{"id":7129,"date":"2016-02-05T22:26:17","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T22:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=7129"},"modified":"2016-02-06T00:01:05","modified_gmt":"2016-02-06T00:01:05","slug":"deep-in-the-night-the-west-side-hears-a-train-whistle-from-jazz-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=7129","title":{"rendered":"Deep in the Night, the West Side Hears a Train Whistle from Jazz History"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fb-Button\"\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>

\"Irabagon<\/strong>(L-R)\u00a0Jon Irabagon, Matt Ulery, Russ Johnson, and Jon Deitermyer, live at the West End Conservatory on December 28. Photo by August Ray<\/em><\/p>\n

Sidebar to West End Conservatory feature<\/strong><\/p>\n

Concert review of Jon Irabagon-Russ-Johnson Quartet<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twas the night before New Year\u2019s Eve, give or take a chilly few. And all through the night the big blizzard had blown. Milwaukee lay mostly fast and asleep, engulfed in a blanket of silver and white.<\/p>\n

Yet the embers of cutting-edge jazz arose and flared at an unlikely locale. 55th<\/sup> and Vliet Street is not the hip East Side, nor is it Bay View or Riverwest. The East Side\u2019s now-darkened\u00a0 beacon, The Jazz Estate, hovers in limbo. So The West End Conservatory just may become the new locus of envelope-pushing jazz in Milwaukee.<\/p>\n

What radiated like a blazing furnace in the conservatory\u2019s long, icicle-encased recital hall was the Russ Johnson- John Irabagon Quartet, though the big, bad blizzard took its toll even here. Besides New York-based Irabagon, the other featured guest performer, tenor saxophonist Ohad Talmor got trapped in O\u2019Hare, Chicago\u2019s black hole of an airport, due to the blizzard. Thankfully Irabagon, from Gurnee, Il. (and likely visiting relatives) got to the Midwest early enough for the gig, as did two Chicagoans, bassist Matt Ulery and drummer Jon Deitermyer.<\/p>\n

The great trumpeter Russ Johnson, a Shorewood resident who worked for some years in New York, has built up strong connections with top-flight East Coast jazz musicians. But even he needed a serious listening space for his latest heavyweight collaboration. That\u2019s where the still-young and evolving West End Conservatory has stepped up big time.<\/p>\n

It was the latest in an impressive series of concerts the West End has hosted (see main story). But even the star jazz band The Bad Plus, upcoming Feb. 6, will be hard-pressed to top this performance.<\/p>\n

Husky trumpeter Johnson projects unbridled passion, bristling virtuosity and bravura power which, at times, summons the spirit of Louis Armstrong, whose legendary 1928 recording \u201cWest End Blues\u201d resonates in the Conservatory\u2019s name. Johnson has been burning it up here and in Chicago for several years, and released two superb recent recordings, including a daringly ambitious reimagining of a classic Eric Dolphy album, which Johnson titled Still Out to Lunch! <\/em><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the real revelation this night was the first-area performance by Irabagon, an affable man of modest stature but gigantic gifts and intelligence. We understood quite quickly why he compares well with any rising saxophonist playing jazz today. And why he won the 2008 Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition. Besides Johnson, Irabagon has worked or recorded with such luminaries as Kenny Barron, Lou Reed, Wynton Marsalis, Mary Halvorson, The Chris Potter Big Band and Mostly Other People Do the Killing. He played on two of 2015\u2019s best albums, Dave Douglas\u2019s Brazen Heart<\/em>, and Irabagon\u2019s own Behind the Sky<\/em> with trumpeter Tom Harrell and pianist Luis Perdomo.<\/p>\n

\"Irabagon_Behind_The_Sky_COVER\"<\/p>\n

Album cover to Jon Irabagon’s latest CD “Behind the Sky.” Courtesy allaboutjazz.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Irabagon\u2019s deft fingers and lusty lungs turned the first set into to a concise, vivid history of the modern tenor sax, with lighthouse beacons from most of the giants.<\/p>\n

On the opener, Johnson\u2019s \u201cSowatch,\u201d Ulery\u2019s big, spacious bass and Deitermyer\u2019s finely crackling drums cushioned a loping lope of a funk rhythm. Johnson set the pace with a solo of sharply rising clarion climaxes.<\/p>\n

Then they launched into Irabagon\u2019s \u201cIt Needs It,\u201d which proved an odyssey.\u00a0 A neo-boppish groove felt like Sonny Rollins meeting Wayne Shorter — sax lines alternately rounded, juicy, oblique and gruff. Here Irabagon\u2019s tenor sax recalled Rollins\u2019 bristling youthful brio on his early RCA recordings. Soon, he\u2019d also evoked Archie Shepp and John Coltrane in alternating bars and finely fractured intervals, and then a burst of Joe Henderson\u2019s gloriously gutsy flag-waving cries.<\/p>\n

\"Jon-Irabagon-01\"<\/p>\n

Jon Irabagon. Courtesy republicofjazz.blogspot.com <\/em><\/p>\n

When Johnson joined in, they sounded a bit like Rollins with avant-garde trumpeter Don Cherry, the trumpeter dancing and smearing notes, the theme now slower, in a mock conversation between two horn players. The tune then rose into magnificence, the two players now resembling brothers reminiscing shared bitterness, pain, love and loss, all with an abandon veiled in puckish wit.<\/p>\n

By the end, both players began emitting slightly strangled embouchure noises in the virtual silence of the rhythm section, akin to bizarre and exquisite sonic manifestations of Roscoe Mitchell (who Irabagon has studied with) and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t recall anyone who had so convincingly summoned more sax masters in a four-minute solo.\u00a0 I also sat stunned because none of this, nor the ensuing playing, sounded the least bit like academic exercises or showiness. It was more like a train traveling deep from a tunnel in jazz history, clearly blowing its own horn, \u201cI\u2019m coming through!\u201d — even as all those music greats echoed from the cavern deep in the horn.<\/p>\n

And this night sounded like more than enough of what Milwaukee needs to rejoin the major leagues in jazz.<\/p>\n

For all his passion, Irabagon conveys a sense of well-considered irony that dwelled in much modern art more than the more facile post-mods may realize.<\/p>\n

The second set was no less stunning than the first, with a couple of angular lines, Irabagon\u2019s \u201cObelisk\u201d and Johnson\u2019s \u201cPardon the Pun.\u201d They both brought to mind the Dolphy-by-way-of- Monk heart-skipping intervals that Johnson employed in his Dolphy re-invention album. Frequently bassist Ulery recalled the glowing songfulness of the late Charlie Haden, who traveled in the deep valleys of forward-trucking Americana during decades of the most exploratory jazz.<\/p>\n

As the crowd poured out on Vliet Street, the snow-bound noir felt considerably warmer than before. A brightness glimmered around the streetlamps, like fireflies dancing in the dark.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(L-R)\u00a0Jon Irabagon, Matt Ulery, Russ Johnson, and Jon Deitermyer, live at the West End Conservatory on December 28. Photo by August Ray Sidebar to West End Conservatory feature Concert review of Jon Irabagon-Russ-Johnson Quartet Twas the night before New Year\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-1QZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7129"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7141,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7129\/revisions\/7141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}