Moon Inhabitants Reviews
Making a Scene
Makingascene.org
February 22, 2025
Russ Lossing Trio, Moon Inhabitants, Sunnyside Records
Pianist and composer Russ Lossing can paint utterly visual and at times hilarious imagery such as his 2023 “Alternate Side Parking.” Here on “Moon Inhabitants” he steps out in another challenging way, creating a floating sensation through music. Considering the makeup of a conventional piano trio with bass and drums, this seems practically impossible. What happens to the rhythm elements? you're likely thinking. In fact though, he's not the first to take this route, and he's taken a similar path before on the trio's 2019 “Motian Music.” Lossing has always been a major devotee of the late drummer Paul Motian, who stamped himself with ability to play elastically, or around the beat in free improvisation, especially with the trio of pianist Paul Bley, bassist Gary Peacock. Lossing goes a bit further than simply Motian's music here on “Moon Inhabitants” by mixing originals with compositions from other jazz and classical composers. He delivers the album with his 25 year tenured trio of bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Billy Mintz as they essentially shun gravity to somehow create a weightless feeling.
Opener “Moon Inhabitants” is an Ornette Coleman tune, the angular, at times swinging tune rife with start-stop rhythms and free improvisation, as Lossing dances all over the 88s. In an interesting sleight of programming, he follows delicately with the rubato melody of Tchaikovsky's “Dance of the Little Swans,” each note floating as if suspended in ether, or, better yet, a leaf calmly floating on the lake. Kamaguchi is 'dancing along' with the pianist while Mintz is subtly keeping pace with his brushwork until the bassist makes a statement that spurs Lossing into further improvisation, while maintaining the weightless feel. Lossing calls his trio's explorations “almost strict time,” a shining example of which is another Ornette piece, “Jayne” as the trio stretches the rope as if in a tug of war, one member exerting the dominant strength and energy before it shifts to another. MIntz and Kamaguchi seem to especially revel in this one which bounces along nicely powered by Lossing's rapid fire liquid runs.
The requisite ballad comes with Harold Arlen's “Last Night When We Were Young” painting it with touches of the blues as the trio moves with a whisper to the point where the alternating short phrases and shimmering runs become hypnotic and trance-like, yet beautiful throughout. Kamaguchi's dark, authoritative bass leads into Sonny Rollins” “Pent-Up House,” aptly named as the trio unleashes their reserved energy, playing still in jagged, non linear fashion as they lock into a joyous swing.
Lossing positions his three originals at the end of the album. His “Being” begins as if one is tiptoeing through the hall quietly at 3 AM, slinking through determined not to disturb anyone as Mintz again judiciously rings his ride cymbal. As the piece evolves, the shackles dissolve, and the trio plays with more fervor as maybe they're now in a living room or side room conducive to slightly louder free expression. “Tulip” moves even further in that direction, similar to “Pent-Up House” in cadence and approach. The gloves are off as Mintz states in his own turn. The final piece, “Verse,” at over ten minutes consists of three movements with the common thread of a long unison line that continually gets embellished, twisted, deconstructed, and revived. It reads almost like a soundtrack to a mystery, leaving us in suspense as to where the piece is headed. It too, in a rather odd way, creates that floating sensation as the piano seems to be on a different plane than the bass and drums, who are in their own rumbling world below. Yet, the bassist's muscular solo and consistent flow especially shine in this piece.
The Russ Lossing Trio digs into this notion of elasticity, firmly embracing the beat while at other times dancing around it, refusing to be adhered to conventional structures. It makes for fascinating listening.
– Jim Hynes
Jazz Times
Top Jazz Releases, February 2025
Published February 25, 2025
Russ Lossing, Moon Inhabitants (Sunnyside)
Russ Lossing is an unsung master, a pianist who can bridge tonal and non-tonal languages and improvisational approaches like few others. I recall nights at the Vanguard with Paul Motian when Lossing brought the music to another level, displaying a formidable command of the tradition and a bristling originality, something also immediately apparent on the free uptempo title track of Moon Inhabitants. It's a follow-up to Motian Music from 2019, with bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Billy Mintz — a trio that also made two albums for hatOLOGY in 2011.
Moon Inhabitants presents a mix of Lossing originals, canonical jazz tunes and a standard, “Last Night When We Were Young,” airy and sparse, but also dynamic and alive. Sonny Rollins's “Pent Up House” is a callback in a way to Lossing's solo piano treatment from 2006 (All Things Arise, hatOLOGY) — both are similarly dense, using the strong motivic material of the song to the fullest, with the theme coming only at the end.
- David Adler
Jazz Journal
jazzjournal.co.uk
March 4, 2025
Russ Lossing: Moon Inhabitants(Sunnyside Records SSC1752)
New York City based, Americanpianist/composer Russ Lossing has a singular musical vision that makes him a musician's musician. That means that he is not a populist, and remain little-known beyond his coterie of admirers. Maybe he'd agree with Jim Hall, that if someone had asked him to sell out, he would have – but I think that like Hall, he's an ironist. You have to be to make a living in our cultural world, without selling out. His latest release balances structure and freedom in the manner of the finest artists.
Lossing's trio features bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Billy Mintz – the latter I know well, through his partnership with Alan Broadbent, but I'm less familiar with Kamaguchi. The trio has been together for twenty-five years. They explore what Lossing calls "almost strict time", playing around the beat on the model of Paul Bley's trio with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian. Lossing played with Motian over a period of twelve years and was a member of his Quintet.
The result, as with Bley, is a mix of jazz and free improv. Amazingly, this is only the trio's fourth recording – following two for Hat Hut,Ways and Oracle, and one for Sunnyside, Motian Music, a tribute to the compositions of Paul Motian. Moon Inhabitants features originals plus interpretations of jazz and classical compositions. Under the heading of jazz are two Ornette Coleman compositions, the frenetic title-track and a joyful interpretation of his early composition Jayne. The latter more relaxed up-tempo swing is a clearer example of Lossing's "almost strict time".
The rubato melody of Tchaikovsky's Dance of The Little Swans opens miraculously, and remains hard to recognise. This haunting piece, at a very slow rubato, becomes a very free improvisation. Harold Arlen's Last Night When We Were Young gets a gorgeous interpretation that follows a similar very slow pattern. A gorgeous, magical album by a great jazz pianist.
- Andy Hamilton, Philosophy Dept., Durham University - andyhamilton.org
Lament for a Straight Line
Must-See Three, Jazz in NYC This Week
Posted on April 22, 2025
Russ Lossing Trio at Mezzrow Tuesday, April 22
There's a “Pent-Up House” on pianist Lossing's sumptuous (Sunnyside) that takes the declarative attitude of Sonny Rollins' 1956 swag and throws in a touch of 2025 querying – it's wise to be a little interrogatory these days. Perhaps it's what the album notes call the “elastic feeling” generated by the trio (bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Billy Mintz) resulting in a “variable pulse.” Years ago, I attributed this welcome variety of demeanors as Lossing “twisting the rhythmic direction toward places where overt swing can shake hands with looser elaborations,” and cited it as a big plus. It's certainly one of the pianist's superpowers. Keep the album close and spend time with Ornette's “Jayne” or Lossing's own “Tulip” for further expressions of same. The payoffs are many.
- Jim Macnie
Dusted Magazine
Volume 11, number 8
April 25, 2025
The Russ Lossing Trio's chosen challenge is to see how much freedom can be found within a structure, and then to see what can be made with it. Pianist Lossing, bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Billy Mintz operate happily within a jazz piano trio idiom that has endured for decades, and if you chose not to pay attention to what they're doing on this disc, it could easily serve as background fare for people who prefer their jazz served with a steak and a cocktail. But even a cursory listen reveals a wealth of quite surprise. The material encompasses Harold Arlen, Ornette Coleman and Piotr Tchaikovsky, as well as a few Lossing originals. All of it is negotiated with respect for each piece's structural challenges as well as a readiness to go quietly airborne at any moment, lifted up by the rhythm section's push-pull and the pianist's knack for resolving dense improvisational forays with an updraft of melody. Full disclosure — not so long ago I wrote liner notes for one of Lossing's solo recordings on another label.
Bill Meyer