If you look at the list of past winners and finalists of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competitions, it’s quite impressive: Aaron Parks, Marcus Strickland, John Ellis, Sam Yahel and Miles Okazaki, just to name a few. In 2008, the winner was an alto and tenor saxophonist from the Philippines named Jon Irabagon, and Mr. Irabagon has wasted little time going out and fulfilling the great promise that winning these competitions bring. In the last three months alone came forth a trio of records that he has either led or featured prominently in, and all dwell in different spaces of jazz, collectively putting on a pretty impressive display of diversity.
With all these Irabagon-related relases coming so close together, it probably makes sense to look at all three CD’s together, too. If the past winners and near-winners of the Monk Competition are any indication, these records could prove to be early bright spots in retrospect after a long and noteworthy career. So just what is artistry and the potential of Jon Irabagon like? We should have a fairly good idea from examining these records:
Jon Irabagon The Observer
The Observer isn’t Irabagon’s first album; his debut was Outright!, released in 2008 by Innova. However, the The Observer marks a real coming out for Irabagon. In the aftermath of the Thelonius Monk triumph, Concord Jazz came a-knockin’ and soon afterwards, Irabagon has hooked up with one of the largest labels with a significant interest in signing and developing young jazz talent. With Concord came the accoutrements: engineering by Rudy Van Gelder at his studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and a crack backing band comprising of Kenny Barron on piano, Rufus Reid on bass and Victor Lewis on drums.
Irabagon isn’t just a saxophone player, he is a composer as well. Seven of the ten selections came from his own pen. Starting with the sophisticated melody of “January Dream” and one through the crisp, mid-tempo strut of the title cut and up to the beguiling “Closing Arguments” that closes out the album, the Filipino master brandishes an intuitive understanding of harmony, tempo and the means to bring them all to life. Nicholas Payton adds his trumpet discreetly to the Latin shuffle of “Joy’s Secret” and as part of a dual horn front line in the Art Blakey-styled hard bop of “Big Jim’s Twins.”
And then there’s a handful of covers, but not the overplayed ones. For Gigi Grice’s “The Infant’s Song,” Irabagon’s fluttering frolic in the high register of the alto is straight-up gorgeous. Tom McIntosh’s “Cup Bearers” is rendered as no-nonsense bebop, where Irabagon delivers rapid lines without any seams or rough notes. For the Elmo Hope tune “Bar Fly,” Irabagon settles into a cozy duet with Hope’s widow Bertha on piano.
Of all the recordings that Jon Irabagon has already been involved with, The Observer might be the one that presents his best of many sides, and dispels any doubt about his ability to lead a crack unit with poise while leaving his own, multifaceted style left intact. The Observer was released last October 20.
Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord Accomplish Jazz
Like just about every other musician who has achieved success as a leader, Irabagon has first toiled as member of other people’s bands. The difference with Irabagon is that he apparently does not see it as toiling as he actively continues his association with some of these bands that have served as key stepping stones in his career, even after he had achieved plenty enough renown to stand on his own. One of those combos since 2003 is Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord. This five piece unit is led by guitarist Lundbom, who reconciles his past love for grunge music with his current passion for whack jazz that’s spiritually akin to John McLaughlin’s own rapprochement of rock and advanced jazz during the time of his 1969 Extrapolation debut album. Joining the two “Jons” are tenor saxophonist Bryan Murray, bassist Matthew “Moppa” Elliott and drummer Danny Fischer.
On Accomplish Jazz, Lundbom’s compositions often sets up motifs or patterns that could loosely be defined as melodic structures that the band members proceed to break down or sometimes rip apart. But never to the point where the song loses its identity. Irabagon gets loud and loose with his alto on the first two cuts, “Truncheon” and “Phoenetics.” On the former tune, Lundbom’s improvisation begins within the bog realm before busting out into Bruce Eisenbeil territory, like Jeykle turning into Hyde on guitar. Lundbom isn’t averse to pulling in an odd cover, like Dr. Suess’ “Because We’re Kids” on his first album. This time, he plays a rendition of the Louvin Brothers’ country classic “The Christian Life” and plays it straight. That’s followed by a rearrangement of Cedar Walton’s “Bolivia,” entitled “Tick-Dog, and concluded with the semi-dissonant James Brown funk of “Baluba, Baluba,” that breaks down into barely restrained, concurrent soloing.
Out on the streets since December 7 and a product of Elliot’s Hot Cup Records label, Accomplish Jazz accomplishes the kind of loose, rocking avant-jazz that few other than Jon Lundbom is capable of producing. Jon Irabagon thrives on being able to run wild i
n this setting. But even Big Five Chord isn’t quite as zany as the last entry in this article…
Purchase: Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord – Accomplish Jazz
Mostly Other People Do The Killing Forty Fort
In 2004, Matthew “Moppa” Elliott formed a four piece band that includes Irabagon he named Mostly Other People Do The Killing. I’ve seen it described in several places as a “terrorist be-bop band,” held up as an example of a recent convergence of jazz and metal, and somewhat skewered in other quarters. No one who has played hell-raising music hasn’t encountered flack at some point, and neither has anyone who challenged the maxims of music while raising hell. Some of those have even been visionaries.
I’m not all that certain that MOPDTK will ever fall into the “visionary” category, but they sure know how to make whack jazz sound fun. Joining Elliott and Irabagon are trumpet player Peter Evans, a seven year veteran of New York’s improvised music scene, and the wild and woolly drummer named Kevin Shea, who appeared on Boogie In The Breeze Blocks by the experimental duo Talibam! Together, this band gives a hard embrace to bop while kicking it in the nuts, by gleefully messing with tempos, inserting un-jazz patterns into the melodies and morphing from meek to the mass hysteria at the drop of a porkpie hat.
2008’s This Is Our Moosic featured a cover that was a knockoff of Ornette Coleman’s This Is Our Music album cover and the one prior to that resembled an Art Blakey Jazz Messengers album cover, but MOPDTK has obvious reverence for the music of Coleman and Blakey, not mocking disdain. Yesterday, their forth album Forty Fort bowed and its cover continues the pattern for imitation, this time the model being the cover picture for Roy Haynes’ 1962 mini-classic Out of the Afternoon (although Haynes’ record is much tamer despite the presence of Roland Kirk on it).
As the opener, “Pen Argyl” is already an earful. Elliott’s five-note bass line is the only thing holding the song together as Shea’s tempo is anything but strict and even the time signature changes like Texas weather. Irabogan—who plays both alto and tenor sax on this record—and Evans take turns with conventional solos before the song takes on a mood of trepidation filled with random sounds coming from Shea’s bag of noises and building up to a frantic climax topped off my Irabagon and Evans each holding a note for nearly a minute. And this is just the first song.
That sets the tone for the seven other Elliott originals that wildly veer from Dixieland to avant garde amidst rock, funk and just plain weird, plus a fairly brief rendition of Neal Hefti’s “Cute.” “Blue Ball” contains a couple of alto sax choruses quoted from Sheena Easton’s 1984 hit “Strut,” a subtle nod to the ’80’s pop cover band Irabagon leads on the side. There’s no telling how many other off-the-wall references that I didn’t catch yet.
Moppa Elliott’s Mostly Other People Do The Killing is “killing it” with Hot Cup Records’ Forty Fort by bringing a raucous rockers mindset to hard bop and just enough humor to make you grin and not too much to make you groan. Whack jazz doesn’t often wear a happy face, but the message I get from these cats is that perhaps it should.
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