Jon Irabagon Quartet featuring Jon Iragabon, saxophones; Matt Mitchell, piano; Chris Lightcap, bass; Dan Weiss, drums. Location: Wistariahurst Museum, Holyoke, MA. Watch here. Free, donations accepted.
“Saxophonist Jon Irabagon is a subverter of the jazz form,” declares Martin Longley in his Irabagon feature in the August issue of The New York City Jazz Record. “He’s a revolutionary who’s secretly messing with the changes. He might be dismantling the music’s mechanics from the inside, but from the outside he can frequently persuade a crowd that he’s an old- school practitioner. There are few players who can so deftly stride from postbop to free improvisation, avant country to doom metal and then wander from chaotic collage-spraying to sleek-blowing fluency.”
The winner of the 2008 Thelonious Monk Saxophone Competition, Irabagon has since topped both the Rising Star Alto Saxophone and the Rising Star Tenor Saxophone categories in the DownBeat Magazine Critics’ Poll and been named one of Time Out New York’s 25 New York City Jazz Icons. Jon was also named 2012 Musician of the Year in The New York City Jazz Record and is an integral member of such high-profile ensembles as the Mary Halvorson Quintet, Septet and Octet, the Dave Douglas Quintet, Barry Altschul’s 3Dom Factor and formerly of Mostly Other People Do the Killing, as well as an established bandleader in his own right.
Matt Mitchell is “a pianist of burrowing focus and an indispensable fixture of the contemporary vanguard,” writes Nate Chinen. A pianist and composer interested in the intersections of various strains of acoustic, electric, composed, and improvised new music, Mitchell composes for and leads several ensembles featuring many of today’s foremost musicians and improvisers. He is an anchor member of Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, the Dave Douglas Quintet, John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble, Dan Weiss’s Starebaby, Jonathan Finlayson’s Sicilian Defense, Steve Coleman’s Natal Eclipse, Kate Gentile’s Mannequins, Mario Pavone’s Blue Dialect Trio, Anna Webber’s Simple Trio, Ches Smith’s We All Break, the Dave King Trio, and Quinsin Nachoff’s Flux. He is also among the core performers of John Zorn’s Bagatelles.
Chris Lightcap is an accomplished bassist and composer with a wide-ranging performing and recording career. He has worked with Marc Ribot, Regina Carter, Craig Taborn, Glen Hansard, Mark Turner, John Medeski, Jason Moran, The Kronos Quartet, Tomasz Stanko, Chris Potter, Paul Motian, John Scofield, Dave Liebman, Paquito D’Rivera, Anthony Braxton, Joe Morris, Sheila Jordan, James Carter, Butch Morris, Ben Monder, Mary Halvorson, and many other artists. His playing is featured on over 80 albums and as a bandleader/composer he has produced six critically acclaimed albums of original music.
This tour is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
