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Jazz Articles about Joe McPhee

About Joe McPhee

155

Album Review

Joe McPhee & Dominic Duval: The Dream Book

by Derek Taylor
November 1, 1999

Unlike Ellington celebrations, tributes to Ornette Coleman are a relative rarity. The disparity is interesting considering that many in creative improvised music circles regard Coleman’s radical innovations as of parallel importance to those of the Duke. McPhee and Duval go a long way towards rectifying this gap on this disc. Recorded live at the Knitting Factory during a series of concerts McPhee was commissioned to perform, each of the pieces in this concert is dedicated to individual members of Coleman’s ...

114

Album Review

Joe McPhee/Dominic Duval/ Jay Rosen: Trio X: Rapture

by Derek Taylor
November 1, 1999

Back in the early days of free jazz improvisation many musicians who chose to play multiple instruments were singled out as scapegoats by critics interested in discrediting the music. The logic (or illogic) behind these naysayers’ arguments posited that a division of energy and focus between instruments would necessarily result in decreased proficiency. Many of the music’s detractors claimed that the new sounds being explored by these musicians were the direct result of such assumed deficiency. Legends like Roland Kirk ...

189

Album Review

Joe McPhee/Dominic Duval/Jay Rosen: Trio X: The Watermelon Suite

by Derek Taylor
November 1, 1999

This magnificent session is perhaps most unusual for McPhee’s decision to stick to only one the reeds in his bulging bag of instruments throughout its entire duration. Though he limits solely to soprano his creative muse isn’t compromised in the least thanks both to his own inventive genius and that of his able associates. “Points” is a little jumbled and sounds like the players are getting their bearings for the anatomical suite to follow on which Rosen sits out as ...