Jazz
Ross Margitza Music · 2 October 2026
“Huckleberry” closes the album in 3:25 and is the only track that runs. It arrives after seven pieces that move between slow and medium tempo, and the impression it leaves is that Ross Margitza’s trio is saving the showiest part for the end.
All eight compositions are his, and the arrangements too. He is on piano, James Sutter on bass and Daniel Dufour on drums. Joel Frahm puts saxophone on the title track (6:09) and never comes back, and the Soha Quartet (Mei Liu and Chloe Yofan on violins, Thomas Gougeon on viola and Katsuaki Arakawa on cello) appears on four: “Discovery”, “The Wanderer” (5:12), “A Heart Fulfilled” (4:34) and “Remembrance” (5:23), dedicated to the pianist Steve Richko.
Margitza grew up in Detroit, where his father and his grandfather were both professional pianists and gave him his first lessons. He started piano at six and trumpet at ten, and says what pulled him into jazz was Oscar Peterson’s reading of “West Side Story”. He holds a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin and now coordinates jazz piano studies there. Until this summer there was one single under his own name: the “Discovery” track itself, released on 7 August.
The album’s problem is uniformity. Seven of the eight tracks run between 4:34 and 6:09 and nearly all of them stay in the same dynamic register, and the strings always come in to hold the harmony up from underneath without ever arguing with the piano. Frahm disappearing after the first track removes the one element that could have done something else. Margitza is a pianist with a clean touch and a dependable left hand, and “June 3rd” (5:59) and “For Graham” (5:01) show it with the trio alone, which is where he sounds best.
It runs 40:54 and comes out on his own label, with no company behind it.
Rating: 7.1/10
Text by Aina Torrents