The People’s Liberation Big Band celebrates five years of wild jazz at RecordBar

When seeing the People’s Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City, it’s very hard to say exactly what will happen on- or, as the case may be, offstage. Just one example: One night, a cellist and a headlamp-donning saxophonist walked into the audience while playing their instruments.

Another night, three vocalists — two jazz singers and one opera tenor — simultaneously performed and mocked the music of Kurt Weill. That was the same night that the band performed selections from their score to the 1925 Russian silent film Battleship Potemkin, in celebration of International Workers’ Day.

“It’s an aesthetic I’m drawn to,” explains Brad Cox, director — and keyboardist and sometime accordionist — of PLBB, “where things are not necessarily laid out in a clean and tidy manner.”

Tenor-sax player Rich Wheeler remembers a show when two older people stopped by, explaining that they loved big-band music and they heard that a big band was performing that night. They didn’t stay too long.

That’s because PLBB’s version of big-band music is way out there, a step beyond even Charles Mingus — and the Mingus Big Band certainly tested limits. It can be a raucous cacophony that blurs the line between music arranged and music not so arranged. But it’s music wrapped in a presentation that invites you in with a sense of whimsy. Think Monty Python: absurdity laced with intelligence.

Now mesh that sensibility with a collection of some of the most accomplished musicians in town: bassist Jeff Harshbarger; pianist Roger Wilder; drummer Sam Wisman; saxophonists Matt Otto, Rich Wheeler and James Isaac; Mike Stover on lap-steel guitar; Pat Conway, who studied percussion in Cuba. Occasionally, woodwind master Mark Cohick — who performs with just about every theater group in town, as well as the couldn’t-be-more-staid Kansas City Jazz Orchestra — drops in. And that’s just scraping the surface.

PLBB isn’t assembled like a modern big band. It draws its instrumentation cues from classic Kansas City bands, built around four saxophones, four brass and four rhythm. “Not as juggernaut-y, can’t sound as big band-y,” is how Harshbarger puts it.

Over the years, the band has built a book of more than 50 original compositions. And each composer brings his own voice to the band — specifically, his own modern voice. “We all love old Basie tunes,” Harshbarger says, “but there’s plenty of it.”

Still, the instrumentation isn’t set in stone. On recent outings, PLBB has assumed a more traditional big-band look to play the arrangements of visiting guests, such as San Francisco trumpeter Dave Scott and New York trombonist Alan Ferber. And the way that PLBB musicians effortlessly glide between the band’s monthly eclecticism and the modern yet more traditional guest arrangements speaks to the talent occupying every seat on the stage.

The band doesn’t sound a distinct voice. But it waves a distinct personality.

“Duke Ellington’s band was musically very sophisticated and very entertaining,” Cox says. “I don’t see why those two things can’t go together.”

PLBB first came together in December 2006 to perform their version of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Today, the band and that score accompany an annual performance by the Owen/Cox Dance Group. (The dance group’s artistic director, Jennifer Owen, is Cox’s wife, and the band is still a key component of Owen/Cox’s Nutcracker.)

For five years, PLBB has been performing on the first Sunday night of each month at RecordBar as part of the twice-monthly “Jeff Harshbarger Presents” jazz series.

This Sunday, the band celebrates that fifth anniversary with a special show. The first set promises a review of new compositions from the past year, and the second set features PLBB’s “greatest hits” over the last five years. Special guest Shay Estes will sing. Expect an extremely large group of musicians joining up to play music they don’t perform anywhere else. They’ll be having a blast. Give yourself over to their sophisticated dissonance, and you might, too.