"The trio plays with great economy and produce a dynamic balance between written and improvised music — no grandstanding gestures, just deep musical trust and creativity."

"A lot of good free and free-adjacent trio jazz — loose, improvised, and occasionally aggressive."

"Mark Helias shows superb instincts — both on bass and in unearthing this long-forgotten recording, captured when all cylinders were firing."

“Open Loose rewrites the rules of jazz trio interaction, balancing structure and freedom with seamless transitions between composition and improvisation. The trio’s intuitive interplay and trust create music that evolves organically—dynamic, unpredictable, yet deeply rooted in jazz tradition.”

“GLOW contains almost six decades of music, practically a career retrospective for the Colsons, wrapped into seven tidy pieces. Those decades of experience show through on this fine recording, abetted by the stellar bass-drum tandem of Helias and Cyrille.”

“These duets are special because, freed from fixed tempos and harmonic structures, they become spontaneous conversations where melody, space, and deep listening take center stage—revealing Jane Ira Bloom’s rare gift as a melodist and the profound rapport she shares with her partners.”

“After three-quarters of an hour… it was incredible. A variety of musical styles were heard, rhythm changes were met with laughter from bassist Mark Helias and drummer Joey Baron. The audience in the sold-out jazz cellar cheered. A true joy to watch and listen to the three musicians perform.”

"A journey from sublime intimacy to edgy avant-garde — a testament to the duo’s innate telepathy and spontaneous creativity."

"An absorbing recital of warmth, lyricism, and invention — Bloom and Helias are perfectly suited to the intimacy of the duo format."

“Performed and recorded entirely in isolation, Bloom and Helias transcend physical distance to create a sacred space of connection and communion. Their wide-ranging sonic journey embraces expressivity and joy, a healing rediscovery of each other through sound.”

“The name Open Loose doesn’t describe Mark Helias’ music as much as epitomize the mindset his trio brings to it.”

“The rhythm duo fits right into Perelman’s free improv vision, following him anywhere he chooses to roam. But they also ground him, sometimes encouraging him to pare his firestorm of sound down to mere flurries of sparks… Perelman’s post-postbop remains as adventurous as ever, but still cleaving to the laws of physics.”

“Mark Helias’s almost unique ability to play the most difficult and challenging pieces with extraordinary lightness turns even complex music into an entertaining, vital experience—especially in live performance.”

“A sour-toned tenor swaps and shares choruses with a voluptuous violin; shuffling percussion is set off against snapping bass lines. This unlikely partnership makes surprisingly seductive improvised music, where spontaneity meets the blues.”

"All the musical ingredients you expect from Helias’ Open Loose are here — expressed with in-your-face energy, stamina, and adventurous interplay."

"These are musicians unafraid to travel outside the conventional jazz universes — with fabulous interplay, propulsive drive, and exquisite atmosphere."

“Performed and recorded entirely in isolation, Bloom and Helias transcend physical distance to create a sacred space of connection and communion. Their wide-ranging sonic journey embraces expressivity and joy, a healing rediscovery of each other through sound.”

“The name Open Loose doesn’t describe Mark Helias’ music as much as epitomize the mindset his trio brings to it.”

“A jazz quintet consisting of sax, trumpet, bass, drums and a chordal instrument can usually sound routine but there’s nothing at all ordinary about this quintet. Ivo Perelman, Nate Wooley, Matt Moran, Mark Helias and Tom Rainey let their extraordinary instincts take completely over for A Modicum of Blues.”

“Atomic Clock is revealed as a collaged exercise in acoustic hip-hop, a kaleidoscope of shifting patterns and rhythms — a sequence of improvisations on tantalizing themes that sounds like the very definition of jazz: freedom with design.”

“Though all compositions are credited to Grdina, it’s the way in which those compositions play out in conversation between the two that signals the heart of the album, and, really, its intelligence, too.”

"A dazzling interplay that teeters deliciously between jazz and abstraction — Shipp and Helias speak the same language, even as their syntax differs."

"Few bassists over the last half-century have composed and played on as much imaginative and influential work as Mark Helias."

“Pathways proved to be the perfect soundtrack to a violent summer storm—its journey from introspective calm to fierce intensity mirrored the unfolding tempest, creating a rare and powerful convergence of music and environment.”

“Helias writes sophisticated if relatively slight sketches that serve primarily as platforms for collective improvisation... The inchoate wash of sound that characterizes much jazz-based free improv is absent. In its place is a more finely detailed music that lacks nothing in terms of emotional directness.”

“The compelling, front-and-center musicality of these performances often requires two or three listenings to discern how devices like metric modulation and the counterpoint technique of inversion propel the compositions. It’s one thing to make a sly, spring-loaded line like Helias’ ‘The Comb Over’ sing, but quite another to give a richly resonant voice to rigorously structured pieces like Dresser’s ‘Transwarmo’… Dresser and Helias’ performances are powerful reminders that an instrument still too often thought of as merely an ensemble workhorse can sing with the same illuminating purity as the most coveted Italian violin.”

“The thought of a world without a live, spontaneous musical connection was too hard to imagine and so we came to these sessions over the internet with an emotional thirst that’s hard to describe. The music is discovered in the moment in a way that I’ve never recorded before.”