My year ends with the completion of two major recording projects for Audiographic Records, the duo album, All Directions Home (a co-production with Nate Wooley and his label, Pleasure Of The Text Records), and the final work by the large Ensemble, Audio One, called What Thomas Bernhard Saw.
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All Directions Home: Nate Wooley and Ken Vandermark follow their first duo album, East By Northwest (which received a 5 star review by Paul Acquaro in “The Free Jazz Collective”), with a great leap forward- seven original compositions that further explore the potential of melody and abstract sound, fired through with spontaneous counterpoint that has been developed over years of working together. In addition to the original compositions, there are original interpretations of Ornette Coleman’s rarely played, “I Heard It On The Radio,” and Fred McDowell’s, “Done Left Here.”
What Thomas Bernhard Saw: Ken Vandermark has composed for large ensembles for more than 15 years, starting with the work he created for the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, and followed by material he composed for his groups, the Territory Band and the Resonance Ensemble. Most recently he organized Audio One, his first big combo to be assembled from musicians based primarily in Chicago. The band’s first document of original material, An International Report, was given the following description by Matthew Grigg in the FreeJazzBlog, “The remarkable facet of this recording is Vandermark’s writing, and how well drilled the ensemble are to execute it. Never one to shy away from ‘difficult’ music, yet always keenly aware of the immediacy of the groove, the material here walks a line between being, at times, almost academic in its structural design, and yet hip-shakingly immediate in its direct focus of energy.” What Thomas Bernhard Saw picks up where that previous album left off, going further into new fields of sound and rhythm over the course of four long-form pieces, the music’s cohesion from a compositional standpoint only possible because of the abilities of the musicians who rendered it.
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These two new CDs are added to Audiographic’s autumn output, joining my latest duo recording with Paal Nilssen-Love, The Lions Have Eaten One Of The Guards, and the special book/solo music document, Site Specific, which includes more than 200 photographs taken on tour over the last 5 years, as well 4 sets of field recordings made in locations with extreme acoustics. These documents can all be purchased through Catalytic-Sound. Here are direct links to the recordings:
Nate Wooley & Ken Vandermark//All Directions Home
Audio One//What Thomas Bernhard Saw
Paal Nilssen-Love & Ken Vandermark//The Lions Have Eaten One Of The Guards
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