Praised for his “open-time creativity and melodic sense” (Gapplegate Music Reviews), drummer Jeff Cosgrove has pursued a unique improvisational path with varied ensembles, including a trio with Matthew Shipp and William Parker (Alternating Current/Near Disaster), another with Frank Kimbrough and Martin Wind (Conversations with Owls), and a quartet playing repertory by the late Paul Motian (Motian Sickness). Projects are also ongoing with Shipp and Rob Brown, Scott Robinson and Ken Filiano, and rising tenor saxophone star Noah Preminger. 
 While Cosgrove has ample experience playing beat-driven music with strict time, he is drawn toward abstraction in his own work, summoning colors and textures on the drum kit, listening deeply to his colleagues as the music flows and evolves. As The Washington Post put it: “Cosgrove’s drumming doesn’t provide the music with an engine so much as a lighthouse.” According to the Frederick News-Post, “Cosgrove reaches so far beyond the parameters of mere beats and time signatures and groove that calling him a drummer is barely the beginning.” 
 Cosgrove has never lived in New York or any other big music hub, preferring to station himself in rural areas — something that he feels has affected his musical outlook and approach. For almost 20 years he lived in Shepherdstown, a town of 2,000 in the eastern corner of West Virginia. He currently resides in the slightly larger Middletown, Maryland.