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Joe McPhee: Flowers
by Mark Corroto
For the longest time it was a commonly held belief that solo saxophone performances, especially freely improvised solo saxophone performances, were an acquired taste. Meaning they are things that one has come to like only through experience, but mostly it is a polite way to say you find the music distasteful. Certainly, much of improvised music can be spoken of in this manner, but when an artist performs with the sincerity and genuineness that saxophonist Joe McPhee does every night, ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee / Jamie Saft / Joe Morris / Charles Downs: Ticonderoga
by John Sharpe
As the liners explain, this date was inspired by bassist Joe Morris and pianist Jamie Saft's shared love for the seminal John Coltrane Live At The Village Vanguard Again (Impulse, 1966) album. In the subsequent discussion with the other participants, it transpired that reedman Joe McPhee actually witnessed that gig from the center of the front row. The outcome is a sequence of collective inventions very much in the same barnstorming spirit.But the result is not an explicit ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee / Jamie Saft / Joe Morris / Charles Downs: Ticonderoga
by Glenn Astarita
The premise for this get together commenced with discussions by pianist Jamie Saft and bassist, guitarist Joe Morris who plotted to meld their influences from John Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard Again (Impulse, 1966) album, along with celebrated artists, trumpeter, reedman Joe McPhee and drummer Charles Downs. Moreover, the band moniker Ticonderoga is a Mohawk Indian word that translates into “junction of two waterways," signifying the transition from the artists' collective impressions and groupthink of the Coltrane set with ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee / Jamie Saft / Joe Morris / Charles Downs: Ticonderoga
by Troy Collins
Ticonderoga was inspired by a conversation between Joe Morris and Jamie Saft regarding their mutual admiration for John Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard Again (Impulse!, 1966). Paying homage to the historic date, the pair invited free jazz veterans Joe McPhee and Charles Downs to convene for an informal recording session at Saft's studio in the Catskill Mountains, located just down the river from Ticonderoga, a Mohawk word meaning “the junction of two waterways."Lending credence to the album's ...
Continue ReadingJoe McPhee: Solos : The Lost Tapes (1980 – 1981 – 1984)
by Mark Corroto
The young cats (players thirty years his junior) know Joe. Players who have immersed themselves in free improvisation, like Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Evans, Martin Kuchen, and Mikołaj Trzaska, learned the possibilities of creating a new music from, not thin air, but from listening. They model their approach after Joe McPhee. Born in 1939, he has been a musician's musician since his experiments in solo performance in the 1970s. For years, copies of his infamous Tenor (Hat ...
Continue ReadingDecoy with Joe McPhee: Spontaneous Combustion
by John Sharpe
In spite of its relatively recent vintage, Oto (Bo' Weavil, 2010), the first encounter between Joe McPhee and British improvising trio Decoy, has quickly become one of the veteran multi-instrumentalist 's most popular recordings. By way of follow up Spontaneous Combustion first released as a LP, but now reissued as a double CD with added tracks, documents the second and third concerts by the band during a two night residency at Cafe Oto in October 2011. It's not too fanciful ...
Continue ReadingSave The Date - Ottobre 2014
by Luca Canini
Addio estate. Arriva l'autunno ed è tempo di altri festival, altre rassegne, nuovi palchi. Ma prima dei consigli per ottobre, ci sono alcuni fili da riannodare, questioni lasciate in sospeso sulle quali tornare. Iniziamo da una buona notizia che rimbalza dalla Sardegna. Dopo l'inatteso rinvio e le ombre sul futuro alimentate dal silenzio, arrivano incoraggianti segnali di vita dal festival di Sant'Anna Arresi. L'organizzazione ha infatti comunicato che l'edizione numero 19, slittata a fine agosto, si svolgerà ...
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