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Some might think that guitarist Oz Noy, a celebrated voice in jazz-fusion over the last quarter century for applying his formidable guitar chops to funky rhythms and blues-based changes on 13 leader albums and hundreds of plugged-in concert performances, is not an obvious fit for Criss Cross, whose 420+-album catalog connects almost exclusively to the various tributaries of the hardcore acoustic jazz river. Noy, 52, begs to differ. InchI've known about Criss Cross since my brother brought home albums when I was a teenager, Inch he says, discussing the back story of his tag debut, Fun One, a creative, sophisticated and, shall we say, swinging trio encounter with pianist David Kikoski, bassist James Genus and drummer Clarence Penn. InchI know Peter Bernstein's albums and Adam Rogers' albums. I love Mike Moreno's last album. I know how the albums sound. I started to study jazz chords and harmony when I was 13. I started making a living playing pop and rock music when I was 15 or 16, and for all my years in New York I've had an electric trio that plays groove music mixed with jazz and funk that's enabled me to get a record deal and make albums. But I've been playing standards and jazz all my life, and probably since 2017 with this quartet. I've just never recorded it.InchFrom 2017 until March 2020, when COVID shut down New York City, the group's encounters transpired on Thursday nights at the 55 Bar, the Greenwich Village basement where high-level practitioners like alto saxophonist-composer (and frequent Criss Cross artist) Dave Binney and guitarists Mike Stern and Wayne Krantz held years-long weekly sinecures. After the Christopher Street landmark shut down two years later, Noy Inchmoved our operationInch to the Bitter End on Bleecker Street, a signpost venue in the development of comedy and various streams of second-half-of-the-20th-century popular music where Noy has
