American saxophonist, composer and band leader Jon Irabagon (a Down Beat certified rising star) gathered members of his quartet to lay down a wide ranging set of modern jazz that reflects his current reality as a working musician and parent of a young family. It’s an album that, despite some initial misgivings, continues to grow on me.
Irabagon, who is in the midst of a project with this quartet to record on other members of the sax family with which he’s less familiar — tenor, soprano, mezzo-soprano and bass horns — fell back on his first instrument the alto for this one. “I had much less time to experiment and discover on an unfamiliar instrument as I was writing this album,” he says. “But I still wanted to create music, so I think I subconsciously went back to my home base since my mind was taken up elsewhere.” The quartet is rounded out by Matt Mitchell on keyboards, Chris Lightcap bass and Dan Weiss drums, with some guests that we’ll come to.
The opening two tracks are near perfect expressions of Irabagon’s intentions. “Morning Star” is a frenetic piece that nevertheless somehow sounds grounded, rooted and focused. With the rhythm section (Mitchell on Rhodes) laying down a supercharged groove, Irabagon plays a blistering rubato throughout the three minute run; it sounds improvised, but then Mitchell matches him note for note on the coda.
The following title track “Focus Out” opens with a lengthy Rhodes solo over a chugging, hip hop influenced groove before Irabagon moves in with a soaring yet soothing tone poem that Irabagon says was influenced by his practice of meditation. Irabagon’s composition was inspired by the disorienting art of Japanese visual artist Akiyoshi Kitaoka, one of whose works graces the album cover, using geometric forms to create an illusion of movement and which mirror the composer’s feelings of fatigue and anxiety.
Two tracks feature the work of improvising emcee and vocalist KOKAYI. I initially resisted “Paper Planes” and “Indigo Stains,” not being that into vocal jazz, but these drew me in with their ebullience and power. The former is an over-the-top, playful depiction of a hyper character rapping nonstop at, say, a cocktail party. Here KOKAYI blends styles from musical theater, vocal jazz, pop and hip hop to great effect. The latter is a much darker political rant in response to Irabagon’s request for words to capture “whatever this dread is that we’re all feeling in 2026.”
“Evening Star” is a restatement of that frenetic opener “Morning Star,” apparently using John Coltrane’s “Ascension,” and here’s where the quartet is joined by tenor saxophonists Donny McCaslin and Mark Shim, guitarist Miles Okazaki and trumpeter Dave Ballou. It’s wild. Fortunately, Irabagon dials it way down after that with the lullaby-like “Prayer (for Reomi)” dedicated to his younger daughter, a sweetly spiritual duet with Matt Mitchell on acoustic piano. Plus there’s a bonus track, the swinging hard bop excursion “Center Post,” just to show us these cats can play it classic and straight.
As part of Jon Irabagon’s quest to release a series of albums on other members of the saxophone family, he’s releasing Saturday’s Child at the same time as his quartet album Focus Out. On this one, he records for the first time on the bass sax, an unusual and attention grabbing instrument that I’ve only seen in action one time. He’s joined by Dan Oestreicher (who plays baritone sax in Trombone Shorty’s Orleans Ensemble) on another bass sax in a short but intense album of duets.
The two wrestled these huge instruments into submission in a live improvised set at a Chicago club in 2023. It sounds to me as though the five tracks (plus one of them redone as a “radio edit”) were edited out of that improvised session and then given appropriate titles and sequenced: “Mood Swings,” “Daycare Infantry,” “Medley Molasses Candyland:Tag:Gripe,” “Waking Dreams” and “Sugar Rush” plus an edit of the latter that includes Mike Pride on drums and percussion. It’s quite a ride. “Daycare Infantry” in particular blends the spirit of “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” with the iconoclastic exhuberance of Trout Mask Replica,” although the same could be said of most of this set. Oestreicher moves to bass flute on the subtler “Waking Dreams,” on which both player utilize the full range of the instruments’ capabilities including the keys and pads to produce a wide range of sounds. I believe there is a certain amount of wordless vocalizing into the horns going on as well, throughout the recording.
It’s not all squawky improvisation, as both men’s sense of swing and Oestreicher’s New Orleans funk frequently show up in these performances, or at least inform and underlie. This is the sound of two top-notch musicians working hard and playing hard. The artwork is suitably playful, too, consisting of a selection of “refrigerator door” crayon drawings done by his elder daughter Xalyra. Recommended for the adventurous jazz aficionado.
(Irabbagast Records, 2026)
