Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Free Music Ensemble: Cuts

159

Free Music Ensemble: Cuts

By

View read count
Free Music Ensemble: Cuts
Ken Vandermark is not one to limit himself to easy, comfortable situations. As successful as the Vandermark 5 is, it presents only one side to his composing and playing. With the Free Music Ensemble, a cooperative trio with bassist Nate McBride and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, listeners, whether on their second disc Cuts or live at Tonic mid September, can hear a more visceral, looser Vandermark, happy to be swept up by the improvisational thrusts of his fellow musicians.

The band began in 2001, only releasing one limited edition CD in 2002 and then following that up with 2004's Underground. The disc that preceded Cuts laid the groundwork for the group's mission: Vandermark compositions (of a very different ilk than his Vandermark 5 pieces) fleshed out to have long improvised segments and segues. The leaderless nature of the bandname represents how effectively any of the three can grasp the music, manipulate it for themselves, and then throw the results back at the others for similar processes.

And while Underground was a fine record full of compelling moments, Cuts advances the concept further and introduces more suite-like thinking. Instead of single tunes, themes are strung together, creating tapestries of more varied texture. At Tonic last month, with an album's worth of unrecorded material, this approach was done even more expertly.

Since this is a saxophone trio, a format that has a long history in jazz, the musical scholarship of Vandermark is better utilized. And since he had long standing relationship with the "rhythm section, particularly Nilssen-Love on two amazing duo records, the two volumes of Dual Pleasure, the shared responsibility is a joyous rather than a weighty one. Because the group tours with some regularity and plays a fine, raucous concert when they do, further albums should continue the group's artistic rise. For now, Cuts is a fascinating snapshot of a hypercreative band in the midst of discovering themselves and what can be done when new thinking is applied to established forms.

Visit Ken Vandermark on the web.

Track Listing

Other Side Up/Boadas; Necessary?/Reset/Slip; Static (A Hundred Yards) Static; Broken (Sentence) Broken; Heavy Light.

Personnel

Ken Vandermark: tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, clarinet; Paal Nilssen-Love: drums; Nate McBride: bass

Album information

Title: Cuts | Year Released: 2005 | Record Label: Okka Disk

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

Near

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.