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), New York’s Downtown scene (Ikue Mori), 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
2:00 pm
Horns From Mars: Chicago, May Chapel
On Saturday, May 30th at 2 pm, there will be a celebration of the birthday of Mars Williams (b. May 29th, 1955) who passed in 2023 at May Chapel in Chicago. […]
8:00 pm
IMS Presents: Bonnie Han Jones, Jeff Arnal, Ken Vandermark
Bonnie Han Jones (electronics/voice), Jeff Arnal (drums/percussion), and Ken Vandermark (saxophones/clarinets) reconvene to celebrate their first collaboration, Signal Otherwise, the 67th edition in the Catalytic Sound Artist Albums series. […]
7:00 pm
Night School: Christa Baclia (video) & Ken Vandermark (reeds)
Night School is a performance series organized in Chicago by Erez Dessel which features collaborations between improvising musicians and video artists. The event on June 28th will present the following […]
Latest Recordings & Releases
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October Flowers for Joe McPhee
Ken Vandermark
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El Infierno Musical II
Christof Kurzmann, Katinka Kleijn, Lia Kohl, Dave Rempis, Ken Vandermark
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Pivot
Mats Gustafsson, Tomeka Reid, Chad Taylor, Ken Vandermark
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Fourth Atlas
Ken Vandermark & Tim Daisy
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Broadcast Transformer
Edition Redux
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This Is Not A Holiday!
Terrie Ex & Ken Vandermark
Recent Posts
Experiments 2026: #3 & #4/work with Ben Hall
Experiments 2026: #3 & #4/work with Ben Hall. 2026 has included a number of shifts in creative strategy for me. Starting in reverse from this spring to the beginning of […]
Living Poets Society
Mixing material with Nick Broste by a sextet with Beth McDonald (tuba/electronics), Erez Dessel (keyboards), Josh Berman (cornet), Lily Finnegan (drums), and Nick Macri (acoustic/electric bass); with readings by poets […]
Autumn 2025-Spring 2026: Influences & Impacts
Though the last half year has focused on the performance of lots of exciting music at home and abroad, much inspiration came from other art sources and focused listening to […]
Instagram Feed
Musician (improviser/composer) who plays saxophones and clarinets, and works with a variety of styles and artists.
![Heading to San Antonio tomorrow to start a hat trick of shows with the Chicago/Texas Sound Ensemble (left to right: Jonathan Horne [guitar], Stefan González [vibraphone], Kory Cook [drums], Matthew Frerck [upright bass]). My thanks to writers Sanford Nowlin and Stephanie Koithan of the San Antonio Current for the coverage, especially to Sanford for the thoughtful interview (link in bio). Friday night in San Antonio we’ll be playing at the Slab Cinema Arthouse, Saturday we head to Austin to perform two shows at Monk’s, and on Sunday we’re in Dallas at The Wild Detectives (links to full concert info also in bio).
“Chicago-based saxophonist Ken Vandermark, one of the undisputed modern heavyweights of free jazz, will play San Antonio with the help of likeminded Texans. Vandermark’s Chicago/Texas Sound Ensemble consists of drummer Kory Cook (San Antonio), guitarist Jonathan Horne (Austin), vibraphonist Stefan Gonzalez (Dallas) and bassist Matthew Frerck (Denton). Gonzalez is also a drummer in the wild experimental collective Young Mothers. Frerck also works with Gonzalez on a boundary-pushing free jazz trio out of Denton called Trio Glossia. Cook’s other notable local project is a two-piece called The Whale. Hard to turn down a show with high caliber musicians eager to color outside the lines.” —Stephanie Koithan
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