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Jazz Articles about Ken Vandermark
Ken Vandermark with Kris Davis/Hamid Drake/Paul Lytton/Ikue Mori/William Parker: Momentum 4: Consequent Duos 2015>2019 (Box Set)
by Karl Ackermann
When reed player and composer Ken Vandermark launched his recording career in 1995, he did so with the deceptively titled Standards (Quinnah Records). Free improvisations with titles like “Rage for Speaking" and “A Sick Man's Dreams" indicated a different view of the agreed-upon definition. And so, it has been and has evolved, over nearly twenty-five years of creating spontaneous music, that Vandermark pushes the envelope, never content to stay at the preceding destination. He continues to challenge himself and his ...
Continue ReadingKen Vandermark / Nate Wooley / Sylvie Courvoisier / Tom Rainey: Noise Of Our Time
by John Sharpe
This summit of talent actually delivers what the title promises. The quartet creates an all-encompassing portrait of the state of the art, in which what might be thought noise is adroitly recontextualized in a musical situation. In a way that's what the members have been doing throughout their illustrious careers. Given their daunting skills as improvisers, perhaps the surprise here is that they do so through the medium of composition. While Chicago reedman Ken Vandermark has forged ...
Continue ReadingPedro Melo Alves, Rich Halley and more
by Maurice Hogue
the sonorous tones of the double bass echo throughout this episode, highlighted by a double hit of Israeli bassist Shay Hazan with music from new releases by his quintet and sextet, Argentina's Juan Bayon as well as Tom Abbs, and Kyle Motl with Abbey Rader's West Coast Quartet. You'll hear tracks from new albums by Pedro Melo Alves and his Omniae Ensemble, Rich Halley Trio, VWCR --a quartet powered by Ken Vandermark and Nate Wooley --Phronesis, and Hobama. It's a ...
Continue ReadingKen Vandermark / Marker: Roadwork 1/Roadwork2/Homework1 (Box Set)
by Karl Ackermann
Reed player, composer and improviser Ken Vandermark has led, or been a part of, more than fifty different groups in his prolific twenty-year recording career. Along the way he has played with many of the top talents in experimental, free, and avant-garde jazz, including Joe McPhee, Joe Morris, Paul Lytton, Marcin Oles, Adam Lane, Ab Baars, Barry Guy, Paal Nilssen-Love, Augusti Fernandez, Tim Daisy, Nate Wooley, Dave Rempis, Sylvie Courvoisier, and Paul Rutherford. He formed his most recent group, Marker, ...
Continue ReadingA Musical Portrait of Ken Vandermark
by Centro d'Arte Padova
For our second contribution to All About Jazz's Mixcloud column, we introduce a mixtape series that we've curated since 2016, entitled “50/50." Through these selections we aim to present a comprehensive overview of the artists invited to play at Centro d'Arte through a mix of their music, curated by us, and of music that inspires them, selected by the artists themselves. The first installment of this series focuses on saxophonist and composer Ken Vandermark, with five tracks taken ...
Continue ReadingArtacts 18 in St. Johann in Tirol, Austria
by Luciano Rossetti
This year Ken Vandermark was the headliner at the Artacts Festival which takes place every March in the picturesque village of St. Johann in Tirol, Austria. Vandermark presented three of his projects and shared the stage with Jaimie Branch, Andrea Massaria, Clementine Gasser, Nate Wooley, Joe Williamson, Terrie Essels, Mette Rasmussen, Susana Santos Silva, Lotte Anker, Elisabeth Harnik, Trevor Dunn, Didi Kern, Dieb13, Alexander Hawkins and Melvyn Poore. This edition of the festival also featured ...
Continue ReadingDKV Trio / The Thing: Collider
by John Sharpe
Recorded live at Krakow Jazz Autumn in 2014, Collider unites two of the hardest hitting contemporary outfits in an off the wall summit. It's notable that all the members of the DKV Trio and The Thing, except bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, have a history of working with the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, the large improvising collective par excellence of the last 10 years. That experience means that they effortlessly rise to the challenge of combining two self sufficient units to ...
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