Jazz Articles about Joe McPhee

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Joe McPhee / Peter Brotzmann / Kent Kessler / Michael Zerang: The Damage Is Done

by Mark Corroto
December 24, 2009

This live date features legendary free jazz pioneers Peter Brötzmann and Joe McPhee, and Chicago's leading rhythm section, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Michael Zerang. The four also make up 4/10 of Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet, maybe the most successful large new music jazz ensemble ever assembled.

As they have in the past while touring with the Tentet, they step away and perform in this more intimate lineup. This quartet has released two previous recordings, Tales Out Of Time ...

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Joe McPhee & Fred Lonberg-Holm: Their First Duet, University of Chicago

by Lyn Horton
November 27, 2009

Joe McPhee and Fred Lonberg-Holm Bond Chapel, University of ChicagoChicago, IL November 9, 2009

Saxophonist Joe McPhee and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm have long been bandmates in Peter Brötzmann's Tentet, as well as in McPhee's Survival Unit III and in other groups formed during their mutual acquaintance. But never have the two had the opportunity to play with one another in a simple duo. The opportunity came when on November 9, immediately following several ...

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Joe McPhee: Angels, Devils & Haints

by Kurt Gottschalk
May 13, 2009

Angels, Devils & Haints is a beautifully unusual tribute record. The project was conceived by saxophonist Joe McPhee as a tribute to the great Albert Ayler, but doesn't include any of Ayler's tunes. The lineup--McPhee (tenor and alto saxophones and pocket trumpet) with a quartet of bassists--isn't an instrumentation Ayler ever used. And yet, from the outset, the dedication is wonderfully apparent. McPhee bifurcates the two principal elements of Ayler's sound, the soulful sax cry and the ...

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Joe McPhee: Angels, Devils & Haints

by Lyn Horton
April 29, 2009

In 1965, Joe McPhee met Donald Ayler by chance in a New York record store. Ayler asked McPhee to join him at a rehearsal where Albert Ayler would be, but unfortunately McPhee was unable to make the rehearsal. That missed opportunity triggered a powerful response in May 2000, when McPhee invited a group of musicians to join him for two concerts in France, entitling them The Albert Ayler Project 2000. Angels, Devils & Haints, a two-volume recording, is the result ...

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Joe McPhee: Tomorrow Came Today & Sweet Freedom- Now What?

by Robert Iannapollo
April 4, 2009

Joe McPhee / Paal Nilssen-Love Tomorrow Came Today Smalltown Superjazzz 2008 Joe McPhee / Lisle Ellis / Paul Plimley Sweet Freedom - Now What? Hatology 1994-2008 Since his earliest releases, multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee has favored that most intimate form of communication, the duet. His earliest duo recording was Pieces Of Light (1974) with synthesizer ...

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Joe McPhee Survival Unit I I I: Don't Postpone Joy!

by Glenn Astarita
March 24, 2009

This 2007 release for the Italy-based Tracce label presents saxophonist/trumpeter Joe McPhee's Survival Unit III improvisation group, which signifies the final moniker for the trio that was originally called The Alto Trio. The origination of the core trio, known as Survival Unit I, came to fruition during the '60s, sparked by themes centered upon social injustices and the Vietnam War.

Captured live during the Italian Tradizione Jazz Festival in Movimento, McPhee and his comrades generate gobs of expressionism, ...

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Joe McPhee: Tomorrow Came Today

by Lyn Horton
January 20, 2009

Music and talking are two modes of expression rooted in human communication. Most of the time, the audible distinction is clear. Sounds are sounds and words are words: the medium makes no difference in how one hears the instrumentality of either. In the context of improvisation, reed player Joe McPhee and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love challenge the definition of both music and talking on Tomorrow Came Today by forcefully transforming the inflections of one into the other. There is no talking...only ...