There’s a bustling, ostentatious impiety in the music of Mostly Other People Do the Killing. Led by the bassist Moppa Elliott, it’s a jazz quartet with a diligent grasp of history but an anarchic take on convention. At Zebulon in Brooklyn late on Thursday night, the group riffled through jazz idioms with hammy geniality, like an impressionist flaunting celebrity voices. The unruliness didn’t remotely make it a mess.
Mr. Elliott and his band mates — the trumpeter Peter Evans, the saxophonist Jon Irabagon and the drummer Kevin Shea — share an attraction to jazz’s subterranean legacy, and to a strain of cohesion epitomized by the Ornette Coleman Quartet. “This Is Our Moosic” (Hot Cup), released last year, parodies the title and cover design of Mr. Coleman’s 1960 album “This Is Our Music.” (Moosic is a town in Pennsylvania, not far from Scranton, Mr. Elliott’s hometown.) And beyond the prankish exterior lies an earnest evocation, along with one of the more feverishly exuberant jazz albums in recent memory.
As was the case with Mr. Coleman’s band, which featured the trumpeter Don Cherry, the potency of Mostly Other People Do the Killing partly hinges on frontline interplay.
Mr. Evans and Mr. Irabagon fit that bill mightily, with a crackling and brightly combative communion. But each also had plenty of space to claim as his own, and that was where the most dynamic playing happened.
Mr. Evans is a superhuman technician; his mobility around the horn can almost feel like too much of an extravagance. But here each of his many digressions came rooted in musical intent. During one solo he drew on the post-bop bravura of Freddie Hubbard and then spiraled up and outward, leaping between octaves with deceptive aplomb.
Mr. Elliott and his band mates — the trumpeter Peter Evans, the saxophonist Jon Irabagon and the drummer Kevin Shea — share an attraction to jazz’s subterranean legacy, and to a strain of cohesion epitomized by the Ornette Coleman Quartet. “This Is Our Moosic” (Hot Cup), released last year, parodies the title and cover design of Mr. Coleman’s 1960 album “This Is Our Music.” (Moosic is a town in Pennsylvania, not far from Scranton, Mr. Elliott’s hometown.) And beyond the prankish exterior lies an earnest evocation, along with one of the more feverishly exuberant jazz albums in recent memory.
As was the case with Mr. Coleman’s band, which featured the trumpeter Don Cherry, the potency of Mostly Other People Do the Killing partly hinges on frontline interplay.
Mr. Evans and Mr. Irabagon fit that bill mightily, with a crackling and brightly combative communion. But each also had plenty of space to claim as his own, and that was where the most dynamic playing happened.
Mr. Evans is a superhuman technician; his mobility around the horn can almost feel like too much of an extravagance. But here each of his many digressions came rooted in musical intent. During one solo he drew on the post-bop bravura of Freddie Hubbard and then spiraled up and outward, leaping between octaves with deceptive aplomb.
