Jon Irabagon, It Takes All Kinds

Jon Irabagon plays sax like he's been through the style wars and has emerged catalysed and all the better for it. But he's too young to have been on the frontlines then. Yet somehow he's internalized the insightful lessons gained by assimilating the sounds that went before and melding them into his own very alive approach. What makes him so important today is not just that he goes in his own way where he will, but that there is more than one Irabagon. There's Irabagon the over-the-top dionysian bebop mad-hatter like on the full length version of Doxy he did a few years ago. There's the jokester that still takes it outside like on Lundbom's Big Five Chord, and there's the player of many voices who rechannels it all in Mostly Other People Do the Killing.

And today, another Irabagon, that of the serious new-new thing artist on It Takes All Kinds (Irabagast Jazzwerkstatt 139). This is a live trio date at a German festival last year. And it is excellent going. First of all Barry Altschul has been playing with Jon for a while now and it is paying off big in interactions. Barry sounds like his old self with that orchestral-but-swinging drum thing he was doing with Circle, Sam and Anthony Braxton way back. Only he has the maturity of time and growth in plain evidence. In other words he sounds as good as ever! Mark Helias has been playing off and on with Barry for years and so he too has a maturity of association added on to a tremendous sense of space and place in his playing.

This is Jon's date so they do Jon's tunes--which have a bop and after completeness-in-change feel to them. And his playing gives nods to the greats of the past but also gets very much his own multi-dimensional phrasings happening. He is part of a continuum, but a step of his own, which is of course much the way things evolve when they do.

In a way, a very healthy way, this music sums up why the style wars of the '80s and after were bullcrap. There was nothing to challenge. The music was growing, is growing and must not be stopped. So here we are today with how that growth leads to new-in-old and new-in-new classicism, whatever that means. But no, really. It's how the free movement and the past can hook up and move on. One way, anyway. Connie Crothers the other day is another. There are many ways, potentially and in actuality.

Jon's playing is definitive of that. So is Barry's. And so is Mark's. This is a trio of importance playing music that affirms that jazz lives and does so strongly, right in the present. We don't need our heads buried in the sand. Listen!

Paul Bley Trio, Closer, 50th Anniversary Edition Remaster

It is possible that pianist Paul Bley is not as recognized as an important figure in the development of free jazz now as he was years ago. I do not claim to have my finger on the pulse of consensus out there, partially because I don't really care what the world thinks and it does me no good to heed the "no, we don't recognize that" jazz police that claim to be the sole tastemakers. Why would I care?

In my own thinking Paul belongs to a small handful of piano innovators in "new thing" evolution. Of course the other would be Cecil Taylor. And of course there are others, but the influences of Taylor and Bley seem especially critical in what went after.

And of all the albums Paul has made, one of the most seminal surely is Closer (ESP 1021), a trio date from 1965 that has been nicely remastered on CD for ESP's 50th Anniversary series. The trio included the wondrous bass wielding of Steve Swallow. On drums was a young Barry Altschul, at the very start of his free drumming career and already an extraordinarily sensitive drummer for the trio context.

And on this album Paul was making a pretty clean break from bop roots--in just 27 short minutes covering some seven very excellent Carla Bley compositions, a number written by Ornette Coleman, one by Annette Peacock and one of his own.

These are classic head structures that allow Paul and the band to break free of changes and let themselves create free tonality and chromatic improvisations that of course owe much to Ornette's harmolodic approach yet have an unmistakable originality.

Keith Jarrett most certainly paid close attention to what was going on with Paul in this stage and built his early style around it. Then of course many others have followed in the path since.

But even if others had not been influenced in the years that followed, this album would still hold up as an avant classic. It is that--and anyone who hasn't heard it really should check it out.

FAB Trio, "History of Jazz in Reverse," Billy Bang, Joe Fonda, Barry Altschul

We are approaching the year point since violinist Billy Bang left us for another plane of existence (it was last April). The only consolation for those who appreciate his music is that there still remains the body of recorded works. So of course any new and substantial additions to his recorded legacy are most welcome. His recording of History of Jazz in Reverse (TUM CDE 028) as a member of the FAB Trio, with Barry Altschul and Joe Fonda, is all the more so, because it is some beautiful music.

It's the three in top form, freely kicking out the jams for an extended studio set. They engage in highly inspired, sometimes greatly swinging improvisations throughout, with Barry in top form, Joe meshing inventively and skillfully with the rhythmic and harmonic implications of the other two and adding his own good-idea styling, and then there's Billy. He sounds especially cohesive, inspired, at a peak.

The rest is probably silence this morning. Maestro Bang sounds as great as ever here, which makes you feel the loss all the more. This album is pure PRESENCE, a celebration of music. So we should hear it with the joy and appreciation of what remains! RIP Billy Bang.

The Ullmann-Swell 4 and Their "News? No News!"

This exact band (Ullmann, reeds; Swell, trombone; Greene, bass; Altschul, drums) recorded on Cadence in 2004, producing a rather exciting disk which I've reviewed in a posting on this site (see below). They return with a superb avant jazz set today on the Jazzwerkstatt release News? No News! (Jazzwerkstatt 068).

This is a well-matched set of players. Gebhard Ullmann plays a raucous, probing tenor and a snaky, fleet bass clarinet; Steve Swell is one of the handful of truly premier avant trombonist working today, a master of projection and color, extroversion and subtlety; Hilliard Greene plays a foundational bass that figures prominently in all that happens on this album. He is a rock. Barry Altschul has been an important innovative force in jazz-improv drumming ever since his seminal work with Paul Bley and Chick Corea, among many others. He sounds better than ever here. Whip-snap swing and a melodic approach to the full drum kit are what you expect from Mr. Altschul, and you get it here, for sure.

With my descriptions above, you might expect that this music just HAS to be good. Sometimes a group that should be really terrific on paper never seems to get it going in real time. That is not true here. This is modern improvisational avant jazz at its finest. But be careful. You may wake up your cat when you play it!

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!