If you’re a smooth jazz fan look away now.
‘Terrorist bebop’, that’s how quartet Mostly Other People Do The Killing style themselves, rummaging through jazz history, gloriously holding favourite tunes and riffs aloft before wryly tossing them aside. It’s a bit like putting a Real Book through the washing machine.
The group is nominally led by bassist Moppa Elliott, whose compositions they subvert and take in wildly different directions at will. One of NYC’s hottest trumpet players Peter Evans presents a fearsome front-line, playing the anarchist one moment and flexing his bop chops the next, while Jon Irabagon is less virtuosic but just as irreverent on sax. Elliott prompts and prods, either keeping his riff while all about him lose theirs, or mischievously changing the time – a trait shared by hyperactive drummer Kevin Shea.
Mostly Other People Do The Killing's Kevin Shea (copyright Fabio Lugaro flickr.com/photos/fabiolug)
In the interval, we serve up more trumpet for you, as we commemorate the 40th anniversary of Louis Armstrong’s death by asking Evans and a selection of other players what influence Armstrong the trumpet player still has on their craft. So it’s a programme in which past and present collide, with often explosive results.
