Roxy Coss
Grammy-winning Musician, Composer, Educator and Activist Roxy Coss has become one of the most unique and innovative Saxophonists on the scene. She is the Founder and President of Women In Jazz Organization (WIJO), Co-Artistic Director of the Brubeck Jazz Summit, and Visiting Fellow for the Think Tank at Wesleyan University’s Bailey College of the Environment ‘24-’25. Starting in September ‘25, Roxy will be joining Stony Brook University as Assistant Professor/Director of Jazz Studies.
Roxy has been a fixture on the New York scene for over fifteen years, and has performed extensively around the world, headlining major festivals and venues. She is the winner of the 2022 Downbeat Critics’ Poll "Rising Star" category in Soprano Saxophone, an ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award, Jazziz Magazine listed her an “Artist to Watch," and she received the Hothouse Magazine & Jazzmobile “Tenor Saxophone” Award. Roxy has six recordings out as a bandleader. Her latest, Disparate Parts, was released March 2022 on the Outside in Music label. Coss has performed and recorded as a side musician with Jazz greats and luminaries including Clark Terry, Louis Hayes, Rufus Reid, Billy Kaye, Houston Person, Bill Charlap, Claudio Roditi, Jeremy Pelt, Willie Jones III, Geoffrey Keezer, Maurice Hines, Ken Peplowski, Mike Pope, and bands such as Darcy James Argue's "Secret Society", the Mingus Big Band, Birdland Big Band, the Diva Jazz Orchestra, and The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra, which she received a GRAMMY for.
Roxy is Founder and President of Women In Jazz Organization, a collective of over 500 professional jazz musicians and composers who identify as women or gender non-binary. WIJO intends to help level the playing field, so that women and non-binary people have equal opportunity to participate in and contribute to the jazz community, leading to an improved and more rich, diverse, and successful art form. The organization is committed to honoring Black Americans as the creators of jazz.
Office Hours:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 2-3:30pm
284 High Street, Room 301 (College of the Environment)