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Joe McPhee Survival Unit III: Don't Postpone Joy!
by AAJ Italy Staff
Poche storie. Joe McPhee è uno dei giganti dell'improvvisazione contemporanea e una delle menti più lucide che ci siano in circolazione. Vuoi per l'enorme quantità di esperienza accumulata (dal free politicizzato alla “new wave” di Chicago, passando per Pauline Oliveros e le sue teorie), vuoi per le incredibili potenzialità espressive insite nel suo strabiliante polistrumentismo (per trovare qualcuno in grado di destreggiarsi con tanta naturalezza alle ance e agli ottoni bisognerebbe risalire a Benny Carter), il musicista di Miami è ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee: Collaborator
by Robert Iannapollo
From the beginning, multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee has had a tendency to go against the grain and more often than not, has recorded in non-standard jazz group formations. It's clear that he must view this as one essential way of continually reinvigorating his art. Additionally, he has always seemed game for new and unexpected musical partnerships. These two releases feature McPhee in anomalous situations and both add slightly different wrinkles to his ever-expanding discography.
Joe McPhee/Paul Hession A Parallax ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee And The (Trio) X Factor
by Robert Iannapollo
2007 marks the 40th anniversary of a major event in jazz, the passing of John Coltrane. It also marks another event that may escape most people, a birth of sorts: the recording debut of multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, as a sideman on Clifford Thornton's Freedom And Unity, recorded the day after Coltrane's funeral. Those 48 hours were a watershed period in McPhee's life.McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, NY. At 8, his father, who played trumpet on the side, called ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee & Survival Unit II with Clifford Thornton: N.Y.N.Y. 1971
by AAJ Italy Staff
Furono proprio l'incontro con McPhee e l'ascolto dei nastri di questo concerto che nel 1974 convinsero Werner X. Uehlinger ad intraprendere l'attività di produttore discografico. Ed infatti la maggior parte degli LP pubblicati dalla Hat Hut negli anni Settanta erano tesi alla documentazione sistematica, quasi maniacale, della musica del polistrumentista americano. Quando nell'ottobre 1971 al WBAI's Free Music Store di New York fu registrata la performance riportata in questo CD (riedito dopo una prima apparizione in tiratura limitata nel 1996), ...
Continue ReadingMichael Bisio / Raymond Boni / Dominic Duval / Joe McPhee: Port of Saints
by Lyn Horton
The unvarnished truth about improvised music is that it takes us where we never expect to go. Port of Saints describes an epic journey whose main character is the saxophone. A guitar acts as the saxophone's alter ego. Two basses supply avuncular guide posts for traveling to an unknowable but certain destination. The journey is rife both with fantasy and human spirit.
Raymond Boni evokes an extra-terrestrial ambiance through his uniquely overt and detailed approach to the electric guitar. Repeatedly, ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee: N.Y.N.Y.1971 & Pieces of Light (1974)
by Kurt Gottschalk
Joe McPhee Survival Unit II with Clifford Thornton, N.Y. N.Y. 1971 Hatology 2006 Joe McPhee Pieces of Light (1974) Atavistic 2006
Something that often gets overlooked amongst the generations of post '60s free jazz blowers and fans is that John Coltrane was a conceptualist and that the free improvisation that erupted ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee: Survival Unit II with Clifford Thornton, N.Y. N.Y. 1971
by Nic Jones
Without quesion, Joe McPhee is an American national treasure, and this recording offers proof that the idiosyncratic free jazz icon been one for over thirty years now. This disc documents a radio broadcast from at a time when the US was undergoing political and cultural upheavals, and the music is both reflective of such a time and the product of a proudly singular musical intelligence. The three announcements which were part of the original recording amount to just 1:43 out ...
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