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Ken Vandermark / Nate Wooley / Sylvie Courvoisier / Tom Rainey: Noise Of Our Time
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 ...
read morePedro Melo Alves, Rich Halley and more
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 ...
read moreKen Vandermark / Marker: Roadwork 1/Roadwork2/Homework1 (Box Set)
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, ...
read moreA Musical Portrait of Ken Vandermark
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 ...
read moreArtacts 18 in St. Johann in Tirol, Austria
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 ...
read moreDKV Trio / The Thing: Collider
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 ...
read moreBarry Guy / Ken Vandermark: Occasional Poems
For British bassist Barry Guy the concert that produced this fine double disc package occurred at the end of a four day intensive residency in Krakow culminating in the premier of an ambitious new work by his Blue Shroud Band. While for Chicago reedman Ken Vandermark, the event was the final episode in two months on the road. But whether relief or exhaustion were the dominant feelings, neither resulted in any lowering of standards or resting on laurels. Occasional Poems ...
read moreKen Vandermark Resonance Ensemble: Double Arc
For the most part, we only follow the trajectory of an artist's career many years after his work has been completed. Looking back at the career of Miles Davis, you can now play connect-the-dots from bebop to Gil Evans to modal jazz to electric Miles. Certainly, back in the day, many a listener knew not where Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970) came from. We are fortunate today to have access to so much more music and an artist like saxophonist Ken ...
read moreFred Lonberg-Holm/Ken Vandermark: Resistance
When you consider all the musicians that have recorded duos with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, it sounds kind of like the SPAM Monty Python sketch comedy piece. “Yes, I'll have some Fred Lonberg-Holm and Ken Vandermark." What, you don't want Fred Lonberg-Holm and Axel Dörner, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Mats Gustafsson, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Peter Brotzmann, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Paal Nilssen-Love, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Frode Gjerstad or Fred Lonberg-Holm and Nick Stephans, or Fred Lonberg-Holm and David Stackenäs, ...
read moreFestival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville 2014
Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada May 15-19, 2014 Victoriaville, Quebec is a town of some 40,000 two hours east of Montreal, a regional center known for the sober pursuits of dairy and wood production. For the past three decades (beginning in 1983), the town has also hosted one of the world's most renowned festivals of adventurous music, the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, or Victo, as it is popularly ...
read moreKen Vandermark Resonance Ensemble: Head Above Water / Feet Out Of The Fire
Listening to the music Ken Vandermark writes for large ensembles do we dare compare him to Duke Ellington? Both band leaders and composers wrote and arranged music to be played by a select troupe of musicians and both suffered the fate of surfing the knife edge of innovation. Ellington always seemed to be delivering scores with the ink still drying to last minute rehearsals. Same for Vandermark who has the added burden of an international cast from Chicago to Stockholm ...
read moreMade To Break: Provoke
Each of these three extended pieces is dedicated to great twentieth century innovators who specialize in distinct disciplines. Led by Chicago outside jazz luminary Ken Vandermark, the quartet derives inspiration from avant-garde composer John Cage, architect, author Buckminster Fuller and philosopher, media theorist Marshall McLuhan. And as expected, the compositions are not thin or one-dimensional by design, yet from a semi-structured and improvisational standpoint, offer much in the way of excitement and entertainment. Vandermark also imparts some of the funk ...
read moreAlbum Showcase
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Swallows & Swans by Florian Ross
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East Of The Sun by Michael Kocour
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Crosswinds by Christoph Irniger
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Trio Tapestry by Joe Lovano
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Imaginary Friends by Ralph Alessi
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Jazz Story
Jazz combines creativity from the mind, heart, and the gut. It flourishes through structure and uses melody and rhythm to bridge the musician's creativity and the listener's imagination. I try to appreciate all forms of music and styles of jazz but find myself drawn to the “hot music” of the twenties through the early thirties, including its many contemporary incarnations
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By Andrew J. Sammut
Member since: 2010
