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Much of Sal's music is available from Zinnia Records. See Discography for vinyl album titles and labels. |
Articles and Reviews
Sal's hometown, Mt. Vernon, NY, declares September 14,
2006
Sal Mosca Day.
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You Go To My Head: |
| "You Go To My Head" features incredibly limber, swinging, graceful, and inventive playing from the criminally undersung piano great Mosca and his colleagues (most notably the redoutable Halperin). A working group (at least insofar as they met regularly at Mosca’s studio between 2001 and 2006), there’s that steady, almost invariable rhythm one associates with the Tristano orbit, and a continual reevaluation of (mostly) standards, kneading, turning, over, and unearthing each detail luxuriously, almost exultantly. The chemistry between Mosca (whose lines are so assured, so swinging but oblique in their relations to tempo nonetheless – so masterful on the title track) and the throaty Halperin is almost telepathic, and hearing them complete each other’s phrases can be stunning. And they each have an almost mischievous way of introducing repeating phrases or sudden harsh jabs as a way of not so much subverting the materials as playfully enlivening the forms they so love (damn if Mosca doesn’t sound a bit like Mengelberg at times here!). The stylistic quirks of these players emerge perhaps most distinctly during "Scrapple From The Apple," where Mosca is just amazing as he constructs these elaborate, two-handed almost baroque fantasies, super-imposing a second chord progression over the piece, then punching out the bottom – I laughed out loud! Great stuff! After a few more romps, memorably through "Sub Conscious-Lee" (aka "Hot House"), they stroll languorously through "I Can’t Get Started", and Halperin is just all over the sensitive foundation laid down by Messina and Chattin, with bright comping from Mosca. It’s just a delight of a record, one that’s sure to please a broad cross-section of this magazine’s readership. |
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Pianist savors the rhythm:
Melodic Standards on the Program
When Mosca Trio Plays Campus Concert
February 25, 2005
By Zan Stewart
Star-Ledger Staff
| For pianist and teacher Sal Mosca, there's nothing quite like digging into evergreens like "Sweet Lorraine" or "All of Me" and giving them a good workout. "The tunes are written beautifully, with beautiful lyrics, melodies and harmonies," said Mosca, 77, who lays out lines with a singing melodic quality underpinned by vibrant rhythm. "They're ideal as a basis for jazz improvisation." Mosca, who will offer a bouquet of standards with his trio Sunday at William Paterson University in Wayne, said that while these songs were often presented in Broadway shows in a "corny way," jazz artists like Lester Young and Art Tatum made masterworks out of them. "That's what I try to do," said Mosca, a native of Mt. Vernon, N.Y., who lives there on the top floor of a commercial building he owns. The pianist, who studied with the innovative Lennie Tristano, said he begins by respecting the work of the composer. Then he mixes in his own feeling, plus renditions by other musicians. "So when I play (Gershwin's) 'Embraceable You,' I can hear Bird (Charlie Parker) and Pres (Young) playing it, and Billie (Holiday) singing it," he said. "All that mixed with my feeling, and it comes out my own way." These days, many artists, seeking freshness, deconstruct standards so they sound like another song. Mosca sees no need. "I play a song differently every time, with (perhaps) a variation on them -- melody or different chords, different tempos, so it always puts something into it." At William Paterson, Mosca will work with bassist Don Messina of Scotch Plains and drummer Bill Chattin. The trio has been together going on five years and plays with vitality and depth on its CD, "Thing Ah Majig" (Zinnia), out today. "There's great feedback between (Don and Bill)," Mosca said. "They're not loud, don't play a lot of complex rhythms. They play in a simple way and keep good time. I see jazz as a conversation with myself, and Don and Bill are there to support and complement me. That helps me to concentrate on my lines." Guests at the concert include singer Alexa Fila and trumpeter Bob Arthurs. Mosca got started in music listening to such greats as Fats Waller and New Brunswick's James P. Johnson on his family's player piano. He began piano lessons at age 14, and soon fell for jazz. "I loved the beat," he said. "Classical music has rhythm, too, but it's more subtle, not a main part of the music. In jazz, it's a main factor. Rhythm thrills me." Mosca's early favorites were Teddy Wilson, Erroll Garner and Art Tatum, who changed Mosca's life when he heard him one afternoon on New York's famed 52nd Street. Later came bop greats like Bud Powell and Parker. Studies with Tristano from 1947-55 were key to Mosca's development. Tristano had him sing solos by Parker and others. "That's when I saw how great this how great this music is," Mosca said. He now does the same with his students. Mosca played with saxophonist Lee Konitz until 1965 and has been a leader since. He said he sees his life in music, which has given him so much, as a "great pleasure." |
Review from the Italian edition of All About Jazz, translated by Luigi Napoli and Mark Diorio (August 2005)
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/italy/reviews/r0705_034_it.htm| AUGUST 2005 5 STARS Numerous recordings have been left since the 1950's from record labels that have recorded the history of jazz (Prestige, Verve, Milestone, Atlantic) with names such as Miles Davis, Lee Konitz, Roy Haynes, Max Roach, Warne Marsh, Eddie Gomez. This is the resume of Sal Mosca, pianist of the Tristano School, who can be heard today on the Zinnia Record label, distributed by North Country and produced by Dan Fiore. Zinnia Records allows us to listen to these types of recordings again. It has been since 1959 that Sal Mosca has recorded in a trio format: the last time was with Peter Ind and Dick Scott, and now with Don Messina and Bill Chattin, a rhythm section that works together with Sal from time to time, his health permitting. If you ask if Sal still has something to say within the scope of a contemporary piano trio, or if he can still make timeless music that is not just a revival of things from decades past, you will quickly have an answer after listening to one of the standards like "I"m Getting Sentimental Over You" that opens this disc (Thing ah majig): Mosca is an artist whose language has crossed the history of jazz (without ever becoming a clone of Lennie Tristano) and today he plays paradoxically modern and interesting, representing an alternative to the current approach of jazz piano trios that follow the model of Monk, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner, all of whom have been taught in the jazz schools to their students. The improvisational capacity of Sal Mosca is simply beyond the norm, thus the depth with which he approaches the structure of a standard, renewing them from the inside, going into unforeseeable territory, then returning to the theme without us ever realizing the roads that were taken; astonishing and surprising us at every instance. The work of this trio is complex, and at the same time spontaneously improvised on the structures of these standards (here respected in their essence) are made to "leap" from within with a recomposed capacity that belongs to very few jazz artists. The ideas of the three players are always new as they wind from one song to the other rendering the album very compact and free of repetition. The final result of these historical interpretations confirms Sal Mosca to be the premier pianist of the contemporary jazz scene. VITTORIA LO CONTE ALL ABOUT JAZZ - ITALY Translated by Luigi Napoli and Mark Diorio (August 2005)
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CADENCE Sal Mosca Thing-Ah-Majig Zinnia Records 118CD I’m Getting Sentimental Over You / Nowhere / I’ll Remember April / I Can’t Get Started with You / How High the Moon / If I Had You (43:26) Mosca, p; Don Messina, b; Bill Chattin, d. Mt Vernon, NY, 3 May 2004. I’ve always thought of Mosca as one of Tristano’s severer disciples, but quite possibly I’ve got things wrong: on the evidence of Thing-Ah-Majig, he could just as well be one of the piano’s finest deadpan humorists since Thelonious Monk’s Riverside days. (Just listen, for instance, to the start of "I’ll Remember April," where he compresses the entire A section into a belated shrug.) Mosca moves around in a piece with a go-anywhere freedom that defies the chord changes’ steady linearity, as if taking shortcuts through a musical fourth dimension: sometimes he lingers in one spot for ages, seemingly indifferent to harmonic motion – on "How High the Moon," for example, he spends a full chorus noodling around "Ornithology"’s little triplet figure – while at other times he cuts across a piece precipitously, like some ancient Greek giving a virtuoso demonstration of conic sections. For Mosca, playing is a kind of listening: there’s a wait-till-the-penny-drops pause before virtually every phrase, as if he were responding to some inaudible stimulus in the ether, and his firmness of touch suggests not decisiveness but an exploratory probing of untested sonic space. His time-feel is unique, working to an inner clock that runs seemingly at three-quarters the speed of his accompanists. As a result, bassist Don Messina and drummer Bill Chattin are crucial presences, playing the changes "straight" but articulating them strongly and inventively: you can almost feel the tension in the air as pianist and rhythm section repeatedly grind against each other and diverge. Mosca’s had a difficult time of it lately: from 1998 to 2001 he was too ill to play at all; he recovered briefly, but in 2003 suffered a heart attack that put him out of action for another ten months. There’s no hint of these difficulties on the CD: his control and focus remain, amazingly enough, pin-sharp. But the disc is suffused with the sense of a man taking thoughtful stock of his memories and his music, and while there’s nothing sentimental in his playing (his chording is still sour as lemon-juice) this is music of great emotional resonance: listen, for instance, to the stoical, slow-drag reading of "If I Had You," whose gentle close suggests a pianist becoming lost in thought. It’s a privilege, and a delight, to have Mosca back in the studio. NATE DORWARD |
| Sal Mosca Thing-Ah-Majig Zinnia 118 4 Stars out of 5 Downbeat |
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Sal Mosca ____________________________ A rare treat! Rebounding from seven years of illnesses, pianist Sal Mosca
has recorded his first trio recording since 1959. His music created with
bassist Don Messina and drummer Bill Chattin reveals underpinnings of
mentor Lennie Tristano's influence. Messina reports (in the liner notes)
how the beauty and glory of the music discloses what it's like to witness
Mosca on his own piano in his own studio. |
Jazz Times - 2006
| SAL MOSCA Thing-Ah-Majig (Zinnia) First, the bad news: Sal Mosca is a fierce individualist. His Web site states that “to remain independent, he has recorded and produced all his own work.” Thing-Ah-Majig is a sonically wretched amateur digital recording. Now the good news: Sal Mosca is a fierce individualist. He is not just a name in the history books. He is, at 77, one of the most original and important pianists now playing jazz. Once a student of Lennie Tristano, he is a somewhat shadowy figure who has devoted much of his life to private teaching at his studio in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. It was into this studio that Mosca brought bassist Don Messina and drummer Bill Chattin to record, spur-of-the-moment, his first trio album since 1959. Deconstructing standards is not a new idea, but wait until you hear what Mosca does with “I’ll Remember April” and “I Can’t Get Started.” Tempo and melody and changes are relative matters to Mosca, and he breaks these songs so far down, in abstracted block chords, tangential fragments and confrontational tremolos, that it is startling when they resolve back into themselves. Mosca’s improvisatory impulses are reminiscent of Art Pepper’s. He will sometimes musically ponder and mark time until a gust of inspiration blows up revelatory free ideas that all tie. There are three more standards in this 43-minute album that are almost as intelligently impulsive and beautifully jagged. Bad sound aside, Thing-Ah-Majig is an essential recording. |