Jazz Articles about Joe McPhee

Joe McPhee: Everything Happens For a Reason

by Clifford Allen
July 10, 2005

Joe McPhee Everything Happens For a Reason Roaratorio Records 2005

As an improviser, Joe McPhee's art has taken several interesting turns and shifts in focus that one listening to his first few recordings might not have expected. Schooled on trumpet from his youth and studying the tenor saxophone starting at age 29, McPhee's brilliant smears of sound on his composition “O.C.T (that is, Ornette, Cecil and Trane) are altogether prophetic and too ...

Joe McPhee Interview

by Michael Anton Parker
June 16, 2005

This interview was originally published in August 2002.

Joe McPhee is having a hard time believing the fact that he is a legend. But it's true, and there are a lot of awfully good reasons for it. First of all, that tone! How can one human being and a metal tube make those sounds? McPhee's horns are always rapturously engaged in a liberation dance for sounds that have spent millenia waiting to be heard. And he doesn't just set them ...

Joe McPhee: The Sugar Hill Suite & Rules of Engagement, Vol. 2

by Kurt Gottschalk
May 1, 2005

Trio-X is one of the longest-standing and strongest vehicles for one of the best free-thinking saxophonists around today. Joe McPhee has countless associations, but consistently is at his most relaxed and exploratory with bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen. With only five releases in the decade they've played together, the group has afforded itself the time to grow and find a common sound.

McPhee/Duval/Rosen The Sugar Hill Suite CIMP

There's plenty of payoff in The ...

Duval & McPhee and Christi & Hassay: Rules of Engagement Vol. 2 & Tribute to Paradise

by Clifford Allen
May 1, 2005

Reedman Eric Dolphy and bassist Richard Davis created not only some of the most interesting reed-bass duets (if not some of the first) in jazz history, but also laid the groundwork for the conversant duo in realms not just of rhythm (reeds/drums, reeds/piano) but of sound. One just has to think of the ways in which the two play with bent notes, growled and slurred phrases, hacking apart time and melody only to rebuild them a few bars later--all in ...

Joe McPhee Po Music: Oleo

by Jeff Stockton
December 5, 2004

Since his return to active recording and performing in the mid '90s, Joe McPhee's music has always been influenced by the palpable joy he takes from exploring the color and texture of sound. That's why it's startling to hear him tear into the familiar Sonny Rollins-penned title track so conventionally. And why it's even more startling, after you've been lulled into a comfortable post bop state for a few seconds, to hear guitarist Raymond Boni drench weird electronic effects all ...

Joe McPhee Po Music: Oleo

by Clifford Allen
October 10, 2004

With Po Music, according to McPhee, the group concept centers on the process orientation of “po-," a linguistic prefix signifying possibility and change (Li Po, anyone?). Of course, McPhee has gone through a number of stylistic changes in his career, from high-energy free jazz to funk and R&B, to “deep listening" and chamber jazz outfits. “Po," then, was part of McPhee's lexicon long before the '82 recording of Oleo, but however the process of investigating the po ssibilities of creative ...

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 ...