"This is a band at the peak of its potential, capable of great power, but also of great range."

~Duncan Heining, Jazzwise, August, 2003.

“...the living embodiment of vibrancy, unrivaled in its ability to thrill mind and body alike. No jazz composer so effortlessly weaves so much jazz history...into so rich and satisfying a tapestry of sound.”

~Chris Parker-The London Times

“...the musicians resembled a vast rock-n-roll band, a Moroccan folk ensemble, a symphonic band playing a hoedown, a jostling crowd of Dixieland street-stompers, a scholarly Schoenbergian tone-row outfit whose drinks had been spiked, and plenty more besides. It was one of the best shows I have seen in twenty years, and is a hot contender for the hair-raiser of the entire decade.”

~John Fordham-The Manchester Guardian

“One of America’s greatest living composers.”

~Time Out Magazine - London

“George Russell may be the greatest theoretician in the history of jazz, but he certainly knows how to boogie. The baddest, funkiest big band in jazz.”

~Birmingham Jazz-UK

“Nobody in jazz today writes with Russell’s scope, feel for ensemble structure, or intellectual reach. Nobody in jazz writes like this, period.”

~J.D.Considine-Musician Magazine

“One of the decisive forces in the development of modern jazz.”

~Frances Davis-Philadelphia Inquirer

“The Living Time Orchestra is a compelling and persistently surprising force in contemporary music.”

~Gary Giddins-The Village Voice

“All of the music’s most important developments from modal improvisation to electronics, African polyrhythms to free form atonality to jazz-rock have taken cues from Mr. Russell’s pioneering work.”

~Robert Palmer-The New York Times

“...the rousing, maniacally wonderful, cutting-edge music of George Russell, the eternally youthful avant-garde maestro and his Orchestra, a wild band of virtuosos...a truly original blend of funk, rock and freewheeling, contemporary jazz.”

~Owen McNally-Hartford Courant

“George Russell is the Duke Ellington of our generation...and the only musician capable of magically firing up a big band.”

~Gilles Anquetil-Le Nouvel Observateur

“Not only were the harmonics, melodic and dynamic shifts in the extended suites often astonishing, but the rollicking, joyful rhythms often tempted one to flout the Smithsonian’s decorum and dance in the aisles.”

~Geoffrey Hines-The Washington Post

“...One of the greatest composer/bandleaders in jazz, not presently, but in an all-time sense.”

~Jack Cooke-Wire Magazine

“...one of the world’s great jazz aggregations.”

~BBC Magazine

“...for nearly half a century he has taken the path of absolute individuality and staggering ambition.”

~The London Telegraph

“...George Russell is not only one of the great American composers of the postwar period, he is the jazz composers jazz composer.”

~John Walters- The Independent

"When you get a whole band to play like that, it's some of the most beautiful music you can have in the world. If you could sit down and write stuff like that out...well, some people do, like George Russell. He wrote stuff like that and it was incredible."

~Rashied Ali, Modern Drummer, January, 2003

“The Lydian Chromatic Concept is one of the two most splendid books about music; the other is My Musical Language by Messiaen. Though I’m considered a contemporary music composer, if I dare categorize myself as an artist, I've been strongly influenced by the Lydian Concept, which is not simply a musical method--we might call it a philosophy of music, or we might call it poetry.”

~Toru Takemitsu, Swing Journal interview, Tokyo

“The simple melody was an experiment inspired by an evening Miles had spent with...George Russell who at the time was working on his...Lydian Chromatic Concept...Miles was fascinated by Russell’s approach. Here was a means for breaking free from tonal cliches while maintaining some amount of restraint. Shortly after his evening with Russell, Miles recorded his new composition demonstrating Russell’s basic principles.”

~Round About Midnight: A Portrait of Miles Davis by Eric Nisenson, Dial Press, New York

“Consider the circumstances. Miles took his musicians into the studio for the first of two sessions for Kind of Blue in March, 1959. At the time modal jazz...was not an entirely new idea...Originally, the idea for this kind of playing with the concept of composer George Russell.”

~Liner notes for Kind of Blue by Robert Palmer, Columbia 1355

“Russell is responsible for what remains the most significant single theoretical treatise written about the music.”

~Morton and Cook, The Penguin Guide to Jazz, Penguin Books. London

“Surpasses any musical knowledge I’ve been exposed to.”

~Ornette Coleman

“Gives you so much more to work with.”

~Eric Dolphy

“George enlightened me about a different way of playing music, an analytical way which enabled me to go on learning about music on my own.”

~Jan Garbarek

“The foremost theoretical contribution of our time---destined to become the most influential philosophy of the future.”

~David Baker

“Far ahead of any book in the field.”

~Gil Evans

“The past, the present, the future, all in one. A must for the serious musician.”

~Art Farmer

“Miles Davis became the first major jazz musician to be influenced by Russell’s ideas, and in 1958 he composed...Milestones, which was based on two modes...He recorded Milestones with Coltrane on April 3, 1958, and both men felt liberated by the new harmonic philosophy. Davis continued to work on Russell’s concepts, and...he created five selections for the first all-modal album, Kind of Blue.”

~Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz by Donald Maggin, William Morrow, New York

“It is indeed quite possible that much of the jazz rock of the seventies would not have existed if it weren’t for Russell’s pioneering work.”

~Eric Nisenson, Music and Sound Output

“The first work deriving a theory of jazz from the immanent laws of jazz, not from the laws of European music. The Concept was the great path-breaker for Miles Davis’ and John Coltrane’s modality.”

~The Jazz Book by Joachim Berendt, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago

"***** 5 stars"

~Jazzman Magazine, France - November 2005

"Russell is one of the great men of postwar modernism, a direct link to the time when everything--architecture, film, music, society-was being reinvented. His writing is so multifaceted and many layered that you want to hear it again. Every band should play a Russell composition, or at least aspire to his adventurous spirit. Four stars. "

~John Walter, The Guardian, London, June 16, 2003

"The revelation of the Umbria Festival was Russell. Both Russell's ensemble and his music, which he has continued to refine and update over a career spanning six decades proved timeless."

~Mitchell Feldman, downbeat, December, 2002

"Amazing. A monumental achievement. I don't know how you did it."

~Gunther Schuller