Click to Download
Was soll man noch dem „Jazz Report" aus Toronto hinzufügen, wenn er feststellt: „Florian Ross may be the most interesting jazz musician to come out of Europe in quite some time"?
Il s'agit d'un genre très resserré, qui propose un véritable défi aux musiciens. S’essayer au trio, c'est aussi se mettre à nu, exister en tant qu'artiste à part entière, et non comme simple musicien au service d'un talent fédérateur. Il s’agit de perpétuer l’héritage du passé avec humilité. A cet égard, les disques de Florian Ross sont un parfait exemple de trio réussi.
In his judicious piano style but also in his obvious skills as a composer and arranger, which steer the music away from the mire of homogeneous Eurobop and into the realms of inventive and original small-group jazz.
Mit dem feinen Ohr des theoretisch gründlich ausgebildeten Komponisten ausgestattet, hat er es nicht nötig, mit schierer Lautstärke aufzutrumpfen
Die Musik, die Florian Ross auf „Big Fish & Small Pond“ präsentiert, steht in ihrer schlichten Schönheit einfach für sich selbst. Jeder, sei er auch ungeübt im Hören von Jazzstücken, kann sich diesen Melodien ganz unbefangen nähern.
Original voices in composition are very rare, and Florian Ross stands among them.
Two things stand out immediately about German keyboardist and composer Florian Ross’s first release for his own Toy Piano label.
First, it’s the compositions, closely written and harmonically nuanced, but spacious, upbeat and smile-inducing, reminiscent of the optimistic, wide-open plains strand in American jazz associated with composers such as Pat Metheny, Joel Harrison and Ben Allison.
The second is the instrumentation: country music more or less owns the pedal steel guitar, but polyglot guitarist Markus Segschneider imports the instrument’s characteristic twang into Ross’s tunes, mixing it with the leader’s synth-drenched chords, making a sound that is fresh yet timeless, strange yet somehow familiar, like the theme tune to a 1970s cop show you never saw.
This enormous production, recorded in Brooklyn by Australian guitarist/leader and multi-award- winning virtuoso James Muller and conductor, saxophonist and composer David Theak, involves more than 20 musicians from the Sydney Conservatorium, where Theak lectures in jazz. They play compositions by Muller and German pianist, composer and arranger Florian Ross on this peer-reviewed label. The virtuoso guitarist has teamed up for this venture with the Sydney Conservatorium Jazz Orchestra, an astonishing big band made up of some of Australia’s most accomplished young lions. The arrangements are by Ross and the album was recorded superbly in New York at Systems Two by Mike Marciano.
...Because of the album’s fine music it is a deserving addition to any Australian jazz collection.
Más allá Ross explora con mapas perfectamente bien trazados texturas y colores exigiendo desde la partitura juegos armónicos en los metales que hagan poco necesario el piano. La búsqueda cromática se va de los tres instrumentos soplados a solas con el contrabajo hasta el diálogo en preparación para lo que en el papel debe de señalarse con las palabras ad libitum: Hegel y Fichte, difícilmente Stirner, pagan su visita a Jelly Roll Morton y a Joe Lovano lo mismo que a Schönberg: la libertad controlada que no por ello no desarrolla una buscada estética.
Kammermusikalischer Jazz auf exquisitem Niveau - feingliedrige Kompositionen, reduziert auf Wesentliches, überraschend schöne Melodien, aber ohne gefällige Süßlichkeit.
