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| Title |
Composer(s) |
Performer(s) |
Length |
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| That Was Then |
Jon Irabagon
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Jon Irabagon's Outright!
Jesse Lewis
The Outright! Mixed Choir
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10:21 |
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| Outright! Theme |
Jon Irabagon
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The Original Outright! Jass Band
Jon Irabagon's Outright!
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10:10 |
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| Charles Barkley |
Jon Irabagon
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Jon Irabagon's Outright!
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11:45 |
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| Oddjob |
Jon Irabagon
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Jon Irabagon's Outright!
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7:12 |
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| Anchors (By Design) |
Jon Irabagon
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Jon Irabagon's Outright!
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8:25 |
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| Quorum Call |
Jon Irabagon
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Jon Irabagon's Outright!
Chris Cash
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12:00 |
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| Groovin' High |
Jon Irabagon
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Jon Irabagon's Outright!
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6:33 |
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Outright! is the debut CD by alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon, whom Time Out New York calls "one of the city's deadliest horn players." The emphasis here isn't on runs of notes and impressing the audience; instead, Irabagon and crew strive for cohesive group improvisations, intricate yet singable melodies, and a spirit of in-the-moment improvisation that looks past the Young Lion All-Star phenomenon and more towards a group-centered view of creation.
Jon spent his formative years not only in the classroom (Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School) but more emphatically out in the clubs of Chicago and New York City, performing everything from jazz, avant garde, big band, rock, pop, modern classical, electronic, and Brazilian music. Jon is a sideman in several forward-thinking groups, including Matt Grason's Motel Project (featuring Washingon, D.C.'s most daring freestyle beat poets), the free improvising RIDD Quartet (Clean Feed Records), the Jostein Gulbrandsen Quartet (Fresh Sound New Talent), Jon Lundbom's Big Five Chord, and Moppa Elliott's terrorist bebop band Mostly Other People Do the Killing (Hot Cup). The latter has been garnering rave reviews and interviews in JazzTimes, Downbeat, and Playboy magazines. All of these experiences have led to this first album as a leader, where Jon combines the approaches and ideals of all this collective work and funnels these ideas through his own compositions with some of New York City's most promising young talents (who perform regularly with legends Lee Konitz, Tony Malaby, Chris Speed, and others) in tow.
The music changes drastically from track to track, and there is a hint of something for everyone, while wrapped in the most free and breathing group improvisation. References to the music of Steve Coleman, Dave Douglas, Ornette Coleman, Wynton Marsalis, Tim Berne, Myron Walden, Peter Brotzmann, and even Squarepusher and Aphex Twin might be heard, as the music is created from the realm of today's New York jazz scene. The songs in this debut CD appeal to not just to the avid jazz lover, but to anyone who is interested in hearing forward-thinking music built on spontaneity and excitement.
Performers include: Jon Irabagon,
Russ Johnson,
Kris Davis,
Eivind Opsvik,
Jeff Davis,
Chris Cash,
Jessie Lewis,
The Outright! Mixed Choir, and
The Original Outright! Jass Band
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Signal to Noise
Some musicians treat jazz traditions the way a four-year-old might approach Grandma's medicine cabinet: What would happen if you poured all those pills in a dish and gulped them down like Skittles?
Put alto saxman Jon Irabagon in that group. Purists might be put off by all the fooling around that goes on in Irabagon's first CD as a leader, Outright!(innova). Avant-gardists might find the group's brashness too self-conscious.
But if your stance is somewhere in between, THERE'S FUN TO BE HAD.
You can maturely swirl and sip the beginning of "Groovin' High" and the sparkling interplay of Irabagon and trumpeter Russ Johnson.
"Quorum Call" is a long buildup of purposeful frantic activity that makes you feel you've drifted to sleep only to be discovered and eaten by army ants. (The acoustic instruments bite like pincers while the electronics tune in on the antennae.)
Later the band expands to 30 pieces for an apocalyptic Dixieland track that sounds like Mardi Gras after a half-gallon of bourbon and a pail of raw crayfish.
Just when you ache for some black coffee and straight-ahead jazz, they deliver that too- in a scalding cup!
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by Larry Cosentino
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Chicago Reader
In this impressive postbop outing, Irabagon and his excellent band--trumpeter Russ Johnson, pianist Kris Davis, bassist Eivind Opsvik, and drummer Jeff Davis--pull back from the absurdist mayhem of MOPDTK, couching heady, rigorous improvisation in elaborate compositions that shake loose from the usual theme-solos-theme structure.
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by Peter Margasak
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The New York Times
Jon Iragabon Wins Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition
Jon Irabagon, an alto saxophonist based in Astoria, Queens, won the 21st annual Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in Los Angeles on Sunday, securing the most prestigious honor available to a young jazz musician. Finishing in second place was Tim Green, of Baltimore, Md.; Quamon Fowler, of Fort Worth, Texas, was third.
The panel of judges for the competition, which focuses on a different instrument each year, consisted of heavyweight saxophonists like Jimmy Heath, Wayne Shorter and Jane Ira Bloom. They selected the three winners from a pool of a dozen semifinalists. All three finalists performed alongside the jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater on Sunday night at the Kodak Theater, in a concert that doubled as a salute to the blues legend B.B. King.
Mr. Irabagon, who will receive $20,000 and a contract with the Concord Music Group, has one album out as a leader, “Outright!” (Innova).
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by Nate Chinen
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All About Jazz Italia
Appuntatevi sul taccuino il nome di questo giovanotto, e seguite con attenzione, molta attenzione, le sue mosse perché avrete la possibilità di imbattervi ogni volta in qualcosa di sorprendente. Come in questo Jon Irabagon's Outright!
Basterebbe, da sola, la versione di un superclassico boppistico come "Groovin' High" a far drizzare le orecchie anche all'ascoltatore più distratto. Vi è l'esposizione canonica del tema, è vero, ma poi il brano si avventura verso altri lidi, con Russ Johnson alla tromba ad evocare il Douglas più avventuroso, il sax contralto del leader a metà strada tra due Coleman, Steve e Ornette, e la sezione ritmica a giocare brillantemente sui metri. Una meraviglia!
Ma questo è solo un assaggio di quello che propone l'intera seduta di registrazione. Quando un delicato dialogo quasi cameristico sembra cullarti verso una fruizione onirica della musica ecco che, lentamente e inesorabilmente, monta una marea psichedelica tra King Crimson e Soft Machine, come nel caso di "That Was Then".
A sottolineare come la conoscenza della storia del jazz sia un fondamentale bagaglio di ogni musicista che si rispetti a patto che non ne diventi un mero replicante, ecco "Outright! Theme". Il brano inizia in perfetto Dixieland Style per poi virare con nonchalance verso una terrificante improvvisazione collettiva che lascia senza fiato per la veemenza dell'onda sonora che ti investe (Peter Brotzmann e dintorni?).
E che dire delle manipolazioni elettroniche filtrate dal computer che si inseriscono in un brano dall'andamento ipnotico e dalle atmosfere sciamaniche, dapprima in maniera quasi subdola e poi sempre più insistentemente fino a dominare l'intera scena divenendo il principale elemento improvvisativo?
Vi è in Jon Irabagon una conoscenza enciclopedica mai esibita, rielaborata, piuttosto, attraverso una curiosità onnivora. Possiede inoltre una grande autorevolezza sia quando opera con il quintetto (splendida la sua intesa con la tromba di Russ Johnson) sia quando porta a livelli di intensità pazzeschi un organico di ben trenta elementi.
Uno dei più sorprendenti debutti degli ultimi tempi.
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by Vincenzo Roggero
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