Jazz Articles about Joe McPhee

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Trio X: Joe McPhee, Dominic Duval, Jay Rosen: Moods: Playing with the Elements

by Ty Cumbie
November 8, 2005

I'll bet anyone $50 that the wonderful multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee could play beautifully on an old length of PVC pipe. Any takers? You'd lose. I've seen him do it, and there were at least thirty other witnesses. Neither PVC nor any other sort of plumbing material is listed on this Trio X release, and silver-haired tunes like “Stella by Starlight appear in the track list, but don't worry, this is no standard issue jazz CD. It's what you'd expect--including the ...

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Cato Salsa Experience and The Thing with Joe McPhee: Sounds Like A Sandwich

by Eyal Hareuveni
August 18, 2005

Sometimes you can't help bursting out laughing while listening to a record. Sounds like a Sandwich, a twenty-minute EP with a most appropriate title, is one of those releases. It features a Norwegian psychedelic rock band, Cato Salsa Experience, together with a jazz power trio, The Thing, and reed man Joe McPhee--or as they call themselves, two bands and a legend. The idea of Joe McPhee blowing Led Zeppelin's “Whole Lotta Love" may sound outrageous at the beginning, but after ...

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Dominic Duval and Joe McPhee: Rules of Engagement Vol.2

by Trevor MacLaren
July 22, 2005

Rules of Engagement Vol. 2 is the first recording by this duo in roughly five years. Though they often play together, it is still a rare treat to get a collaborative disc out of them. Dominic Duval makes a great choice for his second volume in the Rules of Engagement series by choosing a familiar player who can work within his style.

The record lacks the punch of Rules of Engagement Vol. 1, which featured Mark Whitecage; still, McPhee proves ...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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 ...