Drew Gress

Gress studied at Towson State University and Manhattan School of Music.[1] In the late 1980s he worked with Phil Haynes, recording several albums with the group Joint Venture.[1]

In 1998, he released his first album as leader, Heyday, with his band Jagged Sky (featuring David Binney, Ben Monder, and Kenny Wollesen).[2] Gress wrote all except two of the compositions.[3] Two years later, he recorded Spin & Drift, on which he also played steel guitar. He recorded material for two further albums – 7 Black Butterflies and The Irrational Numbers – in 2004.[3]

Gress has taught at Peabody Conservatory and Western Connecticut State University. He has also served tenures as artist in residence at University of Colorado-Boulder and at Russia's St. Petersburg Conservatory.[1][2]

Gress has toured Europe, Asia, and South America.[2] Those with whom he has and continues to work include Tim Berne,[4] Uri Caine, Fred Hersch, Don Byron, Dave Douglas, and Erik Friedlander.[2]

Critic John Fordham described a performance by Gress's group as "one of the great jazz performances in Britain in 2002".[5] In 2004, the UK's BBC Radio and London's Guardian selected his quartet's live radio broadcast as Jazz Concert of the Year.

Composition awards include an NEA grant (1990),[2] funding from Meet the Composer (2003).[2]

The DownBeat reviewer of Vesper, a collaboration between Gress and the trio expEAR, wrote that the bassist "has exquisite time and a composer's sense of line, a combination that allows him an insightful level of counterpoint in his playing".[6] The DownBeat reviewer of Gress's The Sky inside wrote that he "favors a focused restraint, a sort of concentrated tension that wrings the maximum inspiration from minimal elements, and which maintains a taut severity even when spare free passages burst into angular swing".[7]

• Drew Gress at Allmusic
• Joint Venture Discography at Allmusic