Called “one of the most unique and innovative saxophonists on the scene,” and winner of a 2016 American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award, Roxy Coss will perform at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 24.
Originally from Seattle, but now a decade-long fixture of the New York scene, she was listed in a Downbeat Critics’ Poll as a “Rising Star” for the past five years in a row, and a Downbeat Magazine review called her “an exceptional young talent”.
Tickets for the BIMA show, $25 to $29 each, are available now. Visit the “events” section of www.biartmuseum.org to learn more and purchase.
Coss first started playing piano at the age of 5, and learned the basics of music theory, composition, and ear training through the Robert Pace method.
She picked up the saxophone at 9, and fell in love with jazz by 11, playing in her middle school jazz band under the tutelage of Robert Knatt.
Coss graduated in 2004 from Garfield High School, where she toured and performed internationally with the world-renowned GHS Jazz Ensemble, led by Clarence Acox, and went on to attend William Paterson University, where she graduated on a full scholarship Magna Cum Laude in 2008, with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies/Performance.
In 2011, she was chosen to participate in both the prestigious Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead Residency Workshop at the Kennedy Center, and the acclaimed Steans Institute Jazz Program at the Ravinia Festival, where she worked closely with Rufus Reid, Curtis Fuller, Nathan Davis, George Cables, and David Baker.
As a composer, Coss has collaborated with her mother, Seattle visual artist Mary Coss, to create the soundtrack entitled “Eternal,” for an exhibition at METHOD Gallery. She was also commissioned by the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company to write the score for “Breaking,” a one-man dance piece, as well as “Tribe,” a full-length dance show choreographed on commission by the Holocaust Museum of New York City.
She is the Founder of Women In Jazz Organization, a collective of over 300 professional jazz musicians who identify as women or non-binary, which intends to help “level the playing field, so that women and non-binary people have equal opportunity to participate in and contribute to the jazz community, leading to an improved and more rich, diverse, and successful art form.”
