(short)

Since 2001, recording artist, violinist and composer Jessica Moss has been a force of depth in contemporary experimental music. First as a central member of Thee Silver Mt. Zion, until the legendary chamber-punk outfit went on hiatus in 2016, and in the years since as a solo artist, releasing four acclaimed albums on Montreal’s unshakeable Constellation Records. Also a sought-after collaborator, she has worked with (amongst many others): Vic Chesnutt, Carla Bozulich, Patti Smith, Jem Cohen, Jim White, Guy Picciotto, Big•Brave, Melissa Auf Der Maur and Mary Margaret O’Hara.  Her most recent releases, Galaxy Heart (2022) and Phosphenes (2021), are ambitious summations of her work to date: profoundly emotional, expansive musical experiences that draw on post-classical, ambient metal, Eastern European folk, drone, and a myriad of traditions in between. Live appearances include festival stops at Le Guess Who?, Big Ears, ATP, Supersonic, Donau, Basilica Hudson 24-Hour Drone and Soundscapes, Suoni Per Il Popolo, POP Montreal, Bang On A Can NYC and more. 

Beyond her own solo practice, Moss has been busy of late: reviving her avant-Klezmer group Black Ox Orkestar for a new album + tour in 2022, and working on a unique project with Novarumori chamber orchestra that saw the first transcriptions and symphonic expressions of her work in spring of 2023. 

Through her history as a solo performer, Moss has developed an inventive approach to building sonic environments where instrumentation and vocalization are treated as interconnected strands, woven together into aural tapestries. How Moss employs this process to faithfully recreate her multidimensional compositions as they exist on record has long been the central appeal of her performances.

(long)

Montreal violinist, composer, and singer Jessica Moss has performed and recorded with a wide spectrum of ensembles over the past two decades. Best known for her fifteen-year tenure in political of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Moss recorded and toured with the Vic Chesnutt band for the two albums released on Constellation, and worked extensively with Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista. She has performed and recorded as a guest with many of Montreal’s best known artists, including Big|Brave on their acclaimed 2015 and 2017 releases on Southern Lord. She was featured in Jem Cohen’s Empires of Tin project, and joined members of Godspeed, Fugazi, White Magic and Dirty Three to perform the live score to Cohen’s film We Have An Anchor in various locations at Europe and the USA. Moss is also a founding member of avant-klezmer group Black Ox Orkestar, who reunited to release the much acclaimed album Everything Returns on Constellation in December 2022.

Moss’ catalyst to create solo work was a 2014 virtual collaboration with Olympia, USA musician Kevin Doria, who creates intensely rich and layered minimalist drone music under the moniker Total Life and with his bands Growing and Hiss Tracts. Simultaneously she was commissioned by La Biennale de Montréal to create a site-specific composition that reflected on the theme of the 2014 exhibition.

Alone in her practice space equipped with the tools, methods, and experiences gleaned from years in studios, rehearsal spaces, performing and touring, Jessica commenced building her unique style and structure. The music that came was longform and narrative, conjuring images with sounds and melodies and occasional lyrics, and telling exigent stories of troubled times. Written by ear and memory and never committed to paper, Moss conceives for live performance, where she makes use of violin, a myriad of pedals, a microphone, and three amplifiers.

Moss’ first solo recordings came in the form of a self-released cassette entitled Under Plastic Island (2015), a beautiful, swirling meditation on the island of plastic trash floating in the ocean, the result of a trip to Brooklyn during which she spent time in the basement recording studio of friend and occasional collaborator Guy Picciotto (Fugazi). In 2017 she released her first solo LP on Constellation, Pools of Light, recorded with kindred spirit Radwan Ghazi Moumneh of Jerusalem In My Heart. Comprised of two side-length multi-movement compositions, it is a stunning work that unfolds at a stately, inexorable pace, combining sound-art and signal-processed timbres, extended melodic and contrapuntal lines, and the periodic deployment of stark, minimalist vocals.

Following the release of Pools Of Light, Moss ascended as a live soloist, captivating audiences with her gritty, warmly expressive electronic- and drone-inflected post-classical Minimalism (and sometimes Maximalism), accented by a distinctive melodic sensibility that channels Klezmer, Balkan and Middle Eastern tropes. She toured extensively throughout North America and Europe over the next few years, including festival appearances at Big Ears, WSO New Music, Le Guess Who?, ATP, Zemlika, Transmissions and Supersonic, participation in multiple editions of Basilica Hudson’s 24-Hour Drone festivals, and a mix of headlining and support dates with the likes of Zu, Big|Brave, GAS, Xylouris White, Julia Holter, and labelmates Godspeed You! Black Emperor among many others. Moss also collaborated with Angel Deradoorian, Nick Zinner, Clarice Jensen, and Francesco Donadello as part of a residency at the 2018 edition of Berlin’s PEOPLE festival, and composed the score for the Fact Award-winning documentary Laila at the Bridge.

Moss released her second solo album titled Entanglement in October 2018. This record found her channelling quantum theory as a metaphor for creating energetic connections through esoteric processes. Using violin (and occasionally, voice) as sound source, her compositions are set in motion like entangled particles – spinning, ricocheting, warping and stretching in extra-dimensional space. Profoundly informed by the experiences of traveling alone – playing in precarious spaces preserved by passionate subcultural communities, attempting fragile, intimate, abstract transmissions through sound and performance – Moss’ compositions on Entanglement invoke the striving for communication and connection in isolation and the mysterious energies that bind the singular and the universal.

Following the release of Entanglement, Moss struck up an array of fruitful new collaborations: she began working with Roy Montgomery, played on Daniel O’Sullivan’s album Folly, and joined Feist’s live band as a touring member. She also composed and performed the live score for “DUST,” a production from award-winning Australian dance company Dancenorth. Moss contributed to Oiseaux-Tempête’s most recent album From Somewhere Invisible, and she both supported and performed with the band on their subsequent tour in Fall 2019. 

Like most musicians, Moss was unable to perform live for a good part of the year 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdown measures in Montreal notwithstanding, she found a silver lining in the forced solitude, as it granted her the freedom to write and record two albums of new music. The pandemic was a blessing in disguise for Moss, allowing her to achieve the kind of intensely focused concentration needed to create her music. Unencumbered by the demands of pre-pandemic life, Moss spent the entire year crafting Phosphenes and Galaxy Heart, with the help of accomplice and co-producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. Phosphenes was released by Constellation in November 2021, with Galaxy Heart (featuring contributions from Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Thierry Amar and Jim White of Dirty Three fame) following suit in October 2022. 

In 2023, Moss is set to collaborate with Isak Goldschneider, the artistic director of Montreal’s cutting-edge concert series “Innovations en concert”, on the first-ever transcription of her compositions. She will also take part in renowned contemporary ensemble Bang On A Can’s annual Longplay Festival, taking place across several venues in Brooklyn NY. In addition to her musical work, she is a talented visual artist who creates all of the videos that accompany her solo recordings.