Playing Things by Ear

When it comes to jazz in Orange County, straight-ahead sounds and contemporary fusion rule the roost. But thanks to Laguna Beach saxophonist Paul Carman, the rarely heard bird of free improvisation, a wing of jazz often dubbed “avant-garde,” is starting to fly here as well.

Since October, Carman has hosted twice-monthly nights of weird, wild and unpredictable sounds at The Arc, a tiny studio space in Santa Ana’s Artists Village. On the second and fourth Tuesdays, he features his three-piece combo Triorbits (pronounced Trio-Orbits) with bassist Chris Symer and drummer Kendall Kay in a bill with other trios that’s devoted to spontaneous or experimental styles of music.

The Arc barely seats 40 and the audiences may seem tiny compared with the crowds that pack in to hear mainstream jazz at Steamers Cafe in Fullerton or fusion artists at the Hyatt Newporter’s summer concert series, but Carman is still encouraged.

“We’ve had good turnouts since selling out on opening night,” he said by phone, “and we’re getting a cool fan base down here. A lot of the people who show up are in their 20s and they like to hear us just go for it.”

The 45-year-old saxophonist who has worked with musical experimenter Frank Zappa, surf-guitar god Dick Dale and eclectic woodwind player Vinny Golia’s Large Ensemble said the type of audiences coming to The Arc have given him new hope in a world ruled by commercial and traditional music.

“I like playing for younger crowds who are open to this kind of thing rather than the usual jazz-club audience that’s sitting there waiting to hear their favorite standard. We’re thinking of moving out a bit more with the band, playing punk clubs in L.A. and places like that.”

Carman originally conceived the concert series around various three-piece groups.

“Our slogan was, ‘Exploring the art of the trio and improvised music.’ It’s not exclusively an avant garde series at all. The concept was to see how many different kinds of trios we could bring in, how many different styles of music we could find.”

Previous concerts have paired Carman’s group with Portland-based trombonist Michael Vlatkovitch’s trio, the New Orleans free jazz sounds of King Cake (with trombonist Scot Ray and percussionist Brad Dutz), the guitar-based Trio of Doom with Matthew Van Doren, and a power trio with drummer Evan Stone and organist Joe Bagg. At the show Tuesday, Carman will break from the trio format by presenting the improvisational duo of drummer Billy Mintz and saxophonist John Gross.

But in Carman’s musical world, three is not a crowd.

“I’ve always been into the interaction between musicians playing at a high level, bouncing off each other,” he said. “The fewer players there are, the more chance of it working. And not having a piano in the group opens up the space.”

Carman’s willingness to try new things has served him well in the past. His association with Zappa came when an engineer called him into the studio in the late ‘80s to record some saxophone sounds for the former Mothers Of Invention leader’s music.

“[Zappa] wanted some faux-Ben-Webster saxophone samples for his ‘Jazz From Hell’ album and that’s what I gave him,” Carman said. “But as the session progressed and he realized I was open to anything, he had me doing all types of things, blowing low B flats and spinning around in front of the microphones. He liked the idea that I didn’t have an attitude about such things.”

Carman toured with Zappa in 1988 and ’89 and is heard on the late musical maverick’s recordings of that period, “The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life,” “Make a Jazz Noise Here” and “Broadway the Hard Way.”

After leaving Zappa’s group, the saxophonist formed his own bands, combining pop influences with free jazz sensibilities.

“I had other opportunities to go out with other bands,” he said, “but I didn’t want to become a road rat. I’ve always been more of a family guy.”

His quartet ESP, with Orange County-based keyboardist Mark Massey, recorded “Even Picasso Couldn’t Find Her” for Vinny Golia’s Nine Winds label and “Passion” for Carman’s own Crystal Sound label, both in the mid-’90s.

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During that time, the band had a long run at the now-defunct Randell’s jazz club in Santa Ana. Carman moved away from the more accessible sounds of ESP when he formed Triorbits in 1999. The group worked a regular gig that year at the Marine Room in Laguna Beach. In addition to his own band, Carman featured such stalwarts from the Los Angeles free-music scene as guitarist Nels Cline, trumpeter Clay Jenkins, drummer Alex Cline and woodwind player Golia. The series ended late in 1999.

The freestyle approach of Triorbits developed when he met his current sidemen.

“Finding Kendall and Chris was the key,” he explained. “They were yearning to play this kind of music just like I was. They can go anywhere with it. We had that nine-month run at the Marine Room and really got to know one another. The direction came about from what happened in the recording process. Over the years, I’ve just learned to let things fly in the studio.”

The same approach is used on the bandstand. “We never have a playlist,” Carman said, “and we never do a tune the same way twice. We just launch into it.”

Despite the no-holds-barred nature of the music, standard tunes sometimes do crop up. The group’s forthcoming album features music penned by Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman and Duke Ellington. But each of the pieces from these jazz giants finds new direction in the hands of Carman, Symer and Kay. A version of Ellington’s “Take the A Train” on the privately produced “Stuff We Weren’t Going to Let You Hear” album that Carman sells at Triorbits’ performances is so abruptly different that it’s subtitled “Reader’s Digest Condensed Version.”

“There’s stuff happening on ‘A Train’ that we didn’t plan at all,” Carman said. “On [Mingus] . . . Kendall just started screaming and it sounded so good that we went back and overdubbed more [screaming] voices. The audience at The Arc is so used to us complaining along when we do our ‘Whine With That Cheese’ that the regulars have started whining along with us.”

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Although The Arc has its drawbacks--the group is not allowed to charge a cover and must rely on patrons’ donations--Carman said the venue definitely has rewards for the band and the audience.

“It’s a converted office building where several artists rent out studios,” he said. “The Arc people are kind of the bad kids on the block; they’re always trying to do something different. And that’s exactly what Triorbits does.”

SHOW TIME

Triorbits with Paul Carman and the Billy Mintz-John Gross Duo play Tuesday at The Arc in Artists Village, 316 W. 4th St., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. (714) 542-2232