Robert Jospé
Time To Play

In basketball, the affectionate term is "gym rat," referring to a player who’s out on the floor all of the time. Enrolling at NYU after finishing high school in Massachusetts, Robert Jospé became the loft-jazz scene’s equivalent of a gym rat. For fifteen years Jospé shadowed, befriended, and drew from the spirit of such players as Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, and Bob Moses. The fluency and vocabulary he developed on the kit is apparent on his latest CD, Time To Play.
A fan of The Beatles and funk early on, Jospé eventually was drawn into jazz by The Dave Brubeck Quartet, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis. "I was lucky enough to be in New York at the end of the ‘big bang’ of the ’60s," he says. "I was able to see the greatest players of our time in action."
Moving to the Charlottesville, Virginia area in the mid-’80s, Jospé helped invigorate that scene, performing with trumpeter John D’Earth and others. He landed a position on the performance faculty at the University of Virginia. And his own band, Inner Rhythm, has released three CDs, Inner Rhythm, Blue Blaze, and the latest, Time To Play.
Jospé also developed an educational program called "The World Beat Workshop," with percussionist Kevin Davis. "Kids love drums," Jospé says. "We demonstrate what makes a merengue different from a mambo, and a calypso from a samba. Kids get very excited by these rhythms. I’m still fascinated by how one simple idea, the clave, has become the foundation rhythm for so many kinds of music."
Jospé plays a Remo Mondo drumkit, with djembe-style drumheads, at times using his hands to vary textures in the music. "On Time To Play, I moved away from using a lot of hi-hat and cymbal," he explains. "I tried to go with an Afro-Cuban or ethnic folky sound on the drumkit."
For more on Jospé, visit www.robertjospé.com.

Robin Tolleson







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