typically, Coss releases music while in the midst of working out new compositional ideas. Because of the pandemic lockdown and her pregnancy, the suite took its time to materialize; the rest of the album would follow in waves of collective inspiration. “It took me a few months to get back to the place where I was thinking about music, composition, practicing,” says Coss. After a period of rest followed by one of mourning, she sought ways to reconnect with tunes and sketches she’d begun realizing before the pandemic. “It was such a different relationship with the music because I wasn’t performing regularly. It was as though I was holding the potential of what this music represents.”

Seven months pregnant, Coss entered the studio with her trusted bandmates to record the entire suite; related originals “Mabes” and the album title track; and contributions from Wintz, Macbride and Yamanaka, a new layer of collaboration that feels integral to the direction of the band’s expression. “At this point, we all understand what the Roxy Coss Quintet sound is,” she says.

Explosive and visceral, “The Body” introduces a new sonic chamber of RCQ. Textural crunch from Wintz complements moments of playful interaction and hard swinging handoffs. “I wanted that rock sound, that heavy hitting sound,” says Coss. Conjuring a meditative awakening, “The Mind’s” first moments fold into snaky melodies and rhythmic subversions. Coss’ goal was to explore what indecision and overthinking might sound like. Coincidentally — or, perhaps, consequently — “The Mind” became her most puzzling piece to compose. “I had a really hard time figuring out the form of this tune which is not typical for me,” she says. By contrast, “The Heart” emerged intuitively: “Once I wrote it, it was written.” Tender at moments, doleful and contemplative at others, “The Heart” proffers a brief and mystifying solo from Rosato. The final movement of the suite came together as a collaborative gesture; melody serves as connective tissue on “The Spirit,” featuring Coss on soprano, lyrical and deliberate. “It’s less of a clear form,” says Coss, “we didn’t delineate between soloists.”

Enhancing conceptual impact around disparate parts, Coss sought to honor the nature of her quintet. “We’re very different people,” she says, “but we have come together to form a band with an identifiable sound.” Not surprisingly, the title track revealed itself in pieces and layers. Coss sat at the piano with what she initially believed to be sketches of four different tunes: “Then I began thinking, ‘I think they all might be one tune.’” Moving in and out of sections and elemental choices, the through-composed form lends itself to each quintet member’s artistic tendencies. “We move through each person taking the lead, and the sections are dictated by their different personalities,” she says.

Wintz’s “Ely, MN” presents an energetic challenge the artists rise to meet. “It’s the perfect fit [for the band] in terms of vibe,” says Coss, “and it’s really fun to play on.” Wintz stretches colorful melodies across rugged harmonic terrain before Coss and Yamanaka respond with their own lyrical twists and patterned exploration. Written for the late mentor of countless young artists, Harold Mabern, “Mabes” features a sweet and dirty rumination in 3. Yamanaka’s samba-inspired “Sunburn” serves as a vehicle for each artist to act as lead improviser. Macbride’s atmospheric “Warm One” — which spotlights the young drummer’s nuanced, reflexive touch — closes out the recorded setlist as the penultimate track before Yamanaka’s “February (take 2),” one of five short takes punctuating the album’s progression. Coss, who opted to include all five takes, views each as an interlude with its own of-the-moment feeling: “I really like where these go. It’s super representative of these disparate parts.”

The release of Disparate Parts reveals a new phase of Coss’ life and her creative expression, and puts forth layered, new concepts for her quintet to explore. “I’m still feeling this idea of having disparate parts of myself represented in different areas of my life, but it is even more prevalent now that I’m a new mom,” she says. “I’m exploring and expressing this idea through my music — especially in this particular moment.”

Quintet
Outside In Music
Street Date: August 23, 2019

Roxy Coss joins the Outside In Roster with the release of her fifth album, Quintet. This exciting video project serves to rearrange and reimagine a collection of previously heard Coss-penned tunes. Rather than a “greatest hits” package, Quintet offers fans an invigorating compilation of fresh new takes on some of the stalwart’s most cherished compositions, plus one new track – the saxophonist’s arrangement of “All or Nothing At All”. These eight live recordings will each have their own individual video release. Check out the lead single “Don’t Cross the Coss”, released on May 10th here! The disc’s title indeed has a double meaning, as although it marks Coss’ fifth album as a leader, it also notes her favorite type of small jazz ensemble. Quintet is brought to fruition by the bandleader’s formidable group which features pianist Miki Yamanaka, guitarist Alex Wintz, bassist Rick Rosato and drummer Jimmy Macbride.

Roxy Coss’ first four discs charted her evolution of becoming a modern jazz saxophonist of note. She exemplifies the true glories of a jazz musician by being both a torchbearer and an envelope-pusher. As an instrumentalist, she wields a burnished, brawny tone, capable of expressing a gamut of emotions. Her prowess on the tenor and soprano saxophones has elicited placings in DownBeat magazine’s critics’ polls in five consecutive years.

Then there’s Roxy Coss, the insightful composer. The bulk of her burgeoning discography contains fetching originals – a few of which are, as regarded by jazz journalist John Murph, bound to become early 21st-century jazz staples. All of these fine attributes reign on the aptly titled Quintet, while it offers a new celebration of sorts – Roxy Coss, the bandleader. Classic 1960s Blue Note ensembles such as Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and various groups led by saxophonists Wayne Shorter and Hank Mobley provided the earlier boilerplate for the Roxy Coss Quintet, which began in 2008 – two years before she released her self-released, eponymously titled debut. After landing a residency at New York City’s jazz club Smoke, Coss reconfigured her own frontline by pairing her saxophones with guitar. At this time, Alex Wintz joined the band and the guitarist is now the Quintet member with the longest history of playing with her. The rest of the ensemble consists of drummer Jimmy Macbride, bassist Rick Rosato, and pianist Miki Yamanaka – all of whom played on Coss’ fourth, critically-acclaimed disc, The Future Is Female (Posi-Tone, 2018).

The album blasts off with “Don’t Cross The Coss”, which was first recorded on Coss’ 2016 Origin Records’ release Restless Idealism. The whimsical title plays up some people’s initial misreading of the composer’s last name! While Yamanka’s glimmering Rhodes accompaniment elevates and uplifts the disc’s sole non-original, “All or Nothing At All,” “Mr. President,” is a biting socio-political commentary on U.S. President Donald Trump. Reminiscent of Charles Mingus’ classic “Fables of Faubus”, this ominous tune originally appeared on The Future Is Female.

Brighter spirits return on the pulsating “Free to Be,” a tune from her 2017 Posi-Tone disc, Chasing the Unicorn; it’s a self-prescribed manifesto Coss penned for herself to help her push through fake barriers that nip creative energy and personal development. The sauntering, Brazilian-flavored “You’re There,” – also from Chasing the Unicorn – celebrates her marriage with saxophonist Lucas Pino. Following “Enlightenment” – a ballad which graced Coss’ 2010 debut – is “Breaking Point.” On this soaring composition, which first appeared on Restless Idealism, Coss’ soprano sax embarks on coruscating passages in twin-fashion with Wintz. Quintet concludes with another socio-political statement – the urgent “Females Are Strong As Hell,” arguably the emotional centerpiece for The Future Is Female. Indeed, it’s an anthem in light of the #metoo Movement and the fight for many female jazz musicians such as Coss to get the same recognition and performance and recording opportunities as their male counterparts. It should be noted in addition to Coss being also a respected jazz educator on the Jazz Education Network’s (JEN) board of directors and on jazz faculty at The Juilliard School, The New School, and the Borough of Manhattan Community College (a CUNY School), she’s the founder of Women in Jazz Organization.

Roxy Coss’ saxophone and compositional gifts have been without question for nearly a decade, and with Quintet her bona fides as a noteworthy bandleader have now been deftly and unquestionably established.

GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"A nimble-fingered young tenor saxophonist whose career is starting to take off, Roxy Coss begins “Mr. President” in a dust cloud of frustration, painting in spirally smears over the pianist Miki Yamanaka’s dissonant pounds. But by the end of the track — one of seven originals on her new album, “Quintet” — Coss’s whole group is racing ahead, as if to outrun (or outwit, or simply out-punch) the tune’s titular adversary." Playlist feature here.