Roxy Coss

New York-based saxophonist Roxy Coss maintains an active career across multiple roles that include musician, composer, bandleader, educator, and activist. Her writing most frequently draws on the post-bop idiom, yet she commands a thorough command of earlier jazz styles, allowing her warm yet forceful tone to shape inventive improvisations across saxophones, flute, and clarinet. Beyond fronting her own ensembles, she remains sought after as a sideman and has performed with Clark Terry, Louis Hayes, Rufus Reid, Billy Kaye, and Claudio Roditi. Between 2012 and 2014 she belonged to trumpeter Jeremy Pelt’s ensemble and joined the Macktet, a group Pelt co-led with drummer Willie Jones III. Festival appearances have taken her to Newport Jazz Festival, N.Y.C. Winter JazzFest, Melbourne Big Band Festival, Earshot Jazz Festival, San Jose Jazz Summerfest, Ballard Jazz Festival, Jazz Standard, and Jazz Showcase, while she has also headlined numerous clubs. Since 2010 she has held a chair in drummer Sherrie Maricle’s Diva Jazz Orchestra. Coss established the Women in Jazz Organization, and her Roxy Coss Quintet became the inaugural recipient of the Emerging Artist Project Grant issued by the Local 802 Musicians Union AFM of Greater New York. Formed in 2008, the group features guitarist Alex Wintz, pianist/keyboardist Miki Yamanaka, bassist Rick Rosato, and drummer Jimmy Macbride. The 2016 Origin release Restless Idealism earned her an ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award, and the 2018 Posi-Tone album The Future Is Female appeared on multiple year-end jazz lists while attracting coverage in Vanity Fair, Downbeat, and New York City Jazz Record.

Born and raised in Seattle, Coss began piano studies at age five through the Robert Pace method, acquiring foundational skills in theory, composition, and ear training. At nine she took up the saxophone, discovered jazz two years later, and joined her middle-school jazz band. While attending high school she traveled internationally with the acclaimed GHS Jazz Ensemble under Clarence Acox. She entered William Paterson University on a full scholarship, completing a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies/Performance in 2008 and graduating Magna Cum Laude; that same year she issued her privately released self-titled debut to favorable local notice.

After relocating to New York in 2011, Coss was chosen for Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead Residency Workshop at the Kennedy Center and for Ravinia’s Steans Jazz Institute, where she studied with Rufus Reid, Curtis Fuller, Nathan Davis, George Cables, and David Baker. Additional mentors included Gary Smulyan, Donny McCaslin, and Mark Taylor on saxophone, flute, and clarinet; Rich DeRosa in composition; Anne Drummond on flute and composition; and Harold Mabern in improvisation. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Jazz Education Network and holds jazz faculty positions at the Juilliard School, the New School, and the Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY).

Coss participated in Pelt’s studio and touring band for the 2013 album Water and Earth and the 2014 release Face Forward, Jeremy, then moved to Origin for 2016’s Restless Idealism, her second leader date, on which Pelt appeared as a guest. Critical response was positive and led to the first of four consecutive “Rising Star” placements in the Downbeat Critic’s Poll. She next signed with Posi-Tone for 2017’s Chasing the Unicorn, presenting original works alongside interpretations of Joe Henderson’s “A Shade of Jade,” Wayne Shorter’s “Virgo,” Lionel Loueke’s “Benny’s Tune,” and pop standards by Willie Nelson and the Beatles. One year later she issued the assertive and refined The Future Is Female on Posi-Tone, a collection of ten originals that introduced Yamanaka on piano and keyboards; reviewers praised its inventive hard-bop writing and fluid, blues-tinged solos. Although the song titles evoke ongoing struggle, the music itself projects an affirmative outlook. Downbeat again named her a Rising Star, marking the fifth straight year, and Jazziz listed her among artists to watch in 2019. In May of that year she released her fifth album, Quintet, on Outside in Music, a live recording that revisited eight earlier compositions.