For those unaware, sure, using an interrogative as a band name certainly reflects the spirit of wry playfulness that Phil Haynes always brings to the drum kit. But there’s also a serious side to that sobriquet, one that epitomizes Haynes’ restlessly inquisitive nature.

Combining a cadre of horn players with one adventurous and conversational drummer, what might happen? What will this music become? What, quite simply, next?

Both 2 Horns & What? trios include Haynes and the saxophonist Peyton Pleninger and this first new recording entitled AvAnt MODerN (Corner Store Jazz) is a freewheeling live outing with experimental trumpeter Nathan Wooley as Horn #2, while the studio recording JAzZ nOW places the focus more on Haynes’ jazz roots with saxophonist Jonathan Ragonese.

AvAnt MODerN delights in extremes, taking full advantage of Wooley’s and Pleninger’s penchants for delving into the outer limits of their respective instruments, with ample use of extended techniques, striking textures and startling vocalizations. The human voice becomes another “What?” over the course of the album, with Haynes offering spoken recitations on several pieces.

1. Never Doubt I Love
2. Out of the Bowels
3. The Code
4. Blue Jungles
5. For Hawk, Doc, & Dee
6. Where Now
7. Smoke Rises
8. Chant

The band open their first musical outing AvAnt MODerN on the veritably soft storytelling that ambles through Never Doubt I Love and then we get the jagged Out of the Bowels, the ambiently perky The Code, the excitable Blue Jungles, the sonically-hued musical majesties within For Hawk, Doc, & Dee, the dulcetly impassioned Where Now, the first CD rounding out on the playful Smoke Rises and the affecting beauty of Chant.

JAzZ nOW could be termed the more straight ahead of the twin albums, though with Haynes and his cohort that’s a playfully relative term. Ragonese and Pleninger intertwine sinuously, tenor madness echoes of Trane and Newk reverberating in a bracingly contemporary context. “Blue Dop” unfolds with a Mancini-esque stealth, while “A Lil’ Iowa Get-Down” closes the proceedings as an angular hoedown.

Haynes insists, “When I explain the idea of horns and drums to people, they inevitably respond, ‘What?!’ And that inevitably opens the door to some serious fun.”

Musicians:
Nathan Wooley, trumpets
Peyton Pleninger, saxophones
Phil Haynes, drums/tunes/speaking

1. Together
2. Goofus’ Step
3. West Virginian Blues
4. Ragonese 3 (Vignettes)
5. Blu Dop
6. Last Dance
7. Longer Shorter
8. Steps
9. Point - Period
10. Pleninger 3 (Vignettes)
11. A Lil’ Iowa Get-Down

Along next is their JAzZ nOW album and that opens on the gloriously rhythmic machinations that drive Together and the simply sublimely engaging Goofus’ Step and they are in turn backed by the stridently jammed affair West Virginian Blues, a simply mesmerizing, and soulfully crafted Ragonese 3 (Vignettes), and then comes the pensive, yet actively aware (Pink Panther-esque, at times) Blu Dop, the sheer elegance, at first, latterly an amazing amalgam within Last Dance, the melodious Longer Shorter, the all-embracing Steps, the directness of the stirringly evoked Point - Period, the second CD rounding out on the explorative Pleninger 3 (Vignettes), closing on a subdued, at first, latterly emphatically-charged New Orleans-imbibed number A Lil’ Iowa Get-Down.

Musicians:
Peyton Pleninger, saxes
Jonathan Ragonese, saxes
Phil Haynes, drums + tunes

Official AvAnt MODerN Purchase Link

Official JAzZ nOW Purchase Link

www.philhaynes.com