24 August 2010

The Vandermark 5 complete our August
residency at Elastic, playing to a packed house (one of the best
audiences I’ve seen at this venue- standing room only on a Tuesday!).
First performance of “Second Phase” goes well; I made a last minute
change to the arrangement, switching the rhythm section of final solo
section (for Dave Rempis) to cello and drums
instead of bass and drums, this moved the playing out of standard, mid
tempo “Jazz territory” to something more in a Abdul Wadud/Julius
Hemphill space, more surprising. I’m a bit startled at how quickly Clomid this
book of new material has come together, usually it takes several
performances before the group can “get off the page” and directly into
the interaction and improvisation, but either the charts were better
organized that previously or the nature of the exploration of these
charts is better suited to where the band is heading than usual, I’m not
completely sure, especially since my goal was to move as far away from
our past as possible. Speaking of which, here’s a pretty thorough
overview of the bands history at All About Jazz:

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=11016