Ken Vandermark
Ken Vandermark (USA, 1964) is a renowned avant-garde composer, improviser, saxophonist/clarinetist, curator, and writer. He has collaborated and recorded with key figures from the AACM (Fred Anderson), FMP (Peter Brötzmann), British improvisation (Paul Lytton), post-punk (Terrie Ex), Ethiopian music (Getachew Mekuria), and Japanese free jazz (Akira Sakata). Since 2012, he has directed the Catalytic Sound cooperative and runs Audiographic Records (founded 2014). In 1999, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his contributions to music.
Calendar
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Side Yard Sounds: Avreeayl Ra, Erez Dessel, Ken Vandermark, and Shanta Nurullah
Side Yard Sounds is excited to present an evening of solo performances by Avreeayl Ra, Erez Dessel, Ken Vandermark, and Shanta Nurullah at Compound Yellow in Oak Park.
9:00 pm - 12:00 am
Edition Redux: Hungry Brain Residency, September 2025
6:30 pm - 12:00 am
Edition Redux: Sound & Gravity Festival
9:00 pm - 12:00 am
Edition Redux: Hungry Brain Residency, September 2025
9:00 pm - 12:00 am
Edition Redux: Hungry Brain Residency, September 2025
Latest Releases
Medicine Kit
Terri Kapsalis, Damon Locks, Ken Vandermark
Broadcast Transformer
Edition Redux
This Is Not A Holiday!
Terrie Ex & Ken Vandermark
Koniec
Sebastiaan Janssen, Hubert Kostkiewicz, Ken Vandermark & Marta Warelis
Better A Rook Than A Pawn
Edition Redux
Distant Cousins
Paul Lytton & Ken Vandermark
Recent Posts
IN ROTATION & IN ADDITION: Winter 2024-Summer 2025
I like to keep track of the ideas and work in this journal as a reference to what has influenced and affected me over time. Alongside the collaborations I am […]
Edition XL & poets at The Green Mill: night one
Edition XL and the poets Ed Roberson, Ken Taylor, and Kai Ihns will be back at The Green Mill tonight- Saturday, August 2nd, at 8pm- for our second series of […]
Edition XL with poets Ed Roberson, Kai Ihns, and Ken Taylor
Announcing two special nights of music and poetry in Chicago! On Friday and Saturday, August 1st and 2nd, the new ensemble, Edition XL, will make its Chicago debut at The […]
Instagram Feed
Musician (improviser/composer) who plays saxophones and clarinets, and works with a variety of styles and artists.
![Saturday, August 16th, at 7pm: I’ll be performing solo on a bill that includes solo sets by Avreeayl Ra, Erez Dessel, and Shanta Nurullah at Compound Yellow as part of Side Yard Sounds. My most recent work in this format has been compositionally based, for a future release on Corbett vs. Dempsey, called “October Flowers for Joe McPhee”. Tomorrow, the music will be completely improvised and will be derived from what I can locate in the acoustics of the Compound Yellow environment. I’m trying to develop a solo methodology that considers John Chamberlain’s poetry (“It’s all in the fit. Say you take one word that’s on a page. […] You can play around with it, add to it, or if you want you can take the word apart. You can play with the letters in the word, that’s making anagrams. There’s also a way of taking the syllables apart, rearranging the syllables.”) and Robert Irwin’s site-specific installations.
Link to full concert and ticket information in bio.
(photo by the incomparable Petra Cvelbar)
[John Chamberlain quote from, “Black Mountain Chamberlain” (Princeton University Press: 2020), edited by Julie Sylvester, interview pages 2 & 3]
@54bpm
@sitarsis
@compoundyellow
@petracvelbar
#AvreeaylRa
#ErezDessel
#ShantaNurullah
#CompoundYellow
#ImprovisedMusic
#ExperimentalMusic
#FreeJazzMusic
#ContemporaryMusic
#Avant-GardeMusic
#ChicagoMusicScene](https://kenvandermark.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)