Reviews / Press

Hands On'Semble:

Drum! Magazine 2003 and 2002 Reader’s Poll award winner best percussion ensemble.
Drum! Magazine 2001 Reader’s Poll runner up award for best percussion ensemble.

"A Stellar percussion group…extraordinary soloing, and extensive palette of sounds" (Modern Drummer Magazine)

"Masterful" (Modern Drummer Magazine)

“John Bergamo, Austin Wrinkle, Randy Gloss, and Andrew Grueschow succeeded in presenting a CD clearly ranking among the most interesting percussion CD's of the last ten years.”
(Michael Weil, Percussion Creativ Germany)

“...The Hands On'Semble always creates music with excellent energy and interesting colors and textures.The music is never so esoteric as to be elitist or incomprehensible, it always grooves. As great as the music is, it is an excellent resource for listeners to be exposed to and learn about percussion traditions from around the world. Anyone who loves hand percussion should check out Shradhanjali.” (Percussive Notes)

On the Lian Ensemble at the Ford Amphitheater:

“the evening’s most startling moment took place during a percussion interlude featuring Houman Pourmehdi, David Johnson and Randy Gloss, in which frame drums, tonbak, daf, cajon, and bass drum were spontaneously blended into an extraordinary collection of rhythms and timbres.” (Don Heckman, L.A. Times)

“Randy Gloss's maneuvering of his frame drum had to be seen to be believed…” (Mina Silverstone, salamworldwide.com)

On Adam Rudolph’s Vashti:

"The members of Vashti are tastemakers; they communicated effortlessly without resorting to hotdogging. The ensemble pieces sounded like gently dropping pebbles, the solos working toward a cohesive whole. " (LA Weekly)

On Adam Rudolph’s Organic Orchestra Web of Light
(Featuring Brad Dutz, AdamRudolph, Alex Cline, Randy Gloss as percussion soloists):

"Entirely magical and mind-expanding." (Steve Holtje – Music Hound Jazz: The Essential Album Guide)

On Quarteto Nuevo:

“percussionists Randy Gloss and Christopher Garcia multitask via their expert employment of ethnocentric instruments. Ultimately, this wonderful outing signifies one of the major surprises of the year! (Passionately recommended)” (allaboutjazz.com)

On tour with Chitravina Ravikiran:

“A first-of-its-kind presentation held in Delhi and Bombay recently, acclaimed stars from various continents collaborated with the well known Indian prodigy, Ravikiran..
The artistes, apart from Ravikiran, were: Jovino Santos Neto, a legendary pianist from Brazil, Randy Gloss, a well acclaimed drummer from USA and Alfred Ladzekpo, another equally exciting drummer from Ghana Africa…
The proceedings commenced with a solo by Jovino on the piano. Next was Ravikiran’s piece, The Singing Swans, based on the raga Hamsadhwani. Then came a fast paced piece from Brazil, Asa Branca which saw a great interaction between all the artistes. Next on show was a piece from Africa, led by Alfred Ledzekpo on his drums. He also danced and sang during this piece, which tickled the imagination of the public in both cities. The fifth piece on display was another one of Ravikiran’s Melharmonic creations, based on Hamirkalyani raga. It was really interesting to see the artistes handling this piece with its Indian inflections so competently.
Other pieces included Ferro vino from Brazil, where Randy Gloss showed his mettle with a fine percussion solo, Jamming Saints, an intricate creation of Poovalur Srinivasan and rounded off with another jet-set paced piece from South America, Chamigo.”
(KutcheriBuzz Madras India)

On Thanjavur at the Irvine Barclay Theatre:

REVIEW: An eclectic, multicultural program influenced by India, Japan, and American jazz serves as introduction to the world music group Thanjavur.
by Laura Bleiberg, The Orange County Register.
"Thanjavur was the find of the evening. Formed by sitar player Paul Livingstone and drummer Poovalur Srinivasan, Thanjavur plays pieces that are exotic in their mix of instruments and ultimately hypnotic in sound. While their musical influences were clearly diverse, Thanjavur's pieces have a jazz sensibility and an Indian sound. The outstanding guest artists were Pedro Eustache (on flutes, saxophone, and dyduk), Dante Pascuzzo (electric bass), and Randy Gloss (drum set). "

Lian Ensemble at the Seventh International Oud Festival of Jerusalem:

"Three weeks have passed since the final concert of this festival, on Nov. 16, and I am still trying to reconstruct this rare musical and spiritual experience. With no oud on stage, the Lian Ensemble, a Sufi-Persian aggregation composed of four Iranian exiles who are based in Los Angeles and augmented by an American percussionist, delivered a hypnotic set of their interpretations of the poems of well-known Sufi masters such as Jellaluddin Rumi, Farid al-Din Attar (whose text, Conference of the Birds, inspired bass player Dave Holland's album of the same name, ECM, 1972) and Sheikh Javad Nurbakhsh.
Tar player Pirayeh Pourafar usually began each piece with focused and economic playing; santur player Mahshid Mirzadeh soon interlocked with Porafar's nuanced ruminations; and after these two women outlined the exquisite theme, the percussionists--Houman Pourmehdi, who alternated his tonbak and daf frame drums with the ney flute and the stringed setar, and Randy Gloss--added momentum and infectious rhythms. But the magic began when their vocalist began to sing.
Naderi Veseghi Soleyman, a dignified-looking white-haired gentleman in his sixties, seated in the center of the stage, was gifted with a warm and expressive voice, but it was his delivery of the Sufi texts that made the difference. When he sang, you could understood why the Sufis believe and they are able to approach God through truth and love. Soleyman's sincere and humble affinity with the messages of the poetic texts--none was translated--and his joyous, total belief in these texts, together with the rich tonal ornamentations of the ensemble, captured the audience's attention again and again.
The devotional approach of this excellent ensemble, with their imaginative arrangements of complex Sufi texts, all executed in a refined yet virtuosic manner that never lost momentum, contributed to the feeling of elation that accompanied me many hours and days after this concert." -Eyal Hareuveni, allaboutjazz.com