One, Two, Many Concepts

Ken Vandermark Goes/Puts His Money to Work in More Bands Than You Can Count and More Albums Than That

by Tom Hull

KEN VANDERMARK
Furniture Music
(Okka Disk)

SPACEWAYS INC.
Version Soul
(Atavistic)

PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE/KEN VANDERMARK
Dual Pleasure
(Smalltown Supersound)

FREE FALL
Furnace
(Wobbly Rail)

Asked how he could be so prolific, singer-painter-bandleader Jon Langford replied, "I'm brutally efficient and highly compartmentalized." Saxophonist Ken Vandermark could say the same. Like Langford, he moved to Chicago and catalyzed a music scene. Since the mid-'90s he's juggled dozens of bands and released six to nine albums a year. Some of these are chance encounters: get a set of musicians together, turn on the tape, and hope magic happens. But for Vandermark, purist improvisation is just one more concept. Take Free Fall, for instance.

Free Fall is Vandermark's clarinet-piano-bass trio, named after Jimmy Giuffre's famous 1963 album. But unlike Ken Vandermark's Joe Harriott Project (Straight Lines, Atavistic, 1999), this isn't a tribute band, just one that tries to create something new within the framework of Giuffre's lineup and language. Their debut, Furnace (Wobbly Rail), feels tentative. The first half (mostly Vandermark pieces) tests the band's parameters, while the second half (mostly pieces by bandmates Håvard Wiik and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten) slouches into prettiness. But neither half sounds like Giuffre any more than, say, Mingus sounded like Ellington--most obviously, Vandermark's clarinet is dirty and musclebound, like his sax.

Free Fall is the second of Vandermark's album concept bands. The first was School Days, named after the Steve Lacy-Roswell Rudd Quartet album. Jeb Bishop plays Ruddish trombone, but Vandermark takes his cues from '60s saxophonists like Archie Shepp. As with Free Fall, the rhythm section is from Norway--Flaten on bass, and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums--and the band is fiercely responsive (cf. Crossing Division, Okka Disk, 2000). Like Vandermark's, Nilssen-Love's jazz chops assume a rough-hewn physicality that derives as much from rock--a generational shift that crops up all over contemporary jazz. Nilssen-Love has cut several duo albums with saxophonists. The one with Vandermark, Dual Pleasure (Smalltown Supersound), is one of those improvised encounters where magic does happen--an intense, intimate, engaging clash of drums and reeds, each provoking the other.

Vandermark's concept bands evolve: each distinct group opens up new opportunities, setting the initial concepts adrift. His trio with Hamid Drake (drums) and Nate McBride (bass, mostly electric) initially came together to record Spaceways Incorporated (Atavistic, 2000), which interleaved Funkadelic grooves with Sun Ra spaciness. It was cool, but the follow-up, Version Soul (Atavistic, 2002), was groundbreaking: with all original material, it both expanded on the notion of funky free jazz and on the huge talents of the band. McBride's three tunes keyed off funk lines, while Vandermark's six followed his habit of dedicating pieces to touchstones--usually a musician, but sometimes an artist or a friend, anyone who inspires the germ of an idea--ranging here from ska keyboardist Jackie Mittoo and Sly bassist Larry Graham to the suave baritone sax of Serge Chaloff and the fiery tenor sax of Frank Wright.

Then there's Furniture Music (Okka Disk), Vandermark's inevitable solo album. As far back as Anthony Braxton's For Alto, these things have usually been plug ugly, but Vandermark keeps this one fresh by switching horns (tenor and baritone sax, B-flat and bass clarinet), and keeping the intricately composed pieces short-- this is not blow-first, think-later stuff. The Evan Parker dedication is shrill and warbly, the Lennie Tristano is neo- abstract bebop, the John Cage wanders, and the Jaap Blonk sounds like a foghorn on fire. A tough listen overall, but amazing.

But all of these are just side trips. Vandermark's flagship band since 1996, and the main showcase for his writing, has been the Vandermark 5. With two reed players, trombone, bass, and drums, Vandermark gets a big band sound out of a manageable group, much as Mingus did. And while he plays his parts, as with Ellington his real instrument is the band. Their latest album, Airports for Light (Atavistic), is the most complex and varied of the series, with standout pieces for Rahsaan Roland Kirk (which nails Kirk's tone and dynamism perfectly) and Curtis Mayfield (a noirish soundtrack that sets off the album's best solo), and a big-band finale whose connection to Sonny Rollins is less than obvious.

Vandermark's dedications say much about his relationship to tradition, which he mines assiduously for ideas, but his development of those ideas, and his own style of play, are unique. This may have something to do with how much history envelops us today. More likely, though, it's just that his father was a free jazz fanatic who turned his son on to the likes of Joe McPhee at an impressionable age. But the dedications also help organize his prodigious work ethic--expect another six to nine albums in the coming year. In 1999 Vandermark was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, in part (so he says) as an experiment to see what the money would make possible. If only all investments paid off so handsomely.

Original Draft

Jon Langford, when asked how he could be so prolific, with three bands, solo work, and painting, replied, "I'm brutally efficient and highly compartmentalized." Saxophonist Ken Vandermark could say the same. Like Langford, he moved to Chicago and catalyzed a whole new music scene. Since the mid-'90s he's juggled dozens of bands and released 6-9 records each year. Some of those records are chance encounters: get a set of musicians together, turn on the tape, and hope that magic happens. But that sort of purist improvisation is just one of the many concepts he uses to organize his work. Take Free Fall, for instance.

Free Fall is Vandermark's clarinet-piano-bass trio. The group name comes from Jimmy Giuffre's famous 1963 album. But this group, unlike Ken Vandermark's Joe Harriott Project (cf. their Straight Lines, Atavistic, 1999) isn't a tribute band. Rather, they take Giuffre's lineup and language and try to create something new within the same conceptual framework. Their first record, Furnace (Wobbly Rail), feels tentative -- the first half (mostly Vandermark pieces) takes more risks in testing the band's parameters, while the second half (mostly pieces by bandmates Håvard Wiik and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten) slouches into prettiness. But neither half sounds like Giuffre any more than, say, Mingus sounded like Ellington -- most obviously, Vandermark plays clarinet dirty and musclebound, like his sax.

Free Fall is actually the second of Vandermark's album concept bands. The first was School Days, named after the Steve Lacy-Roswell Rudd Quartet album. Jeb Bishop plays Ruddish trombone, but Vandermark takes his clues as much from other '60s saxophonists, like Archie Shepp. As with Free Fall, the rhythm section is from Norway -- Flaten on bass, and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums -- and the band really cooks (cf. Crossing Division, Okka Disk, 2000). Like Vandermark, Nilssen-Love's jazz chops assume a roughhewn muscularity that comes as much from rock -- another generation shift that crops up all over the map. Nilssen-Love has cut several duo albums with saxophonists, and his one with Vandermark, Dual Pleasure (Smalltown Supersound), is one of those improvised encounters where magic does happen -- an intense, intimate, engaging clash of sax/clarinet and drums.

Vandermark's concept bands evolve: each distinct group of musicians opens up new opportunities, setting the initial concepts adrift. His trio with Hamid Drake (drums) and Nate McBride (bass, mostly electric) initially came together to record Spaceways Incorporated (Atavistic, 2000), a concept which interleaved Funkadelic grooves with Sun Ra spaciness. It was cool, but the follow-up, Version Soul (Atavistic, 2002), was the one that really broke new ground: with all original material, it both expanded on the concept of funky free jazz and on the huge talents of the band. McBride's three tunes keyed off funk lines, while Vandermark's six followed his habit of dedicating pieces to touchstones -- usually a musician, but sometimes an artist or a friend, anyone who inspires the germ of an idea -- ranging here from ska keyboardist Jackie Mittoo and Sly bassist Larry Graham to the suave baritone sax of Serge Chaloff and the fiery tenor sax of Frank Wright.

Then there's Furniture Music (Okka Disk), Vandermark's inevitable solo album. From as far back as Anthony Braxton's For Alto, those things are usually plug ugly, but Vandermark keeps this one fresh by switching horns (tenor and baritone sax, B-flat and bass clarinet), and keeping the intricately composed pieces short -- this is not a blow first, think later album. Here the Evan Parker dedication is shrill and warbly, the Lennie Tristano is neoabstract bebop, the John Cage wanders, and the Jaap Blonk sounds like a foghorn on fire. Overall it's a tough listen, but amazing.

But all of these are just sidetrips. Vandermark's flagship band since 1996 has been the Vandermark 5, which is the main showcase for his writing. With two reed players, trombone, bass and drums, Vandermark gets a big band sound out of a manageable group, much as Mingus did. And while he plays his parts, like Ellington his real instrument is the band. Their latest album, Airports for Light (Atavistic), is perhaps the most complex and varied of the series, with standout pieces for Rahsaan Roland Kirk (which nails Kirk's tone and dynamism perfectly) and Curtis Mayfield (a noirish soundtrack that sets off the album's best solo), and a head-scratching big band finale for Sonny Rollins.

Vandermark's dedications say much about his relationship to tradition, which he mines assiduously for ideas, but his development of those ideas, and his own style of play, are very distinctive. This may have something to do with how much history envelops us today, but more likely it's just that his father was a free jazz fanatic, so he turned his son on to the likes of Joe McPhee at an impressionable age. But the dedications also help organize his prodigious work ethic -- expect another 6-9 records in the coming year. In 1999 Vandermark was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, in part (so he says) as an experiment to see what the money would make possible. Few investments have paid off so handsomely.

Notes

This is what I wrote in my cover letter to Robert Christgau on the first draft of this piece. Christgau responded by asking me to write a slightly longer piece (800 words instead of 625).

Bob,

Here's what I came up with on Vandermark. I had it counted at 628 words before I added the first sentence to the last paragraph, then cut a couple of little things, so it's probably a bit over. You can probably find more things to whittle down. Word count doesn't count the ephemera at the top. This leaves a lot of things unsaid -- e.g., Vandermark's relationship to the tradition, how that resembles (and don't) David Murray's; the interesting role that his father played (Stu Vandermark is a hardcore free jazz fan, who made a point of turning Ken on guys like Shepp, Rivers, and McPhee very early on); and of course a lot of detail on the records. FYI, I rank them: Dual Pleasure (high A-), Airports (mid-lo A-), Furniture Music (B+ with trepidation), Furnace (B+ with a muffled yawn). School Days is a bridge for going from Free Fall to Dual Pleasure. Crossing Division is the first School Days album, and a favorite; I don't have the second, In Our Times, which seems to be out of print. I like the Harriott album, but it was included for contrast, to make a point. I like Spaceways Inc. (Version Soul) best of all, but didn't find a way or space to work that in. My favorite V5 album is Target or Flag, on which Jeb Bishop plays a lot of electric guitar. Bishop stopped playing guitar on Acoustic Machine, and only plays trombone there and on Airports. The pecking order on V5 albums is, roughly: Target or Flag, Acoustic Machine, Airports for Light, Single Piece Flow, Burn the Incline, Simpatico; that leaves out Free Jazz Classics, which is off-concept but would be #3 otherwise. The first two V5 records have Mars Williams on reeds; he was replaced by Dave Rampis when he left to concentrate on Liquid Soul. I've read that Rampis actually plays most of the sax solos on the recent records, but I don't have a clear enough mental picture of his playing to distinguish it, and I haven't heard his own records (group called Triage). The new record has Tim Daisy on drums, replacing Tim Mulvenna. Daisy is also replacing Nilssen-Love in FME for the December tour. The other Nilssen-Love duo records that I have are with Mats Gustafsson (I Love to Hear You Snore -- Mats barely blows on the record, mostly turning his sax into a percussion instrument, which is actually an interesting effect) and Håkon Kornstad, a Norwegian alto saxist who has a regular trio with Nilssen-Love. The School Days album has a hyphen in Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten, but most other sources omit the hyphen, including the Free Fall album. I made it a point not to write about race, unlike Mark Fefer in Seattle Weekly. Anderson to Williams was intended for alphabetic sweep, not stylistic (although that, too, is considerable). You could replace Williams with Michael Zerang, although (a) he's less well known, and (b) he's less recent (Vandermark Quartet).

I never got the Vandermark/Brian Dibblee Duets album. As far as I know, the new Territory Band album isn't out yet, nor are the collaboration albums with Gold Sparkle Band (Andrew Barker, Charles Waters) or Paul Lytton. Vandermark is in England now touring with School Days. He will be in the US in December touring with FME (Free Music Ensemble, with Kent Kessler and Tim Daisy), and will appear in NYC at Tonic on Dec. 9. There was an earlier limited edition FME disc on Okka Disk (I've seen it as one word, but two seem to be preferred), which I haven't heard. FME is loosely conceptualized after the German FMP label. Atavistic is probably the best place to try to get artwork, although I'm real pissed at them because they never answer my mail. Bruno Johnson at Okka Disk is another possibility, or Daniel Gill at Fanatic Promotion in NYC (he's handling the Free Fall record).

The Langford quote is from an interview with cyclops mark.

Vandermark's record count (excluding guest appearances and comps) by year (recording date if available; the release dates are usually the following year, sometimes later) is as follows:

Discography and more extensive links are available in the Notes section of my Vandermark CG Project webpage.