Jazz Articles

Joe McPhee-Jerome Bourdellon: Manhattan Tango

by Rex Butters
September 7, 2004

Trumpeter Joe McPhee shows up for this live loft session recorded with flutist Jerome Bourdellon in 2000. The multi-instrumentalist manages to make a multi-instrument out of the pocket trumpet through extended techniques and unbounded imagination. Bourdellon matches McPhee's sonic searchfulness, artfully coaxing new flute nuances and sub sounds before articulating sweeping runs with unguessable destinations.

On the opener, “Business Hour," Bourdellon inflates the bass flute slowly, then hits the keys hard enough to produce percussion and melody, with ...

Joe McPhee & J: Manhattan Tango

by John Kelman
August 7, 2004

Most free music can be daunting to the uninitiated. Free music where the instruments involved are incapable of chordal harmonies can be even more challenging. Freed of the reference points (or, as some free players would call them, constraints) of rhythm section instruments and more overtly harmonic definers, the result can often come across as dissonant, lacking in form and, to some, purely self-indulgent. The truth, however, is that in the proper hands, such liberation can expand the boundaries of ...