Mark Helias' Open Loose

Open Loose Fact Sheet:
• Open Loose was established in 1996 with Ellery Eskelin and Tom Rainey as a smaller offshoot of my quintet, Attack The Future.
• In 1999, Ellery Eskelin, being too busy with his own group, gave way to Tony Malaby as the tenor player in the band.
• To this day Ellery Eskelin still performs on occasion with Open Loose and guested on one cut (Modern Scag) on Atomic Clock to make a quartet with two tenors.
• Open Loose has released seven CDs. “Come Ahead Back” (1998), “New School” (2001), “Verbs of Will” (2004), “Atomic Clock” (2006), “Strange Unison” (2008). “Explicit” (2012) and “The Signal Maker” (2015).
• Open Loose has toured the US, Australia and Europe during the last 19 years.
• In 2008 we played many of the major festivals in Europe including The Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Molde (Norway) Jazz Festival, Pori (Finland) Jazz Festival, The North Sea Jazz Festival, Clusone (Italy) Jazz Festival, Arhus Jazz Festival.
• All the compositions are composed by Mark Helias but the band maintains a democratic and sometime anarchistic approach to improvising. Open Loose has recorded fifty-five compositions by Mark Helias on their six CDs.
• Open Loose has a rotating roster of musicians who have performed in the group when one of the members was unavailable. Those musicians include Nasheet Waits, Jim Black, Gerald Cleaver, Ellery Eskelin and Tim Berne.