IF you heed her peers and colleagues’ opinions, Renee Rosnes is the jazz equivalent of a “five-tool” baseball player: that rare athlete who possesses the technical skills and psychological fortitude to excel in all phases of the game over a sustained duration. In lieu of hitting, throwing, fielding, and running, Vancouver-born Rosnes, 59, has made her mark as an instrumentalist, improviser, composer, arranger, and bandleader, accumulating a CV as distinguished as any pianist of her generation since she moved to New York in 1986.
During her first 15 years in New York, Rosnes established impeccable bona fides as both side musician and leader. She sound- and beat-sculpted on various keyboards with Wayne Shorter and M-BASE influencers Greg Osby and Gary Thomas. She was an authoritative hardcore jazz practitioner in long-haul relationships with Joe Henderson, J.J. Johnson, James Moody, Bobby Hutcherson, and Lewis Nash, as well as the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars. She stamped her elegant, orchestral conception of the piano trio on three sparkling standards albums with her then-husband Billy Drummond and bass maestro Ray Drummond (no relation). And she composed and arranged for her own bands, documenting her output on eight albums—each with its own distinctive character—for Blue Note, beginning with an eponymous 1988 date to which Shorter, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, and Branford Marsalis contributed.
On Rosnes’ 20th and latest date as a leader, (Smoke Sessions), conceived and composed at the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, her apex-of-the-pyramid personnel—Chris Potter, saxophones and winds; Christian McBride, bass; Carl Allen, drums; Rogério Baccato, percussion—jump in the deep end of the pool (Potter, vibraphonist Steve Nelson, bassist Peter Washington, and drummer Lenny White) and 2016’s (Nelson, Washington, saxophonist Steve Wilson, and drummer Bill Stewart), which feature another 16 Rosnes compositions.
