Gene Ess

Quality 0.50 · 0 views · Updated 2 months ago

American jazz musician

title: "Gene Ess" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["year-of-birth-missing-(living-people)", "living-people", "american-musicians-of-japanese-descent", "american-jazz-guitarists"] description: "American jazz musician" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Ess" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American jazz musician ::

Gene Ess is a Japanese-American jazz guitarist. He was a member of the Rashied Ali Quintet, working with Ravi Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Lonnie Plaxico, and Reggie Workman.

Career

Ess was born Gene Shimosato in Tokyo, Japan, and raised in Okinawa on an American military base. In his early teens, he was a performing musician in Okinawa. He studied classical music at George Mason University, then attended Berklee College of Music, where he became interested in jazz, particularly the music of John Coltrane.

Ess moved to New York City and became a member of a band led by Rashied Ali. He toured with Ali and recorded on his album No One in Particular. While in this group, he played with Ravi Coltrane, Eddie Henderson, Carlos Santana, Archie Shepp, and Reggie Workman

Ess's album Modes of Limited Transcendence (2009) received the 2010 SESAC Outstanding Jazz Performance Award. The album includes compositions by Ess and pianist Tigran Hamasyan. In 2012, he released A Thousand Summers, which contains vocals by Nicki Parrott.

Following this, Ess released Fractal Attraction (2013), which continues his exploration of voice in a chamber group setting. The album was recorded with Thana Alexa on vocals, David Berkman on piano, Thomas Kneeland on drums, and Gene Jackson on drums. Ess has also worked with Al Foster, Slide Hampton, Dave Liebman, and Clark Terry.

Discography

As leader

  • Sunrise Falling (Amp, 2003)
  • Sandbox and Sanctum (Simp, 2005)
  • Modes of Limited Transcendence (Simp, 2008)
  • A Thousand Summers (Simp, 2012)
  • Fractal Attraction (Simp, 2013)
  • Eternal Monomyth (Simp, 2015)
  • Absurdist Theater (Simp, 2016)
  • Apotheosis (Simp, 2018)
  • Ah-Bop (Simp, 2022)

As sideman

  • One World Tribe, Prayer for September (Paddle Wheel, 1995)
  • Rashied Ali, No One in Particular (Survival, 2001)

References

References

  1. (2013). "The Great Jazz Guitarists". Backbeat.
  2. "Gene Ess".
  3. (11 July 2006). "Gene Ess: One Note Says It All".
  4. (4 September 2013). "Blending Passionate and Pensive".
  5. (6 April 2017). "Discography {{!}} Gene Ess Shimosato".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

year-of-birth-missing-(living-people)living-peopleamerican-musicians-of-japanese-descentamerican-jazz-guitarists