Jon Armstrong’s music is full of life and humanity, and like life and humanity, it is complex, sometimes messy, sometimes dark, sometimes light, always interesting, and unavoidably engaging. It is also indefatigably optimistic. His latest release, Reabsorb, is all those things.

Jon Armstrong
Reabsorb (Orenda Records)
A review
Saxophonist/composer Jon Armstrong’s new two-part sextet recording, Reabsorb, is not music you will likely be humming in the shower, but it may well set you humming. For Armstrong, who grew up as a member of a Buddhist church where communal chanting was a central element, music has an intensely spiritual and communal character. That chanting tradition “informed the way I write and play music,” he told me in a recent conversation, “that kind of like trance, that sort of all-encompassing physical state of being absorbed by sound.” Reabsorb offers that opportunity—to be absorbed in the music and transported to a deeper understanding.

The music, conceived (and available) as two continuous sides of an LP—“Hit It As Loudly As Possible” and “Loop of Light”— was inspired by two single-stanza poems by his wife, Erin Armstrong:

Hit it as loudly as possible
best case scenario:
They’ll mention the quiet when I’m gone

Light moves inside a green leaf
Now I’m absorbed by green
bouncing the loop of light

In response to these poems, Armstrong composed music that is, he says, “a meditation on our own mortality,” a meditation that offers an appreciation, even a celebration, of our impermanence.

Having found the sound of this project in his head—“The sound always has to come first,” he told me—Armstrong began to hear the musicians it needed, and pulled the band together: Dan Rosenboom (trumpet), Ryan Dragon (trombone), Joshue White (piano), Ben Shepherd (electric bass), and Tina Raymond (drum set). Even though some of these folks had never played together before and came from distinctly different musical backgrounds, Armstrong sensed that they would fit together nicely on the project, which requires exceptionally deep listeners and fearless improvisers—and he was right.

“I knew I needed maximum freedom for the players, also an incredibly clear direction,” says Armstrong. He created what he calls “launchpad melodies” that led to open structures that “specific chamber groups within the sextet would extrapolate on.”

 “Hit It As Loudly As Possible” begins with a bang and proceeds with a raging solo by Armstrong who plays across the full timbral and tonal possibilities of his instrument. The solo somehow combines both ferocious incredulity about the dying of the light, and the thrill of existence, and it sets the stage for the next improvisational section, featuring White. The piece continues in this fashion, unveiling melodic statements that match the cadence of the poem’s lines and opening intensely improvisational stretches featuring first Rosenboom and then Raymond. By the end of the first piece, a detente has been achieved between the rage and the thrill—an acceptance, even a celebration, of impermanence.

 “Loop of Light” begins with an extended bass solo, with Shepherd deftly and eloquently employing FX pedals, as the mood of the music moves to a more ethereal environment. Armstrong uses the timbral qualities of the instruments to create distinctive effects. For example, you might think you’re hearing a gong repeating toward the end of the bass section, but it’s the horns together creating that effect, while the piano adds a twinkling of light. The trombone solo section moves deeper into the transcendent space, with the piano adding a touch of wonder, before a final feverish ensemble section subsides into tranquility—“the reabsorption of our spirit back into the universal consciousness of all life,” as Armstrong has described it.

Music’s shamanic quality lies at the center of Reabsorb—available at Orenda Records as an LP, CD, and digital download—and all of Armstrong’s music with which I am familiar. “I go back to our ancient task,” he says. “Musicians inside of a culture need to be telling stories. We need to be giving a unique human experience to our brethren.” For Armstrong, it’s about making a spiritual connection on waves of sound, and Reabsorb accomplishes that task with a deep, honest, and compelling compassion.

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