Sylvain Rifflet, Jon Irabagon, Sébastien Boisseau & Jim Black - Rebellion(s) (2020) [Hi-Res]

Rebellion(s) is the child of two outstanding saxophonists, Sylvain Rifflet from France, and Jon Irabagon from the US, and was born of their conviction that even today jazz can act as a megaphone for the most burning social issues of the day. The basis for these compositions are emblematic speeches from past and present, and they show the diversity of voices of resistance in various areas. The fiery words of Andre´ Malraux, Greta Thunberg, Emma Gonzale`s, Olympe de Gouges, and Paul Robeson shake us up from the position of leisurely listeners, while in the tension of the music we hear the fomenting passion of John Coltrane, Sun Ra, or Ornette Coleman.

“Clever, original, and pays no heed to conventions”, they say of Sylvain Rifflet, the award winning French woodwind player, one of the architects behind this project, who in his own admission composes by first putting into words what he wants to say through music. In this case these words have a particular significance, because here the verbal aspect appears in a very concrete manner. The project Rebellion(s), initiated last year by Sylvain and his American fellow musician saxophonist Jon Irabagon, is linked to the American jazz tradition, in which the musicians played an active part in civil rights struggles through their art. The album features speeches by the most charismatic revolutionaries of our time – and past times – with phrases of the spoken word replacing the sung vocal part. These impressive speeches are catalysts for the compositions not just in terms of content, but also musically: the rhythm section, featuring two key figures of American and French jazz – drummer Jim Black and bass player Se´bastien Boisseau, expands the dynamic of the spoken language with their playing, while the two melody instrumentalists take the musicality of the sentences and continue to weave it. The speech by former French Culture Minister Andre´ Malraux at the burial of the anti-Nazi revolutionary Jean Moulin, the confrontational speech by teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, the passionate utterances of Emma Gonzale`s against the gun lobby, the words of Olympe de Gouges, one of the first to speak up for women’s equality, and the biblical baritone of Paul Robeson shake us up out of our comfortable position as listeners. Meanwhile in the music we hear the boiling passion of great predecessors, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, or Ornette Coleman. The result is free jazz, a complex alloy of repetitive and minimal music, which here directly targets the emotional-intellectual channels of the listener.

Sylvain Rifflet is an outstanding saxophonist in French jazz who tries to eschew musical cliche´s at all costs. In order to do this, he draws for inspiration not so much from the vocabulary of jazz, as from related arts and other branches of music. He was engaged in Early Music, and the art of Moondog. In the French jazz lineup Mostly Other People Do The Killing he met saxophonist Jon Irabagon, who became his closest creative partner. Together, they came up with the idea and lineuop of the Rebellion(s) project.

Saxophonist Jon Irabagon “is a subverter of the jazz form” – as journalist Martin Longley described him. “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”, explains Longley. The Philippine-American saxophonist has capitalized on his keen sense of style in many lineups, in addition to which he teaches extensively, and has his own record label under the name Irabbagast Records.

Se´bastien Boisseau has been one of the greatest French double bass players of contemporary jazz for almost twenty years. He is a classically trained musician, who follows the jazz tradition of Jenny-Clarke, Bruno Chevillon, Claude Tchamitchian and others. Se´bastien Boisseau can be heard on several albums on the BMC Records label: he has taken part in projects by guitarist Ga´bor Gado´, and was a member of the pan-European quintet UNIT (Blondiau, Gado´, Donarier, Pasborg), with whom he also recorded for BMC.

What would modern jazz drumming be without the contribution of Jim Black? Born in Seattle in 1967, he studied at one of the most famous jazz institutions, Berklee College, and later set out on tour from Brooklyn. Even he himself cannot keep count of the bands in which he has played. He has been leading his own bands since the early 2000s, characterized by a special explosiveness. It is no exaggeration to say that all his life Jim Black has used every means available to rebel against the boring, ubiquitous 4/4 measure.