Aaron Irwin Trio: (after)
Adhyâropa Records

It was during the isolating days of the pandemic that the many parallels between music and poetry crystallized for Aaron Irwin. Having recognized the latter as a kindred “attempt to give form to the intangible,” it wasn't long before the idea of uniting the two in a recording project came to the Brooklyn-based saxophonist and composer. He titled the project (after) to emphasize the practice of crafting a musical piece after being inspired by a poetry text and included references in the nine track titles to the poets whose material helped midwife the material into being; in three cases the texts themselves are read, in one case by the author himself.

A graduate of Chicago's DePaul University and the University of Miami, Irwin gets around. In addition to leading his own outfits, he's played in Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, The Mike Fahie Jazz Orchestra, and other groups, and performed with artists as diverse as Rufus Wainwright, Idina Menzel, and The Roots. Irwin is, in other words, a versatile and highly adaptable player, so it's no surprise that he should adapt himself to this poetry-related project with a similar kind of ease. He's not alone, however: on the date, the alto saxophonist and bass clarinetist is joined by guitarist Mike Baggetta and drummer Jeff Hirshfield in a bass-less outfit that embraces the space a unit of three players affords. While the forty-eight minutes of music laid down at Big Orange Sheep on July 5th, 2023 resist easy stylistic capture, calling it avant-folk jazz isn't far off the mark.

A genuine sense of in-the-moment creation is established between the musicians, and while there are a few occasions where these close listeners work up to an aggressive skronk, for the most part they play with admirable restraint. In place of someone who might fill every space with a busy fill or beat, Hirshfield imposes himself on the music with, in one track, little more than a gentle ride cymbal pattern, the music all the more effective for the subtlety of the choice. Similarly, Baggetta might call Derek Bailey to mind in a passage or two, but he also generally embraces a less-is-more approach. Irwin and his partners consistently take their cues from the poems and fashion the stylistic character of their gestures in accordance with the emotional terrain of the texts.

Baggetta initiates “Recuerdo (after Edna St. Vincent Millay)” with a riff reminiscent of Gotye's “Somebody I Used to Know,” but the entrance of Irwin's purring alto distances itself from that association quickly enough, as does the spikiness the guitarist gets up to thereafter. The tapestry the altoist and guitarist generate beautifully supports Bonita Oliver's expressive reading of the poem in “Frederick Douglass (after Robert Hayden)”; as satisfying is the instrumental part that follows, with Hirshfield giving locomotive drive to the leader's feathery musings and Baggetta enhancing the playing with animated shadings and a scrabbly flourish or two.

“Five Bells (after Kenneth Slessor)” surprises for swelling from a hushed intro into an intense firestorm, with the guitarist's molten attack leading the charge; “The Cemetery (after Steve Scafidi),” on the other hand, draws a dignified elegy from the trio. In “The Hill (after Joshua Mehigan),” the Brooklyn-based author recites his own poem, with the performance alternating between evocative voice and instrumental passages and Irwin playing bass clarinet. He returns to the woodwind on "When I Heard at the Close of the Day (after Walt Whitman),” the tune surprising also for the rousing, soul-jazz feel Irwin went for instead of something more folk-like. Emily Wong gives an evocative reading to the text in the sleepy, bluesy “Daniel Boone (after Stephen Vincent Benét),” after which the trio unleashes its inner Sabbath for the fiery “The President Visits the Storm (after Shane McCrae).”

June 2024