By Todd Matthews

Sitting inside Seattle's Coffee Messiah is like sitting inside some odd, alternative psyche. Tables painted swirling, psychedelic colors clutter the room like obstacles. Local artwork featuring apocalyptic images of monsters and goblins adorn the walls. A collection of Christ figurines hangs from the wall behind the barista's counter, with a Pee-Wee Herman doll as a centerpiece, nailed to a cross. Though "Caffeine Saves" is the coffee shop's tag line, something else was competing for the audience's soul on a recent Thursday evening. Seven musicians (three saxophonists, two percussionists, one bass player, and one electric guitarist) were huddled in the corner, laboring away through a repertoire of lengthy and sprawling experimental jazz that meandered through be-bop to marching band to hard-rock riffs. In one expansive, fifteen-minute song, the band started with barely a whistle from a tenor sax, stretched out to a hopping be-bop jazz melody, and came to a crashing halt with a performance of dueling, haunted saxophone solos.

The music was hallucinogenic, spontaneous and sonic—at times arresting and disturbing; at other times melodic and funky. A strange collection of sounds and music coming from a unique and unconventional collection of musicians: the Monktail Creative Music Concern.

Monktail members (Left to Right) John Seman, Mark Ostrowski, and Stephen Parris
+ + photo courtesy Monktail Creative Music Concern + +

As young musicians in Philadelphia more than a decade ago, bassist John Seman and percussionist Mark Ostrowski hosted informal jam sessions with their high school bandmates. Parting ways for college, the pair re-joined in Seattle in 2000, and formed Monktail. The result is a collective with more than two-dozen composers, musicians and artists exploring the atypical and exigent in improvised jazz through nearly a dozen different noms de plume.

At the Coffee Messiah show—a weekly gig billed as the "Monktail Residency"—the group was "scaled down" from its usual 10-member arrangement to a still burgeoning and complex seven-piece set-up that included Izaak Mills on tenor saxophone and flute; Billy Monto on alto and tenor saxophone; Adam Weiss on tenor saxophone; Stephen Parris on electric guitar; Ostrowski on percussion; John Ewing on percussion; and Seman on upright bass. At the end of one set, the lanky and energetic Mills commented, "We're not done. We're just lazy."

Monktail is anything but lazy.

The group is in the middle of what promises to be a long-standing weekly gig at the Coffee Messiah, performing every Thursday night for as many people that can fit into the small café. At press time, the group was booked at Elliott Bay Café, Polestar, the Arts In Nature Music Festival, and the Baltic Room—and that was only through the month of August. Earlier this summer, Monktail performed at the Fremont Street Fair, the Crocodile Café (as part of the Seattle International Film Festival), and Industrial Coffee in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood.

Simply put, Monktail is establishing itself as the must-see band in Seattle's rarely popularized experimental jazz scene. "We are dealing with American music that already has a place within the larger scope of jazz, which has a place within the larger conception of American contemporary music," says bassist and Monktail co-founder Seman, describing the collective's style of music. Is it jazz? Is it performance art? Those seem to be the burning questions surrounding the group's music. "We've got five saxophonists. How much more jazz can you get? It's not traditional jazz, but it is more a hybrid. I guess you could lump [our music] into jazz—but maybe with a footnote. It's definitely jazz, but it's also a little classical. It's even a little rock. It's got that attitude."

Experimental and avant-garde jazz grew out of the late-1950s and into the 1960s, when musicians took jazz in more exploratory directions. Traditional forms, harmonies, melodies, and rhythms were transformed considerably, and sometimes even abandoned. Trumpet player Don Cherry, pianist Cecil Taylor, and saxophonists Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Archie Shepp notably furthered this movement in jazz—a movement characteristically composed of dissonant clusters of notes and fast technical passages that do not appear based on any particularly harmonies or rhythmic pulses.

To be sure, Monktail isn't inventing avant-garde or experimental jazz. Nor is the group introducing this type of music to the Seattle music scene. Seattle reed player Paul Hoskin was onto something when he hosted an evening of spontaneous music in a Belltown loft in 1985; the event grew into the Seattle Improvised Music Festival, and celebrated its seventeenth year last June with musicians from Germany, San Francisco, New York, and the United Kingdom. Moreover, veteran experimental jazz saxophonist Wally Shoup has drawn crowds locally for almost two decades. But what Monktail is doing is tapping a large amount of local experimental jazz talent, gathering these musicians under one moniker (the Monktail collective), and performing live at a number of Seattle venues not commonly known for jazz music.

Monktail reaches audiences through nearly two-dozen musicians and a dozen different groups formed under the Monktail title. "The thread that goes through all the bands is Mark and me," explains Seman. "We are kind of the rhythm section for most all of [the groups]." The most notable groups in the Monktail catalogue include Non Grata, Deal's Number, and Special Ops.

Non Grata is the public persona of Monktail, and carries the responsibility of explaining through its music the philosophy of the collective—the advancement of creative and experimental music. "[Non Grata] is very much based on ensemble interaction and listening," says Seman. "That experiment is about a whole bunch of us navigating through it without looking like idiots or sounding like idiots, and actually accomplishing something that we appreciate."

Deal's Number is fronted by Billy Monto, a classically trained saxophonist. "Billy had never really played jazz until he hooked up with me and Mark," explains Seman. "Billy's improvisations are just exceptional because he's not burdened with other stuff. He just knows that classical base. It [started as] an experiment in how to get a classical musician to improvise. It just worked out."

Special Ops is a power trio consisting of Ostrowski on percussion, Parris on electric guitar, and Seman on upright bass, and formed on September 12, 2001. "We had a rehearsal space above Graceland," Seman recalls. "We went in there and worked through it musically with no intention at all. Afterward, Mark said, 'That was like a requiem for New York, wasn't it?' The recording goes on and on for hours. There was such good motion and flow and energy coming from the disbelief that we were in."

The various groups developed from informal jam sessions, where things would happen musically that were worth noting and developing. "We would record it and say, 'Ooh, that's cool. That's a band,'" says Seman. "And then [we would] listen to the [recording], give the songs titles, and [they would have] a form and a flow. [We would] work that into some sort of artwork. We would come up with new groups that way, and give ourselves parameters with which to work. The purpose of Deal's Number is different from the purpose of Non Grata or Special Ops. They all have a singular focus in mind which reflects the whole collective."

Monktail's music is not easy listening. Such is the nature of experimental and avant-garde jazz. Saxophones threaten the ear drums . . . instruments sound as though they may implode at any given moment . . . the music often lacks a distinct beat and harmony. But easy listening is not the goal of experimental jazz. A person's own investigation of an instrument (his or her exploration of it) is totally valid, according to experimental jazz purists. The popular thought says that studying formally with a teacher might be the "right" way to achieve certain specific aims, but it's not the only way.

Monktail Creative Music Concern performing live at Coffee Messiah
+ + photo courtesy Jason West / Jazz Steps + +

Despite the interest in avant-garde jazz, Seman and his Monktail alum have storied histories in traditional jazz music and composition. Seman graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in ethnomusicology. Ostrowski graduated from Berkeley, and toured with a traditional jazz band. "We all have a background in traditional jazz," explains Seman. "We've all gone to school and played in traditional gigs. I studied with some fantastic educators and bass teachers, but I've always been struggling with that little dialectic that when I play—not eschewing the traditional stuff—there's so much more that's there. I've also found that practicing scales and all that stuff, that just gives you chops. It gets you limber. It's just like working out."

This inherent characteristic of avant-garde jazz has resulted in marginalized audiences.

"I think [experimental jazz] is music that requires effort as a listener," says Seman. "It's happening live. It's not rehearsed per se. We're all along for the same ride. If the stuff is getting pretty good, then we're all into it—the audience and the musicians. If it's going somewhere else, then we keep juggling and try to get something out of it. I think it takes a little more effort. Most audiences just want to be entertained. Our music can do that, if you are open to it. It can do more if you work at it. Some nights it's just good all night. Other nights, you have to struggle to get something meaningful. When it does happen, it's very powerful. You can feel the room change. It's entertaining to watch that process."

This article originally appeared in Jazz Steps and All About Jazz