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As a Leader

As a Co-Leader

With Exit 50

As a Sideman

Back to Party's Over / Begun Reviews Kelly Rossum Party's Over / Begun Trumpeter Kelly Rossum, a graduate of the University of Nebraska (BM) and the University of North Texas (MM), is currently a DMA candidate at the University of Minnesota, and teaches at the MacPhail Center for the Arts in Minneapolis. On Rossum’s Party’s Over/Begun, the most exciting playing is found on the last two tracks. While the opening selections are good solid jazz, they don’t separate Rossum and his band from many of the jazz groups playing and recording today. The last two tracks however, show a different side of Rossum both as a performer and composer. Here he is experimental, adventurous, and not at all tentative. A.M. Quiet is everything implied in the title. Opening with slow and somber chords in the piano, Rossum is able to play on the tune’s atmosphere in order to work out some wonderfully subtle emotional possibilities. In the best cut, Rush Hour, Rossum’s melody is frantic, jagged in line and harmonic structure, and punctuated by wonderfully accented schizophrenic lines in the piano. Rossum, as soloist, is at his best as he tries to keep up with Lease’s piano playing which, on this cut, is in a style highly reminiscent of Myra Melford. Rossum’s group is best when not playing it safe. This reviewer recommends that his next disc steer the course laid out on these last tracks. Thomas R. Erdmann ITG Jazz Editor, director of bands and trumpet professor Elon University, Elon, North Carolina Return to Party's Over / Begun Reviews