Barry Altschul's 3Dom Factor, Tales of the Unforeseen

Barry Altschul is one of the undeniable avant jazz drummer innovators of our time. You only have to listen to his work with Paul Bley in the beginnings of the New Thing movement and beyond, his presence with Dave Holland and Chick Corea and then as a quartet with Anthony Braxton in the celebrated group Circle, and onward to his role with Holland in the Sam Rivers Trio and simultaneously with Anthony Braxton in some of his best ensembles in the '70s to get an idea of why that is so. An extremely creative free player with an orchestral sense, an ensemble drummer who is as much an equal melodic improvisatory voice as he is a drummer in the conventional role, his solo approach and his special way of playing time, all can be heard to great advantage on those sides.

His initial bandleading days, too, give us superior playing and a leader of sensitivity and forward momentum. On the State side at least he became less present over the years, though in Europe he remained active and vital.

Now in the last decade or so he has re-emerged full-force as both extraordinary drummer and leader of essential bands. Barry Altschul's 3Dom Factor with Jon Irabagon on tenor, soprano-sopranino and flute and Joe Fonda on double bass is especially vital, both as a showcase for Barry's drumming and group concept and as a leading avant gathering.

We get a new album with Tales of the Unforeseen (TUM 044) and it lacks nothing for driving free excitement and instrumental excellence. The overarching construction is a suite of freely improvised segments with the interjection of three compositions--Monk's "Ask Me Now," Annette Peacock's "Miracles" and Barry's own "A Drummer's Tale."

This is free music in the tradition of Barry's earlier bands and his work with Bley, Circle, Braxton and Rivers. Barry sounds better than ever in all the ways that make him special, a free style that is busy but focused, a supreme sense of kit sonarity and use of space, an ability to straddle time and freetime to ever-varying degrees, and a sense of percussive gesture that, with the right players along for the ride, creates depth and movement. Just listen to Barry alone and what he is doing here and you get a seminar on state-of-the-art edgy percussiveness Altschul style.

But of course it is the presence of Fonda and Irabagon in the trio that puts it all together in the end. Joe Fonda is the sort of all-around free and linear-harmonic bassist that thrives in a spacious trio setting and Altschul's use of spacetime. Joe is a critical force here, just right for this gathering.

Jon Irabagon, as this blog continually attests, is one of the extraordinary reedists on the avant-modern jazz scene and he fits in completely with the 3Dom approach in very virtuoso ways. You hear him at first with a bit of Trane channeling but then he expands continually throughout to create significant improvisations in keeping with Barry's legacy but helping also to stretch that legacy into the present.

In short this is one of the most potent, cutting-edge avant jazz ensembles operating today and Tales of the Unforeseen shows them at their very best. It is a triumph for Barry and all concerned. It is trio music of the highest order, free and structured with inspired musicianship, a definite classic-in-the-making! Do not miss this.

Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Mauch Chunk

Mostly Other People Do the Killing is the potent mix of the now quartet format: Jon Irabagon on sax, Ron Stabinsky, piano, Moppa Elliot on bass and Kevin Shea on drums, doing music that evokes the heritage of jazz from a contemporary viewpoint, often with outright humor or tongue-in-cheek subtlety.

For their latest outing they do not add guests as they sometimes do, but stick with a new quartet format for a program of hard bop, classic Blue-Note oriented music. Mauch Chunk (Hot Cup 153) refers to a small town in Pennsylvania once a part of the thriving local coal industry, now fallen on hard times and renamed Jim Thorpe in honor of the sports hero and with the hopes of attracting tourism.

There are seven Moppa Elliot numbers to be heard here, all fitting in with the hard bop way but played with some outside avant tendencies that come in at times rather brilliantly in ways that may make you smile and even laugh. In my case it is the laughter of appreciation of their adept and seemless multi-language jazz attack. Irabagon's alto and Ron Stabinsky's piano often as not are the instigators of the bad-boy transgressions that no doubt would result in detention for all four if this was music high school.

Yet the music is dead serious at the same time, like Don Pullen could be when he gravitated out of changes-oriented soloing to expressively free outness.

There is enough brilliance from Irabagon and Stabinsky here to keep you listening intently, yet the compositions have the stylistic authenticity and contributory advancement that makes the band convincing on more than one level.

No, this isn't going to raise a furor like "Blue" did. It is no rote restating of the literal past but a serious interaction with it, a forwarding of it, a renewal of older forms for today and a confrontation of today with yesterday.

For that it is a must-hear. This is seriously ahead jazz with the ability to laugh. It's another feather in the caps of the players and the pen of Moppa Elliot. So I suggest you dig into it.

Mike Pride, From Bacteria to Boys, Birthing Days

Mike Pride is not just a hugely capable, brilliantly original drummer. He is a composer-concep- tualist-leader of ever-increasing stature. This is shown especially in the sum breadth and depth of his latest releases, two albums of startling contrast. Drummer's Corpse, which I covered last week on these pages, is a mind-boggling avant blow out. Today, the other sign of the proverbial coin, Birthing Days (AUM Fidelity 077) with his From Bacteria to Boys group.

Where Drummer's Corpse is carefully anarchic and bombastic, Birthing Days is anarchically careful, so to speak. It is propulsive, well composed and texturally built modern jazz. It's a group of some heavies. Mike of course is on drums, the deservedly celebrated Jon Irabagon on alto and tenor, Alexis Marcelo puts his stamp on things on piano and synth, and Peter Bitenc plays some very together double bass. To add to the reed solo clout we have guest appearances by Jason Stein on bass clarinet for two cuts and tenorologist Jonathan Moritz on two other pieces.

What's especially nice about this record is the indivisible meld between the cook, the solo firepower and the compositional girth. The written-out parts intertwine in always interesting ways with the hitting at it. It's fired-up and original jazz of today in the very best sense. Masterful, captivating and very original. Molto bravo!

Barry Altschul, the 3Dom Factor

If Barry Altschul was less present in the past few decades than one might have hoped, he is most assuredly back. At age 70 he has been sounding great, gigging with important cats new and older, and now he has a new solo album, his first in many years.

The 3Dom Factor (TUM 032) pits Barry as bandleader with a lively trio of Joe Fonda on double bass and Jon Irabagon on tenor in a program of Barry's compositions, many of which are well-known from previous Altschul band recordings, some new, and one classic Carla Bley piece. All get new life on this disk.

This is a trio that works together very nicely. Joe Fonda is a presence whose playing has the sort of dynamic virtuoso, hitting-it quality Barry always responds to in a bassist. Jon Irabagon has been gigging and recording with Barry over the last few years, and quite productively so. He is also the sax presence in Mostly Other People Do the Killing and Jon Lundbom's Big Five Chord, two highly acclaimed outfits of today. Jon plays with a full grasp of the history of music, has the humor of a Sonny Rollins, and comes across freely with lots of imagination and ability. He is a tenor of today, destined one hopes for many great things to come.

Put the three together with these tunes and you have some damned fine music. Barry has all the fire and drive of yesterday and the ability to swing as mightily as ever while still being a primary innovative force in imaginative and creative free drumming.

The album is a joy!

Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Slippery Rock!

No other group out there can match Mostly Other People Do the Killing for over-the-top, madcap ensemble jazz that manages to convey strongly a sense of good-natured snideness. Not since the classic days of the Art Ensemble of Chicago has there been a band that makes excellent, advanced jazz and nevertheless has a humorous side that takes a loving jab at the music as it happens to exist right now.

Slippery Rock! (Hot Cup 123) is their latest, a send up of smooth jazz that is just so good that it does not scream "parody" as much as uses it as a stepping stone to some beautiful playing.

In its two-horn front line of Peter Evans, trumpet, and Jon Irabagon on saxes and flute, it has some of the very best of the younger players, really astounding cats who absorb tradition and make it something very much their own, and funny too when they choose to be so. The rhythm section of Moppa Elliott, bass, and Kevin Shea, drums, has tremendous vitality and thrust, great ideas, and the ability to go in and out on the turn of a dime, so to say.

Moppa writes all the music and it's excellent. It gets some corking good jabs in there at the same time, taking the standard, sometimes rather weak hard bop derived funkiness of the smooth crowd and transforming it, giving it lots of balls and a big horse laugh in there somewhere too. The band plays it all with such exuberance, it's as if either you or they will soon explode, with joy, with irreverance, with glee, and it's not clear if you or the band will be spontaneously combusting first!

That's probably all I need to say about this album. Mostly Other People Do the Killing are central. They are important. And they can smoke you like nobody out there, almost nobody anyway. This new one will get you into the ozone and all with some great good-humor-man bells and popsicles!

Jon Irabagon's "Outright!"

Jon Irabagon is one of those adventurous souls that comes along every so often. He interjects a kind of "anything goes" philosophy into all he plays, and he covers just about everything you can think of. On Foxy (see earlier posting) he showed how he could play one bebop number for 79 minutes in a trio context and generate the kind of excitement that is reserved for the rarest moments.

It's time to set the clock back to 2007, and his quintet Outright! (Innova 699). This is an excellent disk. It gives you the ensemble context of his music in ways that intrigue the ears.

For most of the album, Irabagon's alto is joined by Russ Johnson's trumpet, Kris Davis on keys, Eivind Opsvik on bass, and Jeff Davis at the drums. Jessie Lewis joins on guitar for one cut, the Outright! Choir steps into the fray on yet another, and a big-band version of the group prevails for ten minutes on yet another.

This is ensemble music that unleashes Mr. Irabagon's very expansive stylistic grasp. The music ranges from highly original free-avant excursions to bop, swing and even New Orleans style. What impresses me about this one is the organic synthesis that happens between the pre-planned composed aspects and the improvisational. There is a seamless meld most of the time, a natural unfolding of the music toward a totality that does not show its seams.

This is provocative, very lively jazz-improvisation. It gives you another take on why Irabagon is becoming very important on the scene today.

Jon Irabagon Blows His Top On "Foxy"!

The album is called Foxy (Hot Cup 102). F-O-X-Y.

Just skip the review and go get it right now! No, I am only kidding. What is it we are talking about? We are talking about Jon Irabagon on tenor, Barry Altschul on drums, and Peter Brendler on bass. We are talking about 78 minutes or so of Jon Irabagon blowing his top! It's a mid-up swing groove with "Jumping with Symphony Sid" as the nominal underlying implication. It's no coincidence but also very funny how the album sleeve's front panel takes Rollin's Way Out West cover art concept and burlesques it with a bikini-clad would be tenor-wielder standing in the desert in place of Rollins. Funny! But the music is something like the cover. Read on!

That does not begin to describe what goes on, though. Take Sonny Rollins at his best, mid-Period Trane on a sheets-of-sound tear, Roland Kirk on one of his most fantastic tenor solo flights, then just put an h-bomb in the bell of the sax.

This is one incredible performance. Irabagon has been known to be a man of adventure, especially as a member of Mostly Other People Do the Killing and as a guest with Puttin On the Ritz. Nothing is sacred but that stance is sacred. For Foxy the bop extended solo becomes an epic, almost a send-up of itself. But no, this is very serious blowing. They stick close to the changes (and imply them when things get over-the-top) but there is so much fire one might suspect arson is the cause.

Barry Altschul never sounded better. He fires up and never lets up for 78 minutes. He pushes Irabagon to just blow his top, man, and that's what Irabagon does.

This is some of the most impressive blowing I've heard in the last ten years. Irabagon is monstrous. He plays with musical cells, then comes out with lightening runs, he circular-breathes his way into some wild phrase repetitions and he has the hard sound of classic-wailing-gone-berserk all the way through.

I don't think I need to say anything more. Good lord, this one is hot!