Jon Irabagon, Inaction is an Action

Today a look at one more recent example of the music of Jon Irabagon, Inaction is an Action (Irabbagast 005). Where the previous releases were ensemble oriented, composition and improvisation based, this one is devoted entirely to solo sopranino sax improvisations in an avant-free jazz mode.

The emphasis is as much on sound color and timbre as it is on line, on expression as it is on form (form follows inventive content, in other words).

For this, his ninth outing as a leader, Jon roams freely onto pathways of personal self-expression that utilize technique, subvert it and create it anew in unusual ways of sounding the instrument.

The avant history of the sax is channeled and renewed Irabagon style. From Trane and Ayler to Lacy, Braxton and beyond, Jon assumes a level of sound innovation and adds to it. There are arabesques of line sounding that identify themselves as personal and original but also as coherent partly by means of the avant tradition. There are pure moments of sound, then some things equally line and sound oriented.

It's not just a matter of creating new sound-colors and creating melodic form both inside and outside those parameters; it is ultimately a series of cohesive sound-images organized and framed by the parameters of slices of time, selections, pieces, eight in all.

Jon most certainly dwells in rarified territory for this album, more extreme perhaps than most of his previously recorded work, but connected to the whole of his artistry in its keen attention to timbre elements. There is no "jazz" saxophonist out there today who does not work out of a personal set of timbral possibilities. Jon is no exception, yet he can unveil a wider set of sound-color extremes than many and appears to take delight in interjecting them during the course of his soloing. Here that tendency is taken much further than usual, with the unaccompanied solo format lending Jon an unlimited freedom he makes great use of.

And then when he turns to episodes that zero in on line extensions, as in "Ambiwinxtrous," he phrases in unusual melodic clusters, then in turn phrases the extended techniques that follow in their own way, combining clusters of tone and sound as part of a totality of phrased gesture.

In the end Jon pushes his own personal boundaries of the limits of expression further beyond what we ordinarily hear from him in recorded form. In so doing he again establishes himself as an important and breakthrough player in the avant sax mode. Perhaps he will treat us to some of this outside playing with an uncompromisingly out ensemble in future. If so I will certainly want to hear it.

In the meantime we have this unaccompanied flight to the nether worlds of expression. Jon is essential listening for what's going on today. He pushes the envelope especially and satisfyingly on Inaction is an Action. Danger, bare wires? No. No danger here. Just keenly insightful explorations.

Highly recommended.

Julian Julien, Terre II

I have not been previously exposed to the music of Julian Julien before but I am very glad to make its acquaintance now. The latest, Terre II (self-released) is a set of compositions in a sort of ambient pulsating mode for a mid-sized ensemble that includes vocals, reeds, guitar, cello, percussion, keys, electronic ambiance, etc.

There is improvisation involved (well done) and an overall cohesion compositionally that gives the ensemble a spacey consistency born of Julian's clear objectives. The music is harmonically based, colored sound that has a homogenized togetherness that is on the artist side of musics that might otherwise be classified as smooth or new agey. This is music too contentful to be relegated to that realm.

Yet it has a kind of universal appeal that might attract listeners not often inclined toward the new. The writing for horns and cello stands out as singular.

I find myself liking this music as I listen more. It is distinct; it holds its own. It is not what one might expect but a good listen puts you on its wave-length. Lend your ears to this one for a new wrinkle!

Caili O'Doherty, Padme

I sometimes find myself backlogged with too much music to cover, too much that is good to cover in a timely way. Here for example I find myself writing about the music of pianist-composer Caili O'Doherty on her album Padme (ODO 7001) when it has been out for a while. Never too late if the music is worthwhile, and it is!

When I went to Berklee so long ago there were maybe two women in the student body, none in the faculty and no one thought it odd. Now it is a different world and women of excellence are very much a part of the scene. So here's one for you today.The album is a vehicle for Caili's compositions but also shows her as a pianist who can improvise in ways that fit and exceed stylistic expectancies. The music is contemporary rock-beated or swung modern jazz with changes and interesting head structures, all in a today-oriented vein, but with twists and turns that give us another wise take on things, an O'Doherty side if you will, and a sense of jazz legacy.

There is a trio of O'Doherty, Zach Brown on bass and Cory Cox on drums (who is spelled by Adam Cruz for one number). Added to the mix at various points are Mike Bono on guitar, Alex Hargreaves on violin, and the horns of Caroline Davis, alto, Ben Flocks, tenor and Eric Miller, trombone. The guests fill in the charts well and give us at times their improvisations.

Caili's music lays right, whether in a post-Herbie-Nichols way, an ECM-ish composed form, ever-changing funk in a post-M-BASE mode, or any number of sidebars. The writing is impressive, the playing very good and the musical pleasure derived substantial.

This is her first album and I must say I expect we will be hearing more and more involved things in future from her pen and piano. But the music is there right now and sounds very well. A pleasure to hear, in fact.

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.

Jon Irabagon, Behind the Sky

Jon Irabagon has been quite prolific of late. I covered the new MOPDtK the other day on these pages, there is a solo album that I'll be covering soon and a Barry Altschul Trio recording as well. But today a quintet gathering--for Behind the Sky (Irabbagast 004). It is about loss and the mourning process, as well as a celebration of the life of some loved ones and mentors he has lost recently.

Now none of the music sounds like a funeral march, mind you, because Jon channels his feelings in affirming ways. What it all is about is a series of 11 originals that work themselves out with a changes-oriented approach that I suppose one could call "mainstream," yet it all has a living quality that doesn't put it in the "safe" music realm. It all breathes.

Joining Jon is his regular trio of Luis Perdomo on piano, Yasushi Nakamura on bass and Rudy Royston on drums (!), and they sound absolutely great here. Then trumpet and flugel icon Tom Harrell joins in on three numbers and sounds as masterful as ever.

For all the hubbub of Blue, which MOPDtK released a while ago and apparently still is raising hackles out there, in Jon's playing on the album I cannot help but detect just a pinch of mid-period Trane and Cannonball. Not so much as you would say he is channeling them, because it is all Jon, but in the phrasings and masterboplicitous flow of his exceptional noteful barrages you can hear a little of them, but made original as one would expect from Jon at all times. So Blue in the end was a stepping stone to something new as much as it was a statement in itself. Artists work that way, yes. Growth is a growth "through," not just a willy-nilly sprouting upwards like the wild weeds of seasons come and gone.

All this is secondary to the music at hand, which is something to hear and appreciate, and, of course is another stepping-stone to future Irabagonian developments. If he looks back as he looks ahead, it is fitting here especially as a memorialisation of those he has lost, of our continual loss of the old present made way for, the inexorable movement we sometimes wish could stop for a while, but both organically, culturally and historically it cannot.

You need not know any of this to dig the music, which has an edgy fire to it, a cohesiveness of all, and three excellent soloists--Luis P. is supercharged here, too.

The rhythm section hits it hard and burningly, make no mistake. Rudy is a firebrand on the date and Yasushi is right there, also.

It may be yet another way station on the continuing Irabagon journey, but it also is vibrantly alive music, excellent for both the fire and reflectiveness of it altogether. Jon is challenging himself and his contemporaries to keep on. They do. And the music that results embodies the past and moves it to the ever-present now in very enjoyable and considerably brilliant ways.

Highly recommended.

Joe McPhee, Jamie Saft, Joe Morris, Charles Downs, Ticonderoga

If you've been reading this blog regularly you will notice that Joe McPhee has been very active of late. And so today we have his vital presence again, on a quartet date, with Joe, Jamie Saft (piano), Joe Morris (in his double bass persona) and Charles Downs (drums). The album is another goodie, called Ticonderoga (Clean Feed 345).

The four let sail with four collective, freely improvised pieces in the best tradition of post-new thing expressive heft. It's great to hear Joe carry forth with his tenor and soprano on this album. Clearly he is inspired and comes through with his personal way, fluid like crazy and able to create stunning hairpin turns of expressive color, vibrato and non-vibrato, a master of his instruments who both sounds and phrases with a linear conversational logic and fluency that puts him at the top of reedists in the "free jazz" zone.

Jamie Saft is a treat in this context because you don't hear him that often on disk in this total blow-out vein. He makes full use of the inside-the-piano possibilities as well as conventional note-ing and he creates a beautiful congress with Joe and Joe's way to get beyond. Jamie is monsterful and masterful here, beyond Cecil Taylor while in some ways channeling his legacy, but adding to it with a less cyclical, more linear horizontality.

I've said this before about Joe Morris on bass but I will say it again because it still has relevance for sure: that he is the kind of bassist who can, in the language of pitching in baseball, "expand the strike zone," that in other words he creates a busy and cogent foundation of expanded tonality that allows the soloists to go wherever they will in terms of key center and beyond and make it all seem inevitable and right. And he does it all with a rhythmic all-over quality that lets the band go in time wherever they will, too, freely.

Charles Downs has that special all-over quality on the drums as well. He establishes a multi-present open rhythmic space and ever varies it while using the kit sensitively for all the sound fields he uncovers at any point in timelessness. Whew.

And in this quartet setting all four get a oneness of result that takes years to do right like this. I never tire of exceptional freedom sets of this sort, because there is a continuity of variability and there is nothing to tire of--for there is never just one thing happening. Like the best free players, they all are bent on creating a confluence born of an open totality, an infinite variability within the free jazz parameters they come out of, which takes all of the past and makes it present in a future now, if you can dig what I am trying to say.

In short, a free gathering of total togetherness, a whole of great artistry born of linear fluidity and exceptional avant virtuosity. Is that enough? You bet it is! It is an album of vital presence and if you dig the outer realms this will make you smile and play it twice, more than twice!

Rodrigo Amado, This is Our Language

When the Portuguese avant jazz titan tenorist Rodrigo Amado fields a quartet of edgy all-stars, what do you get? You get This is Our Language (Not Two MW 922-2). And that translates to some great music. It's Rodrigo with the extraordinarily capable vets Joe McPhee on pocket trumpet and alto sax, Kent Kessler on double bass and Chris Corsano on drums.

This is a moderated free-for-all, a series of solos, duets, trios and full-band performances, with an emphasis on the latter. All four most certainly know what they are about. And they generate some exceptional kinetics. Rodrigo is inspired to create blazing mottos and sonic-expressive outburst that show him fully together, a mature artists in full bloom. Joe McPhee with both trumpet and alto brings his "A" game of ideas and lets loose with a space clearing vibrancy perfectly attuned to Amado's outbursts. Kent Kessler is a dynamo of bass energy and a very cohesive voice in the ensemble. And Chris Corsano has that raw-but-schooled explosiveness and timbral breath that spurs all forward.

It's all you could hope for in a spontaneous meeting of these four. The chemistry is all very much there. So much so that this is some of the best work of all four...and as a quartet, look out! This is one heavy quartet and Rodrigo should be proud to have brought this together so excitingly.

I recommend this album to anybody and everybody. Newcomers to Amado, newcomers to free avant, or those who know these four very well. The pump is primed and the musical riches flow abundantly and creatively. Oh, yes, it does!