Jason Jackson emerges as a jazz master whose gifts as a composer and arranger match his virtuosity as a trombonist. His inspired combination of horns, strings, and rhythm is quite unlike anything else being recorded these days. The new disc is on  Planet Arts/Jack & Hill Music labels.

Inspiration finds Jackson at the helm of full orchestras made up of rhythm, horn, and string sections.  Jackson was able to call on the services of friends and colleagues such as trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Terell Stafford, trombonist Slide Hampton, clarinetist Evan Christopher, saxophonists Pete Christlieb, Dick Oatts, Rich Perry,and Steve Wilson, pianists Roger Jones II and Michael Melvoin, bassist Rufus Reid, drummers John Guerin and Dennis Mackrel, and percussionist Roger Squitero. Of the ten selections on the CD, six of the arrangements were written by Jackson, one by his friend and former teacher Slide Hampton, one by Christopher, and two by the prolific motion picture composer Eddie Karam.

The remarkably varied program on Inspiration opens with the lively samba- and montuno-driven original “Brazilian Bop,” which came out of Jackson’s travels to Brazil with Ray Charles and the two years he spent in Dominican salsa singer Raulin Rosendo’s band. The standards “Spring Is Here” and “Tenderly” showcase Jackson as a supremely lyrical interpreter of ballads in the tradition of such trombone predecessors as Tommy Dorsey and Urbie Green, both of whom he credits as influences, although he cites J. J. Johnson, his onetime instructor at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, as his all-time favorite.

Other standouts are the swinging Jackson composition “Wake Up Election 2000” for full orchestra, with solos by Wilson (on alto), Stafford, and the leader; Vernon Duke’s “April in Paris,” for which Jackson’s arrangement combines polyrhythmic swing with an Afro-Cuban feel; and “The Spot,” the trombonist’s swinging salute to jam sessions. “It’s where musicians have sort of a social gathering; otherwise we’re working all the time,” he says. “It’s where we go to play and hone our skills and be inspired by each other’s ideas.”

“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. An integral member of such high-profile ensembles as Mostly Other People Do The Killing and the Mary Halvorson Quintet, as well as an established bandleader in his own right, his list of current projects includes the bands Bryan & The Haggards and Mike Pride’s From Bacteria to Boys as well as a longstanding partnership with legendary drummer Barry Altschul and Dave Douglas’ new quintet.

Jon’s own record label, Irabbagast Records, has currently released five of his efforts, including I Don’t Hear Nothin’ but the Blues Volume 2: Appalachian Haze (with Mike Pride and Mick Barr), Outright! Unhinged (with Ralph Alessi, Jacob Sacks, John Hebert and Tom Rainey), It Takes All Kinds (featuring Mark Helias and Barry Altschul), and 2015's latest releases:  Behind the Sky (with Tom Harrell, Luis Perdomo, Yasushi Nakamura and Rudy Royston) and Inaction is an Action (an experimental solo sopranino saxophone recording).  


Jazz saxophone player and composer Elias Haslanger has played and recorded with Ellis Marsalis, Maynard Ferguson, Asleep at the Wheel, the Temptations and many more. Also on Soundcloud as Cherrywood Records, his record label. <a href="http://www.elijazz.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.elijazz.com</a>


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