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Florian Ross

Born in 1972, he studied piano and composition in Cologne, London and New York with John Taylor, Joachim Ullrich, Bill Dobbins, Django Bates, Don Friedman and Jim McNeely.

The first of Ross's six albums was released in 1998 under his own name. Ross's recordings look closely at both the multifaceted jazz tradition and his extraordinary handling of contemporary material. In all formations, from trio to quintet, from string orchestra to brass ensemble, Ross succeeds in reconciling two seemingly different musical forms: improvised and composed.

While many of his European colleagues consider it a virtue to distance themselves from the mainstream, another camp makes an effort to continue the American jazz tradition in Europe as authentically as possible. Florian Ross's music is a refreshing break from this often embarrassing programmatic context. Ross not only ignores the demarcation line but translates traditional aspects into a language of the present. His lack of interest in the idea of higher, further, faster corresponds to his fondness for deeper sound regions and warmer timbres, as sounds oscillate between blue, orange and terracotta.

This foundation invites inspiration: the architecture is occasionally daring but never cool. Intellect and feeling do not exclude each other, the head listens to the stomach and vice versa. The music radiates balance, something that is often propagated but seldom achieved. The stark and songful does not trigger disquietude within Ross; on no account edgy actionism. He knows that it's not what you say but how you say it, and that less is (sometimes) more.

It is impossible to simply reduce Florian Ross to a pianist or improviser, or even an arranger and composer, as his work cannot be limited to a single genre or category. He is much too much the pianist to abandon himself solely to the compositional architecture, and much too much the composer to succumb to a mere fascination of the piano. He is a musician who thinks, hears, writes and plays musically.

Ross has played and worked with Vince Mendoza, Bob Brookmeyer, the Bamberg Symphony Big Band, Peter Bolte, Joachim Schönecker, Tommy Smith, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Jeff Cascaro, Jim McNeely, Dave Liebman, Don Friedman, George Duke, John Scofield, Kenny Wheeler, Ron Mclure, Joe Lovano, Eric Vloeimans, Nils Wogram, John Hollenbeck, Bill Dobbins, Paul Heller, Michael Buckley and Ronan Guilfoyle. He has given concerts in Switzerland, Austria, England, Scotland, Croatia, Finland, Russia, Mexico, the USA, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and China. Ross also taught at the Academy of Music in Hanover, Weimar and Mainz, and at the University of Music in Leipzig and Dresden. In addition to his CDs he released four of his own compositions in the first European Real Book.

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35
Album Review

Florian Ross: Tunes & Explorations

Read "Tunes & Explorations" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Variety and nostalgia are the essence of Tunes & Explorations, the twenty-second album by German-born composer/arranger Florian Ross who observes his fiftieth anniversary by dipping into the Great American Songbook to revive and reshape for his splendid octet a number of luminous evergreens from the Golden Age of American music. Ross underlines the contrast via jazz compositions from Bill Evans ("Fun Ride") and Horace Silver (the closing “Sister Sadie") and his own groovy curtain-raiser, “Baking Magels." The ...

4
Album Review

Florian Ross Octet: Tunes & Explorations

Read "Tunes & Explorations" reviewed by Pierre Giroux


Florian Ross is a German-born composer, arranger and jazz pianist who has a fondness for releasing albums with double names which began with his debut release Seasons & Places (Naxos Records, 1998). He has continued with that “idée fixe" in almost every year in which he has delivered a release. This year is no exception; the latest incarnation is Tunes & Explorations, an octet session given over (with one exception) to the exploration of some well-known compositions from the Great ...

2
Album Review

Florian Ross: Architexture

Read "Architexture" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


Writing about music has been compared to dancing about architecture, in that it is a supposedly useless task. Writing music about architecture is a worthwhile proposition, though, as shown by this release from German pianist Florian Ross, composing music for his quartet and the Event Wind Ensemble which is inspired by famous architects and buildings he has encountered in his travels. This music plays like an updating of the Third Stream genre, combining classical formality and jazz fluidity. ...

5
Album Review

Florian Ross: Reason & Temptation

Read "Reason & Temptation" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Midsummer 2019 was quite a busy time for Florian Ross. Apparently, the German-born pianist recorded the quartet date Reason & Temptation from June 29-July 2, then returned the following day to the same studio in Koln and added a wind ensemble to record Architexture for another label (Naxos). Reason & Temptation was self-produced on Ross's own label, Toy Piano Records. In each case the core group consists of the pianist's working quartet—saxophonist Sebastian Gille, bassist David Helm, ...

3
Take Five With...

Take Five with Florian Ross

Read "Take Five with Florian Ross" reviewed by Florian Ross


About Florian Ross: Born in 1972, Florian studied piano and composition in jny: Cologne, jny: London and New York. Since 1998 he has released 18 albums featuring both small and large ensembles and written over 350 commissioned compositions and arrangements for large jazz ensembles. He received the prestigious Thad Jones Composition Competition Award in 2000 and the WDR Jazz Composition prize in 2006. His commissioned works include pieces for the German NDR and WDR big bands, the Netherlands ...

5
Album Review

Florian Ross Trio: Pigs & Fairies

Read "Pigs & Fairies" reviewed by Jack Bowers


As a composer, German-born pianist Florian Ross seldom strays from the musical basics: melody, harmony, rhythm. As a performer, however, he uses those same basics to fashion a broad palette of sound, coming at the listener from a variety of routes and angles cannily designed to deepen an over-all mood of singularity and anticipation. On Pigs & Fairies, his fourteenth recording since 1998 and third as leader of his trio, Ross uses every weapon at his disposal, ...

12
Album Review

Florian Ross Quintet: Lines & Crosscurrents

Read "Lines & Crosscurrents" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Although you'd be hard-pressed to pick Florian Ross' quintet out of a lineup, the German-based helmsman wrests as much color and contrast as can be envisioned from a group that includes himself on piano or synthesizer, Markus Segschneider on pedal steel guitar and Niels Klein on clarinet, bass clarinet or tenor sax. If the music on Lines & Crosscurrents veers at times toward smooth jazz, it never quite crosses that line, thanks mostly to Ross's perceptive charts and the quintet's ...

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Recording

Florian Ross Octet: Tunes & Explorations

Florian Ross Octet: Tunes & Explorations

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

I love jazz octets. More than any other ensemble configuration, an octet shows off an arranger's stuff. Unlike a big band, an octet is fully exposed, with individual instruments coming and going rather than full sections broken into chords. In many ways, octets are little big bands—the skeletal version. As a listener, you get to hear the busy shifts of a chart more vividly than a big band's brass and horn sections. Because they're exposed, octet arrangements either sound great ...

Primary Instrument

Composer / conductor

Location

Cologne

Credentials/Background

Hochschule für Musik und Tanz, Köln, Germany

Clinic/Workshop Information

Piano, Composition, Arrangement

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Tunes & Explorations

Toy Piano Records
2022

buy

Architexture

Naxos Records
2020

buy

Reason & Temptation

Toy Piano Records
2020

buy

Swallows & Swans

Toy Piano Records
2018

buy

Pigs & Fairies

Toy Piano Records
2017

buy

Lines & Crosscurrents

Toy Piano Records
2015

buy

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