m2theory

Pianist Steve Cohn has performed his own works in venues including New York City’s Miller Theatre, New Works October Series, the Newport JVC Festival, Sweet Basil, The Great American Music Hall, NORVA Performance Hall, Norfolk Virginia, Puffin Cultural Arts Forum, and performed and recorded many times in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, on WBGO-FM, WFDU, WKCR, KJAZ, WNUR, WBUR, KPOO, and Stanford University radio.

Bassist Larry Roland has performed at parks, street corners, outdoor theaters and private living rooms. He toured throughout the Northeastern part of the US, New Orleans, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Roland has recited his poetry at Harvard University, Boston University, MIT, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the Vision Festival in New York and at many other schools, festivals, and events in and around the northeast and Canada.

Drummer Chuck Fertal performed with a panoply of stellar jazz artists throughout the US.   Fertal has been on radio for WBUR-FM (BOSTON), WERS-FM (BOSTON), WBAI-FM (NY), WBGO-FM (NEWARK). He toured Sun Valley, Idaho, Great American Music Hall (San Francisco), Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society (San Francisco), Cooper Union (NYC), Sweet Basil, Village Vanguard, 7th Avenue South, Blue Note, Tin Palace and Lincoln Center, all in NYC, New Orleans, military tours through Corpus Christi, Texas, Biloxi, Mississippi, Atlanta, Georgia, and Montgomery, Alabama.

Reed player Michael Moss has been leading groups that have performed in multiple colleges and universities on the East Coast and Mid-West, curated and promoted seven Westbeth Music Festivals from 2007-2013, and collaborated with other jazz lofts in NYC as President of Free Life Communication, a musicians cooperative in New York City, producing two Loft Jazz Music Festivals in the ‘70s. He presented three Loft in the Sky Music Festivals in upstate New York for Art Awareness in the ‘70s, and was on the Board of Directors of the Madison Musicians Cooperative in Madison, Wisconsin in the ‘80s at the same time he was in the University of Wisconsin—Madison Ph.D. program in the Counseling Psychology Department; Moss was graduated with a Ph.D. in 1991. Radio appearances: WKCR-FM, WBAI-FM and WNYC-FM in New York City, WMFM-FM, WORT-FM and WHA-FM in Madison, WI, WLAV-FM in Grand Rapids, MI and others. Moss appeared in the Annual Westbeth Music Festival (NYC) 2007-2013, PS 122 (NYC), Philadelphia Fringe Festival 2005 & 2006, and in the Fishtastacon Music Festival 2005 & 2006 (Philadelphia). As part of a tour sponsored by Pro Helvetia–a Swiss foundation, Moss played the Swiss Embassy (Washington, D.C.), Convergence Centre (Philadelphia), the Swiss Institute in NYC, and at Piano Magic in NYC. As President of Free Life Communication, Inc., a NYC musicians cooperative, Moss coordinated with other NYC jazz lofts including Studio Rivbea, Environ, Space for Innovative Development, Sunrise Studio, The Brook, Jazzmania, and Studio WE in the First and Second New York Jazz Loft Celebrations. Moss has led groups in the New York Musicians Jazz Festival, Isthmus Jazz Festival (Madison, WI), the Jazz and Blues Festival at Grand Valley State College (Michigan), Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY), SUNY at Stony Brook opposite Anthony Braxton, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and at Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago).

New York Free Quartet (Michael Moss, Steve Cohn, Larry Roalnd, and Chuck Fertal)

Michael Moss (tenor and soprano saxophones, flute–western and bansuri), Steve Cohn (piano, shakuhachi, Hichiriki, trombone), Larry Roland (bass, words/poetry), Chuck Fertal (drums, percussion)

Music is an art that exists only in time. Unlike painting and literature, it cannot be appreciated without the passage of time. One cannot freeze it to study it. You cannot stand in front of a piece of music and examine every detail for as long as you want, at least not the actual sound element of music. A music score is not music; it is merely a visual representation of how to play a written piece. Therefore, one must enter into a time continuum to experience music, whether it be completely notated/composed music or completely improvised music, as is practiced by the New York Free Quartet.

Why the preamble? Merely to point out that the time taken to create this music is the exact amount of time it will take to hear it. One must enter into a contract with this type of music. Is the time worth it? Absolutely. Consider all the reasons why that is true.

Sensitive listeners attuned to creatively improvised music don’t need to be told that this is an exceptional quartet who has delivered a superb collection of music with “Promotional Copy.” For those who may be coming to this music for the first time, I can only express envy. This experience is like no other.

Carl Baugher January 2017

Monk Meets East Meets West                         11:20  https://www.soundcloud.com/stream

On Their Shoulders                                           13:19  https://www.soundcloud.com/stream

24-8 Aren’t We All?                                            6:03  https://www.soundcloud.com/stream

Fun Key                                                                 5:25  https://www.soundcloud.com/stream

In Between Gigs…Can You Dig?                    12:30  https://www.soundcloud.com/stream

Spirits Here And Not Hear                              8:00  https://www.soundcloud.com/stream

Band Website: https://www.facebook.com/MossCohnRolandFertal/

Open-form extended group improvisation as practiced today has become a highly evolved art. It is as hard to do right, without a safety net, in the full public eye, as anything humanity has taken on in its history. It takes decades of dedication to come together and really play, to make all the difference between a good record and one that is truly transcendent, beyond the given and into a higher plane.

The New York Free Quartet does it–some prime examples of the art, as set down on a live recorded gig (cd entitled FREE PLAY released in 2015) in the heart of New York, on a summer day, July 29, 2014.

When you hear the results in all subtlety and expression, it should come as no surprise that these four artists have put in significant time, both together and in a myriad of similar playing situations. Reedist Michael Moss has been interacting with pianist and multi-ethnic instrumentalist Steve Cohn and bassist Larry Roland for some time now. And Steve’s association with drummer Chuck Fertal goes back 30 years. They all have been musical gladiators in the fight to make improvised music anew for a long time. Mike’s key experience in the early loft scene in Manhattan is only a part of the involvement of all in the music of the trenches. So that by now they well know who they are and how they can channel the experience of the history of improvisation, the wide world of musics, the musical heritage of the eternal Afro-diaspora, the world slipstream that we all still participate in. The music you hear is the culmination of all that.

Then there are the poetic utterances that we get an excellent taste of here, with Larry’s evocative recitations. Like the music it is about being there, becoming in the spirit of creation, surviving a world mostly disposed to have you “eat, lay eggs and run,” to live like roaches, with no room for what else there can be unless like the NYFQ you insist on a repeating soundings of the depths. In spite of it all.

But most of all this is about totality, total sound generation. You can hear them speak with the sure vocabulary and eloquence of masters long apprenticed, chained to the lodestone of woodshedding, gigging, communicating in the classroom, on the stage, in the streets. It all leads up to this moment in July when the New Free Quartet gives out with definitive individuality-in-togetherness. Check Michael Moss on bass clarinet or any instrument in his reed arsenal, flowing out with the very together freedom that takes years to reach. Steve Cohn as the pianist who by touch and thought brings significance into sound like very few pianists alive can do. Larry Roland on bass, never wasting a note, making it all mean something. Chuck Fertal on drums, a master of tone, everything hit in just the right place, with second-splitting soul science.

And the more of it, the totality of collectivity. You don’t get what the NYFQ achieved that day in July without all the jousts of life in alleys and cold-water flats combined with the extended free-thinking togetherness of group playing that comes only with much time, talent and perspiration. It’s all here. All on this recorded set. Just sit back and listen!
– Grego Applegate Edwards