‘Avant-garde party music’ Industrial Jazz Group at The Black Door

By ART EDELSTEIN Arts Correspondent – Published: October 23, 2009

Montpelier’s Black Door will host a rare appearance by a full-blown jazz band on Saturday night. The problem may be fitting both musicians and audience in the room.

San Francisco-based Industrial Jazz Group is a 16-piece band, so it’s going to be a tight squeeze at the Black Door, but one that might be worth the effort. This band, now in its eighth year, has developed a reputation for fun, high-energy, quirky, genre-bending shows, featuring what it calls “avant-garde party music.”

Its recent live CD, “LEEF,” recorded in Amsterdam, highlights a band that sounds like no other I’ve heard in this genre. It’s a horn-led, funky-rhythm ensemble, with some really good woman’s vocals, but a wacky presentation. It made me think that Miles Davis had crossed paths with Spike Jones and the Motown Records’ rhythm section.

Bandleader Andrew Durkin says that the band was frustrated by the limitations of “jazz, the institution,” but equally resistant to the confines of modern pop. The IJG, he notes, “has pioneered a hybrid sound: an idiosyncratic blend of rock, bebop, cartoon soundtracks, trad jazz, blues, funk, Balkan music, doo wop, and, well, a lot of other stuff.”

Perhaps the best description of this group’s music comes from Tom Bowden of Educational Digest who wrote, “IJG composer Andrew Durkin writes music that people who think they hate jazz would like.”

IJG is on an East Coast tour and lined up the Black Door, which has been a venue for some fine club music of late. It will be interesting to see how this large band manages the stage here. If you like adventurous music then this is a show not to be missed. But, a warning: Leave the kiddies at home, as some of the lyrics are off-color.