The Aaron Irwin Trio’s latest album, Spark, features tracks inspired by jazz greats, blues legends, and a couple of less likely characters. The Illinois-born saxophonist and composer spoke to UK Jazz News from his Brooklyn home, about those inspirations, his own pathway into music and his love of poetry, ahead of the album’s release.
Irwin’s chosen career seems almost pre-destined. ‘My uncle and two of my grandparents were musicians, so I grew up in a very musical family’ he explained. ‘My high school jazz band was also exceptional, and, you know, you show a little bit of promise when you’re young, and then you get to play with better musicians, and you become better, and one thing leads to another. After High School I went to De Paul University in Chicago, then to the University of Miami, and benefited from some extraordinary teachers. That’s how I got started.’
In High School, Irwin played flute and clarinet as well as saxophone. ‘Early on, I knew that doubling was a way to make money, a way to make a living. You triple your chances of getting hired, if you can play other instruments.’ Such versatility has seen Irwin work with Darcy James Argue, Jamie Baum, Rufus Wainwright and The Roots, as well as releasing ten albums as leader. ‘Saxophone was my primary instrument, but I was playing flute and clarinet too. I didn’t major in those instruments, but I played clarinet in the Wind Symphony, and I was always taking lessons. I knew of this thing called Broadway: a lot of my mentors had jobs playing in Broadway shows, and I was like, oh, well, maybe that’s a way. And then, obviously, the sax players in the great jazz bands could play flute and clarinet very well. It’s always important to me.’
Composition came later: ‘It’s an ongoing, interesting, journey for me. Growing up I knew about composition, but I wanted to be a saxophone player and play standards, the jazz canon. It wasn’t until I got to New York around the early 2000s that I realised that however great one might be at playing standards, you have this opportunity to really be expressive in composition. You have to look inward, ask “What do you want to say?” It’s been a challenge to understand what it is that I value in music that I want to get out in the world, and as I get older, I feel like I’m getting more secure in that understanding of who I am, and I hope I’ll continue to do so. One thing I found — and it relates to the music on Spark — is that I love songs. While I love other approaches to compositions, I think I best fit in with some version of writing songs, the form that songs have, their functional harmony. These pieces in the past few albums have been kind of exploring that realm, I guess.’
Irwin also has a keen interest in reading and writing poetry, although he’s yet to become a lyricist. ‘Oh, I’ve thought about it. I have written poetry, that’s a thing that has been of interest to me over the last five or six years. The problem is, I don’t think I’m a very good singer. I’d have to partner with a singer perhaps. I don’t see that happening soon, but who knows? Obviously, lyrics and poetry are linked, and it would be a nice fit. But so far, I haven’t explored that.’
Some of the titles on Spark betray an obvious link to Irwin’s musical favourites. On ‘Fahey’ the inspiration drawn from John Fahey’s guitar style comes through immediately thanks to Mike Baggetta’s playing. ‘Giuffre’ displays another obvious connection between the music and the title. ‘Mississippi Hurt’ references blues artist Mississippi John Hurt. ‘With “Fahey”,’ Irwin explains, ‘I’ve been interested in writing fingerstyle guitar lines, and how I can incorporate that into my own music. I’m not an expert on Fahey’s playing, but from what I can glean he broke some rules in that style of music. I was picking apart how he does some of that, so I wrote a fingerstyle thing for Mike.’
Jimmy Giuffre has become a key inspiration. ‘I knew Guiffre’s name, but I didn’t check his music until I was well out of college. Discovering his music was transformative. I had no idea how far he travelled as an artist. He started as a swinger, a bebop saxophonist, and by the end of his life, he was doing some really wild stuff with avant garde jazz and composition. So, over the last 20, 25 years he’s become a lodestar for me as somebody who evolved and grew his whole life. That’s what I aspire to do as well.’ Spark also features ‘Goodnight Laverne’ and ‘Goodnight Shirley’. Laverne and Shirley was a popular TV comedy from the late 1970s, but neither character was a musician. Irwin explains: “Maybe 7 years ago my wife and I adopted two cats. They’re sisters and they came with the names Laverne and Shirley. Nobody would know this, but those tunes are a tribute to my cats.’
Irwin often writes for specific musicians: on Spark, that involves Baggetta and drummer Bill Campbell. ‘Because Mike lives out of town, I couldn’t rehearse a lot with him before the music was completed, but I do send him things along the way. For this project, he was recording stuff, sending it back, asking “Is this what you want? Is this what you had in mind?” I know Bill’s playing really well. When I’m writing I can hear how he’ll sound, how I think he’ll interpret it. Then last summer we had this eleven-day tour. I think we had two or three rehearsals beforehand, so we got it together in a pretty short amount of time.’ The trio took audience reactions into account as they decided which tunes would form Spark’s track-list. As Irwin recalls, ‘Sometimes I can’t predict if a composition will work as well as I think, and some other things were much stronger than I had thought. There were things we didn’t record because they just weren’t quite “up to snuff,” you know.’
Although Irwin has toured Europe with Darcy James Argue, and visited Britain, most recently accompanying his wife on a business trip, he’s yet to perform in this country although he would love to do so. Meanwhile, Irwin will continue to play and compose: ‘In The Outliers Malcolm Gladwell talks about whether we have any control over our destiny, free choice. Although it feels like I have free choice, so many things were put in front of me as a kid that it was almost like, “Well, of course, I would do this thing”, music was so much a part of my life, there all the time.’
Spark is released worldwide on 6 March, on Adhyâropa Records