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Joe McPhee / John Edwards / Klaus Kugel: Existential Moments
by John Sharpe
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 ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee, Michael Bisio, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Juma Sultan: The Sweet Spot
by John Sharpe
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 ...
Continue ReadingRodrigo Amado This Is Our Language Quartet: Let The Free Be Men
by John Sharpe
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 ...
Continue ReadingGustafsson / McPhee / Håker Flaten / Nilssen-Love: The Thing She Knows...
by Chris May
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 ...
Continue ReadingBlue Reality Quartet: Blue Reality Quartet!
by John Sharpe
Back in 2001 when reedman Michael Marcus' trio waxed a disc under the title Blue Reality (Soulnote, 2002), he could scarcely have imagined the circumstances under which he might resurrect the name. As the four masked faces on the cover of Blue Reality Quartet! show, times are sadly very different. Joining Marcus in the studio in November 2020 are and drummer Jay Rosen from the original date, multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee and percussionist Warren Smith. A plethora of connections informs the ...
Continue ReadingRodrigo Amado This Is Our Language Quartet: Let The Free Be Men
by Mark Corroto
If you are not hip to Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, where, as they say, have you been? He has garnered acclaim for many years now, with his own Motion Trio, Lisbon Improvised Players, The Wire Quartet, Luís Lopes' Humanization 4tet, and in duos with Chris Corsano and trios with Kent Kessler and Paal Nilssen-Love. If, though, you are new to Amado, This Is Our Language Quartet with Kessler, Corsano and the doyen of free jazz Joe McPhee is the most ...
Continue ReadingFlow Trio with Joe McPhee: Winter Garden
by Mark Corroto
The thing about free jazz is that it is very much like abstract expressionist painting. Many an inexperienced museum goer will spot a Jackson Pollock and say to herself, “I coulda done that." Actually, you couldn't. Same thing with free jazz. From a distance, it's all hubbub and din, but try your hand at it, and you're just creating babel. In the hands of masters like the Flow Trio and their guest Joe McPhee, that cacophony becomes a beautiful thing, ...
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