Jazz Articles

The Frame Quartet: 35mm

by Troy Collins
October 7, 2009

Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and bandleader Ken Vandermark is widely known for paying homage to artists of various disciplines, regularly including dedications in his song titles to those who have inspired him. On 35mm, the studio debut of his newest ensemble, The Frame Quartet, Vandermark reveals his longstanding debt to cinema, not only in name, but in approach. Filmmaking is an intensely collaborative medium, and The Frame Quartet embraces this concept implicitly; Vandermark is the sole writer, yet each ...

Vandermark / Kessler / McBride / Joode / Flaten: Collected Fiction

by Mark Corroto
December 2, 2008

The beauty and the challenge of undertaking a project like Collected Fiction, a collection of bass and reed improvised duos, is to make an engaging and thoughtful experience for both players and listeners. These 22-tracks do just that with a polymorphic approach that renews itself with each track.The organizer here is Chicagoan Ken Vandermark, playing with three very familiar bassists and one somewhat new acquaintant. Vandermark's connection with Kent Kessler goes way back to their work with Hal ...

The Engines: The Engines

by Andrey Henkin
January 15, 2008

Let's try to get through this CD review without using the “V" word. Instead, let the eponymous debut of The Engines serve as a discussion starter on the idea of a larger Chicago aesthetic. The quartet--Jeb Bishop (trombone), Dave Rempis (alto, tenor and baritone saxophones), Nate McBride (basses, both acoustic and electric) and Tim Daisy (drums)--is drawn from the remarkably vibrant Windy City jazz and improvised music scene, as documented most assiduously by Okkadisk, headquartered just up the coast of ...

Territory Band: Collide

by Mark Corroto
November 10, 2007

Collide is Ken Vandermark's sixth release for his transatlantic small big band (or is it a large small group?) of American jazz meets European improvisers. Unlike the prior sessions, this disc is comprised of a single composition, divided into five parts.

The Territory Band has, at its core, players who execute Vandermark's writing with a satisfying proportion of improvised and ensemble playing that has as its contemporaries bands like the Brötzmann Tentet, the ICP Orchestra, and ...

The Engines: The Engines

by Mark Corroto
October 19, 2007

Chicago is indeed a city of big shoulders. Great architecture, huge pizza, and musicians with heavyweight sound. Think of Buddy Guy, Gene Ammons, Lester Bowie, and Fred Anderson to name just a few. Pretension has never been an ingredient of their music.

When four of Chicago's sons got together to form a band called The Engines, you get the idea that power will not be lacking. The members of the quartet all have been associates of Ken Vandermark's ...

Joe McPhee / Peter Br: Guts

by Lyn Horton
August 2, 2007

When people die for what they believe in, their actions speak louder than words. At least for a moment. Repeat performances of their deaths are impossible. So it is up to those who survive them to revitalize the symbolism of their deaths. Creative people do this well in the form of a tribute, for they are lending their lives to the realm where they have invested their own spirits already.

The quartet of reedmen Joe McPhee and Peter ...

Peter Br

by Mark Corroto
July 21, 2007

The milestones of the 66 year old German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann's career are a useful device by which to review his prolific and passionate music making. From early experiments with Alexander von Schlippenbach and the Globe Unity Orchestra, he gained jazz infamy with an octet recording called Machine Gun (FMP, 1968). Aptly named, the unrelenting surge of three saxophones (Brötzmann, Evan Parker and Willem Breuker) over piano, double drummers and double bassists, announced a new energy in European free music--one ...

Territory Band-5: New Horse For The White House

by Mark Corroto
September 23, 2006

You can certainly find plenty of heady intellectual discussion surrounding Ken Vandermark's Territory Band. He has taken the concepts of jazz and European music and interlaced them with composed and improvised music. (Was that last statement redundant?) In doing so, Vandermark continues the argument begun the day Louis Armstrong played a familiar march “his own way." While Stanley Crouch has made a career telling us what jazz isn't, Vandermark continues to open our ears to what it can be.

Paul Lytton / Ken Vandermark / Philipp Wachsmann: Cinc

by Kurt Gottschalk
August 14, 2006

Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark is about as well known as a jazz fan as he is a jazz musician. With a breakneck release schedule (two discs is a slow year for him), he has found time to compose and lead his own bands while paying respect to his elders: tribute albums to Sonny Rollins, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Joe Harriot, a band organized around Peter Brötzmann, and bonus discs filled with live versions of “jazz classics that accompanied some of ...

Territory Band: Company Switch

by Rex Butters
May 22, 2006

Ken Vandermark's fourth collection with the Territory Band, Company Switch, continues to mine ideas too big for the Vandermark 5. Lasse Marhaug, who replaces Kevin Drumm on electronics, seems more inclined to contribute color and texture to the ensemble's experimentation. Given Vandermark's imagination and the assembly of musicians, sparks fly and vast amounts of musical landscape are covered on this two-disc set.

Crackly loops approximate fire that explodes into electrical noise on the opening “Killing Floor. The rhythm section rises ...