The Jazz Infidels got their name after a month of debate.
"It was something we could all semi-agree on," saxophone player Sam Isabel said. "'Infidel' has a connotation that you don't follow the norm. Plus, we wanted to indicate that we are a jazz band."
The band also includes Der Baron on drums, Vince Spiak on stand-up bass, Boleszek Osinski on trumpet, and Shawn Umsteau or Paul Mallory on piano.
"We all have a say in the standards, but the songwriting is open to anybody," Isabel said. "Paul wrote a bebop tune."
Isabel composes his jazz pieces with a heavy punk influence. He likes to call it a "punk-bebop- fusion."
"I wrote a song called 'Brass Knuckles,' which is pretty much punk-bop," Isabel said. "It has this raw-aggressive energy with rhythmic punk ideas."
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Writing instrumental music can make it hard to be aggressive.
"Even though there aren't any words in my punk-jazz style, you still want the energy there," he said. "Words make punk. And it's hard to say things like the F-word in instrumental music unless you try to express the F-word. That's what improvising is for. . It's like the rhythm section sets a flow, and you're just kinda swimming in it. You're just sort of flowing with the music, but freely and trying to listen to what other people are doing, and then you accent or lead that."
As far as soloing goes, the Infidels leave it up to the musician to decide how long to play.
"Well, the policy on that is solo until you're done," Isabel said. "Whether that's 20 minutes or two minutes."
Isabel said the band's improvisations are sometimes brilliant.
"It's good when we feel where each other are going and accent that," he said. "We play together in unison, and it's completely improvised. You gotta play together all the time for these moments to come across."
