Chicago saxophonist/composer Ken Vandermark and New York trumpet player Nate Wooley had been operating in each other’s orbits for several years- having worked together with Paul Lytton, Joe Morris, Agusti Fernandez, and Terrie Ex- before putting together their duo project in October 2013, when they toured the United States for the first time. With this unique ensemble, they deal directly with each other’s iconoclastic compositional and improvisational vocabularies and have created a book of original material that takes inspirational cues from the under-appreciated work of John Carter and Bobby Bradford (two of their compositions are part of the group’s repertoire). Vandermark and Wooley have worked together to create an organic combination of the jazz tradition, free improvisation, and modern composition, and have then placed it into the raw and intimate context of this duo.
On June 22nd, 2014 they recorded an album that combined their performance at Okka Fest 6 in Milwaukee with a studio session the following day. Entitled, East By Northwest, the record was released in December of that year as a co-production between their two independent labels, Pleasure of the Text Records (Wooley) and Audiographic Records (Vandermark). In January 2014, the duo went back on the road in the United States for their second tour together, which culminated in the release of their second disc: All Directions Home. These first two albums were critically acclaimed (East By Northwest [2014] received a 5 star review in the “Free Jazz Collective”; and “The New York City Jazz Record” stated that All Directions Home [2015] “showcases the strengths that have made the duo luminaries in their respective scenes.”). In addition, their performance at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, on May 16th, 2017 was heralded as one of the “Concerts of the Year” by “The New York City Jazz Record”.
The duo released their third recording, an LP entitled “Deeply Discounted/Sequences of Snow” in December 2018. This latest album is an exciting new statement from the duo, featuring long-form compositions for the first time, written specifically for the LP format and developed while touring in North America during 2017. Nate Wooley’s piece, “Deeply Discounted II,” is inspired by John Cage’s “Cheap Imitation” which, in turn, was inspired by Erik Satie’s, “Socrate;” Ken Vandermark’s composition, “Sequences of Snow,” is dedicated to the visual artist and musician, Michael Snow, and was influenced by several of Snow’s experimental films, such as “Wavelength,” “Dripping Water,” “La Région Centrale,” “So Is This,” and “See You Later.” The material was recorded in Chicago by Alex Inglizian at Experimental Sound Studio on June 24, 2017, and the album artwork was designed by Fede Peñalva.
Ken Vandermark and Nate Wooley toured the US between April 23rd and May 3rd of 2019 in support of “Deeply Discounted II/Sequences of Snow.” During the trip, the duo performed some pieces from their first three recordings alongside a new set of music composed in collaboration using the “exquisite corpse” method first made popular by the Surrealist art movement. These new pieces were recorded at Experimental Studio in Chicago at the end of that tour and will be released as a CD in 2023.
Nate Wooley
Born in (1974) Clatskanie, Oregon and began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. He made his debut as soloist with the New York Philharmonic at the opening series of their 2019 season. Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language.
Wooley moved to New York in 2001 and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Annea Lockwood, Ken Vandermark, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada. He has premiered works for trumpet by Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Annea Lockwood, Ash Fure, Wadada Leo Smith, Sarah Hennies and Eva-Maria Houben.
In recent years, he has built a reputation as a composer of music epic in scope and social in design. His series of solo works based on the International Phonetic Alphabet, The Complete Syllables Music, was compared to the literary work of Georges Perec and hailed as “revolutionary solo repertoire” by All About Jazz. At the other end of the spectrum, his decade-long Seven Storey Mountain cycle has encompassed almost 50 different performers, the most recent version consisting of a 32-person ensemble. This iteration, Seven Storey Mountain VI, “expresses communality, with all of its potential for the profound and the spiritual,” according to Pitchfork. SSMVI appeared on many year-end lists, including as record of the year in El Intruso’s International Critics List and critic Peter Margasak’s personal list.
Another branch of Wooley’s compositional work is his commitment to the concept of Mutual Aid Music, beginning with the quartet work Battle Pieces, commissioned by Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation in 2014, and including a short-lived, but powerful compositional set entitled knknighgh in homage to poet Aram Saroyan. MAM has since matured into a full chamber ensemble work for double quartet and has been expanded through collaborative work with Annea Lockwood (Becoming Air, release on Black Truffle Records 2021), choreographers Kim Brandt, Jen Mesch, and Anna Sperber, and with commissions by TILT Brass, Loadbang Ensemble, and Dither Quartet.
Wooley received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award in 2016. He was the recipient of the Instant Award for Improvised Music and the Spencer Glendon First Principles Award in 2020. He is a 2022 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Music and Sound.
