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Roxy Coss

Musician/Composer Roxy Coss has become one of the most unique and innovative Saxophonists of her generation, a definitional voice of the Millennial Movement in Jazz. Winner of a 2016 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award, the 2016, 2015 & 2014 Downbeat Critics’ Polls listed her on the "Rising Star" list for Soprano Saxophone. Originally from Seattle, and now a fixture on the New York scene, she has performed extensively around the world. In January, Coss released her sophomore recording as a leader, Restless Idealism, on Origin Records, featuring 10 original compositions; the follow-up to her self-titled debut, Roxy Coss (2010). Restless Idealism has been met with critical acclaim, and reached #7 on Jazzweek, the US Nationwide Jazz Chart. Downbeat called her "An exceptional young talent”. The Roxy Coss Quintet has performed at many of New York City’s top venues, including The Jazz Standard, Smalls, the Zinc Bar, SMOKE Jazz Club, the 55 Bar, and Club Bonafide. The Quintet was also featured at this year’s Newport Jazz Festival (Newport, RI). Coss has headlined at the famous Jazz Showcase in Chicago, and was a featured artist at the 2015 Ballard Jazz Festival in Seattle. She has performed as a leader at venues across the US including The Nash (Phoenix, AZ), Pastiche (Tucson, AZ), The Royal Room (Seattle, WA), The Triple Door (Seattle, WA), The Side Door Cafe (Old Lyme, CT), The Palace Theater (Waterbury, CT), Libby’s Jazz Club (Jackson, MI), and The Union (Kalamazoo, MI). As a side-woman, Coss has performed nationally and internationally with Jazz greats such as Clark Terry at the world-famous Blue Note Jazz Club, Louis Hayes at historic Minton’s in Harlem, and the Claudio Roditi big band. She has appeared with the Mingus Big Band, which is in residence at the Jazz Standard in NYC, and she has been a regular member of The Diva Jazz Orchestra since 2009. She was in trumpeter Jeremy Pelt’s group from 2012 through 2014, and toured with the MACKTET, led by Pelt and drummer Willie Jones III. She was also featured in the Off-Broadway hit, Maurice Hines is Tappin’ Thru Life. Roxy graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2008 from William Paterson University with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies/Performance, where she studied with Rich Perry, Gary Smulyan, Rich DeRosa, and Mulgrew Miller. In 2011, she was chosen to participate in both the prestigious Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead Residency Workshop at the Kennedy Center, and the acclaimed Steans Institute Jazz Program at the Ravinia Festival, where she studied with Rufus Reid, Curtis Fuller, Nathan Davis, and David Baker.

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Album Review

Steven Feifke: The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra

Read "The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Metti assieme un talentoso giovane orchestratore come Steven Feifke, un trombettista di prima grandezza come Bijon Watson e una big band con grandi nomi e prestigiosi ospiti e il risultato è scontato. Il debutto della Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra è stato propiziato dalla collaborazione col Jazz Education Network ed ha assunto le vesti di un album includendo in organico ospiti di rilievo come Kurt Elling, Sean Jones e Chad Lefkowitz Brown. Il principale riferimento è la tradizione ...

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Album Review

Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra: The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra

Read "The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra" reviewed by Jack Bowers


The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra, co-led by pianist/composer Steven Feifke and trumpeter par excellence Bijon Watson, is a seventeen-member ensemble comprising seasoned players paired with young lions who are poised to capture pride of place. Nowhere do the leaders say who is in which group, and it would be impolitic to name them here. Suffice to say that some of the names may be more familiar than others--as, for example, trombonist John Fedchock who cut his teeth with one of ...

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Radio & Podcasts

Roxy Coss, Deadeye, Gilad Hekselman, Johannes Wallmann & More New Releases

Read "Roxy Coss, Deadeye, Gilad Hekselman, Johannes Wallmann & More New Releases" reviewed by Ludovico Granvassu


This week we focus on new and upcoming albums featuring emerging guitarists like Reinier Baas and Gilad Hekselman, electro-acoustic projects and more... Happy listening! PlaylistBen Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Johannes Wallmann “Precarious Towers" Precarious Towers (Shifting Paragdim) 0:16 Host talks 5:34 Bill O'Connell “Enough Is Enough" A Change Is Gonna Come (Savant) 8:13 Roxy Coss “Part I: The Body" Disparate Parts (OUTSIDE IN MUSIC) 16:01 Host talks 22:33 Deadeye ...

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Album Review

The DIVA Jazz Orchestra: Swings Broadway

Read "Swings Broadway" reviewed by Jack Bowers


At the ripe old age of thirty (closer to a hundred in big-band years), the superlative New York-based, all-female DIVA Jazz Orchestra remains as frisky as a newborn colt, swinging up, down and around Broadway with abandon on its thirteenth album, a brisk and colorful tribute to the Great White Way that shines brightly from start to finish. The album opens and closes in a mid-1950s vein, raising the curtain with Steven Feifke's breezy, well-grooved arrangement of ...

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Album Review

Roxy Coss: Disparate Parts

Read "Disparate Parts" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


Let's just get thing one out into the open right away: Disparate Parts has plenty of balls to spare. Saxophonist Roxy Coss' acute, teasingly biting tone and rich, no boundaries disposition to composing and jamming has placed her high in the generational echelon of new and challenging players. She willingly and unapologetically blends and blurs the lines to suit any and all missives, and the fourteen fireballs heard loud and clear on Disparate Parts broach nothing less. Commandeering ...

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Radio & Podcasts

Celebrate Women's History Month With New Releases From Melissa Aldana, Somi, Birthday Shoutouts and More

Read "Celebrate Women's History Month With New Releases From Melissa Aldana, Somi, Birthday Shoutouts and More" reviewed by Mary Foster Conklin


Happy Women's History Month! This broadcast celebrates with new releases from saxophonist Melissa Aldana, vocalist Somi's tribute to the great Miriam Makeba, pianist Yuko Mabuchi plus singles from Tierney Sutton and Natalie Cressman with birthday shoutouts to Carol Sloane, Flora Purim, Rachelle Garniez, Tomoko Ohno and Eric Comstock, among others. Thanks for listening and please support the artists you hear by purchasing their music during this time of pandemic so they can continue to distract, provoke, comfort and inspire.

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Album Review

The DIVA Jazz Orchestra: DIVA + The Boys

Read "DIVA + The Boys" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


The all-female DIVA Jazz Orchesta has a boy-meets-girls story threaded into its origin, as drummer Stanley Kay served as the impetus behind the group's formation. Therefore, it's only fitting that the ladies have a few gentleman over to join them for some high times in the music every now and then. This eight-song set, recorded live at Pittsburgh's Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in March of 2017, finds clarinetist Ken Peplowski, dearly departed trumpeter Claudio Roditi, trombonist Jay Ashby, and ...

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Recording

Roxy Coss: Future Is Female

Roxy Coss: Future Is Female

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Jazz and politics go way back. One can argue that Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings in the 1920s were “hot" because he was seeking racial justice through musical talent and vision that exceeded everyone else's at the time. Most blues recordings of the 1930s and '40s also are political in that they were creative expressions of an impoverished “low-down" life experienced by many Americans during the Depression, particularly African-Americans in the South. In the 1950s and beyond, ...

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Interview

Introducing Roxy Coss - Going for Adds January 10, 2010

Introducing Roxy Coss - Going for Adds January 10, 2010

Source: Kari-On Productions

INTRODUCING ROXY COSS WE ARE GOING FOR ADDS AT RADIO STARTING JANUARY 10, 2010 New York City based musician and composer Roxy Coss is making a name for herself as a versatile, original voice within the vibrant and thriving jazz scene today. All About Jazz is saying, “Coss is head and shoulders above many of the gifted, well-schooled young people who are trying to get a toehold in the intensely competitive NYC jazz and improvised music scenes. Her multiple talents ...

"Coss has been refining a style that is intricate and sincere, intelligent yet accessible." - BRIAN ZIMMERMAN, DownBeat Magazine

"Easily the next hot modern jazz star for Generation Now." - Christopher Llewellyn Adams, Cashbox Magazine "Just like Coltrane, Coss achieves a perfect balance of lyricism and intensity in her improvisations through a superb sense of timing, rhythmic and harmonic structure." - Wilbert Sostre, All About Jazz "[Coss plays with the] unassuming clarity and wise restraint of an oldtimer with nothing to prove... I plumb forgot I was listening to a record, swept away on the emotional journey." - David Wilson, Wilson & Alroy Reviews

Primary Instrument

Saxophone, tenor

Location

New York City

Willing to teach

Advanced only

Wesley Crispus
saxophone

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Disparate Parts

Outside in Music
2022

buy

Swings Broadway

Diva Records
2022

buy

The Generation Gap...

Cellar Records
2022

buy

Reconnected

Next Level
2021

buy

DIVA + the Boys

MCG Jazz
2020

buy

Quintet

Outside in Music
2019

buy

Videos

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