LOU GRASSI'S NU BAND

Grassi will bring his most recent project the NuBand featuring the incredible talents of Mark Whitecage, Roy Campbell, and Joe Fonda for a rare evening of highly crafted improvised music featuring: Lou Grassi (drums), Roy Campbell (trumpet), Mark Whitecage (saxophones, clarinet), Joe Fonda (contrabass).

"Despite impressions to the contrary, Lou Grassi is an ordinary man with only two arms. But anyone who has heard him drum may be forgiven for thinking that he is in fact a group of people, or a multi-armed creature of some kind. Nor does his apparent multi-handedness extend only to the breathtaking facility of his playing - it also refers to his skills across the spectrum, as a composer, an ensemble leader, and a musician of wonderfully varied tastes and approaches.
       
Think I'm exaggerating? Try this: name one other drummer, besides Lou Grassi, who has performed with both ragtime pianist Max Morath and the peripatetic avant-garde piano artist Borah Bergman. Whose resume includes work with the Warren Vache Sr. Syncopatin' Seven and Sun Ra alumnus Marshall Allen. Who has performed with the Dixie Peppers and with Charles Gayle. Indeed, Lou Grassi is a man with a broad mind, a sweeping imagination, and the skills to carry him through virtually any situation that requires a drum. He can make them whisper. He can make them keen. He can keep cool, detached time. He can rumble and roar. He can thunder, he can hiss. He can do more than you may think can be done with the drums. He has to be heard to be believed. …His free improv recordings are startling and refreshing testimony to the fact that this kind of playing is not the sprawling exercise in chaos that some make it out to be. Instead, you find the music held together by Grassi's overarching architectonic sense, and steadily propelled in one direction or another by his sharply honed sensibility.

He’s played and played, with (among many others): the jazz bassoon player Karen Borca, reedman Rob Brown, The Copascetics, Eddy Davis, the underground California multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia, ESP-veteran pianist Burton Greene, silk-tonsiled vocalist Johnny Hartman, angular saxophonist Chris Jonas, the towering bassist William Parker, and the monumental trombonist Roswell Rudd. If you have ever appreciated what a good drummer can add to a jazz ensemble - or wanted to find out - don't miss the multifaceted work of Lou Grassi." –Robert Spencer

Some publications related to this event:
January, 2001 - 2001