Jazz Articles about Joe McPhee

About Joe McPhee

Radio & Podcasts

Reed Rapture With McPhee And Other New Releases

by Bob Osborne
January 5, 2023

On this show a further look at Ivo Perelman's Reed Rapture In Brooklyn, this time he is in partnership with Joe McPhee. I have further examples of McPhee's work and in addition I am sharing new releases from Lazlo Gardony, Kaja Draksler & Susana Santos Silva, and, Paul Dunmall with Paul Rogers & Tony Orrell.Playlist Show Intro 00:00 Ivo Perelman & Joe McPhee “Three" from Reed Rapture In Brooklyn (Mahalaka) 00:54 Joe McPhee, Dave Rempis, Tomeka Reid, Brandon ...

Album Review

Ivo Perelman: Reed Rapture in Brooklyn

Read "Reed Rapture in Brooklyn" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
December 13, 2022

"Let's play two," the famous line by the Cubs Hall-of-Fame baseball player Ernie Banks in 1969, uttered when the temperature in Chicago had reached 105 degrees (40.5 celsius) and his teammates were exhausted, might find its analogy with this massive undertaking from saxophonist Ivo Perelman. At eleven hours in length though, the two games Banks cited are not single games, but more like two double-headers here. Like the baseball infielder, Perelman has limitless energy and a never-ending appetite for creativity, ...

Liner Notes

Reed Rapture In Brooklyn: A Box Set Of Woodwind Duets With Ivo Perelman

by Hrayr Attarian
November 20, 2022

One of the 20th century's musical geniuses, saxophonist Charlie Parker said “Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you that music has boundaries. But, man, there's no boundary line to art." This statement on unbridled creativity applies perfectly to saxophonist Ivo Perelman's oeuvre. Perelman, however, is not just a saxophonist. Although the tenor is one of his favorite tools of expression, he is an ...

Album Review

Joe McPhee / John Edwards / Klaus Kugel: Existential Moments

Read "Existential Moments" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 3, 2022

Multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee's trio with British bassist John Edwards and German drummer Klaus Kugel has become another of his most potent working bands, following in the footsteps of such esteemed outfits as Trio X and Survival Unit III. On their third album, after Journey To Parazzar (NotTwo, 2018) and A Night In Alchemia (NotTwo, 2019), recorded in front of an audience at the FreeJazzSaar festival in Saarbrucken in 2019, the threesome conduct a masterclass in building and releasing tension, during ...

Album Review

Joe McPhee, Michael Bisio, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Juma Sultan: The Sweet Spot

Read "The Sweet Spot" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
April 27, 2022

Making music with one's neighbors was one way of getting by during the pandemic. Of course, it helps if your colleagues are all of the caliber of the foursome assembled on The Sweet Spot, all of whom reside in the Hudson Valley, a couple of hours north of NYC. But it is not just geographic proximity which promotes the special chemistry in evidence on the set. Saxophonist Joe McPhee and bassist Michael Bisio go back to the mid-'90s, and have ...

Album Review

Rodrigo Amado This Is Our Language Quartet: Let The Free Be Men

Read "Let The Free Be Men" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
August 28, 2021

Portuguese tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado adds another stunning entry to his discography with the third album from his This Is Our Language Quartet. It was actually recorded live in Copenhagen, three days before the outfit's second studio outing, A History Of Nothing (Trost, 2018) so, unsurprisingly, presents the same starry roster completed by multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Chris Corsano. The resultant blend of spontaneous free jazz, by turns refined, beautiful, exhilarating, heart-rending and belligerent, remains similarly ...

Album Review

Gustafsson / McPhee / Håker Flaten / Nilssen-Love: The Thing She Knows...

Read "The Thing She Knows..." reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
August 22, 2021

The Hat Hut and ezz-thetics family of labels is in 2021 just three years shy of its fiftieth anniversary. This is a remarkable, perhaps unique, achievement for an independent company which has concerned itself exclusively with the avant-garde end of jazz and conservatoire music from the get go, and has done so with the highest (for which read costly) production standards. Perhaps mindful of the coming anniversary, the labels' founder, Werner X. Uehlinger, has since 2019 been reissuing ...