Stephan Crump’s Rosetta Trio — Lineup: Stephan Crump on acoustic bass, Liberty Ellman on acoustic guitar, and Jamie Fox on electric guitar

“a low-key marvel...melodies and harmonies that seem equally alluring and askew...bracing improvisation..a strangely intuitive group dynamic...selfless and deceptively effortless” —JazzTimes

After fifteen years of collaboration, Rosetta Trio charts new territories of shape and feel on its new album, Outliers, available now on Papillon Sounds.

Best known for his dynamic founding role in the Vijay Iyer Trio, Memphis-bred, Grammy nominated, Brooklynite bassist/composer Stephan Crump leads his own uniquely colorful and hard-grooving all-string Rosetta Trio, featuring guitarists Liberty Ellman and Jamie Fox. Hailed as “a string ensemble for the new century” by All About Jazz, the group formed in 2005 to record an album of pieces written in the aftermath of 9/11. That album, Rosetta, was greeted with inclusion on multiple top ten lists and ecstatic reviews for its narrative depth and outstanding performances. Their second release, Reclamation (2010), “ingenious originals” (The New Yorker), “bareness in emotion” (NPR), was much more than a follow-up effort, though it was the earlier album that gave the trio its name and its mission: to inhabit the dynamic and rhythmic flexibility of a drumless ensemble and embrace its challenges and expanded responsibilities; to reject restrictions of genre; to explore different territories of feel, texture, color; to groove. With Thwirl (2013) “a declaration of increased proportions, a culmination of superior interplay, chemistry, delicacy and vision” (Downbeat), the group revealed a new telepathy. Rosetta Trio, whose members have for years collaborated with many of the leading lights in the New York creative music scene, has developed into a formidable unit, sensitively and powerfully rendering Crump’s often profound, sometimes playful and always honest music.