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Ken Vandermark (born September 22, 1964) is an American composer, saxophonist, and
clarinetist
This article lists notable musicians who have played the clarinet.
Classical clarinetists
* Laver Bariu
* Ernest Ačkun
* Luís Afonso
* Cristiano Alves
* Michel Arrignon
* Dimitri Ashkenazy
* Kinan Azmeh
* Alexander Bader
* Carl Baermann
* ...
.
A fixture on the Chicago-area music scene since the 1990s, Vandermark has earned wide critical praise for his playing and his multilayered compositions, which typically balance intricate
orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orc ...
with passionate improvisation. He has led or been a member of many groups, has collaborated with many other musicians, and was awarded a 1999
MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to ...
. He plays
tenor saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...
,
clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound.
Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
,
bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...
, and
baritone saxophone
The baritone saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of instruments, larger (and lower-pitched) than the tenor saxophone, but smaller (and higher-pitched) than the bass. It is the lowest-pitched saxophone in common use - the bass, contra ...
.
He was also a member of
NRG Ensemble NRG Ensemble was an American free jazz ensemble founded in the late 1970s by saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist Hal Russell.Margasak, PeterThe Undiminished Power of Hal Russell's NRG Ensemble''at Chicago Reader''
The group's personnel was somewhat f ...
.
Biography
Boston and Montreal
Vandermark grew up in Massachusetts, graduating from
Natick High School
Natick High School is an urban/suburban public high school serving students in grades 9 to 12 in Natick, Massachusetts, United States. The school is located on the banks of Dug Pond. Its enrollment was 1,603 students during the 2015–2016 schoo ...
. His father, Stu Vandermark, was the Boston correspondent for ''
Cadence Magazine
''Cadence: The Independent Journal of Creative Improvised Music'' is a quarterly review of jazz, blues and improvised music. The magazine covers a range of styles, from early jazz and blues to the avant-garde. Critic and historian Bob Rusch fou ...
'' and currently is a noted essayist on jazz, primarily concerned with improvisation.
Vandermark led a jazz trio, the Fourth Stream, in Montreal while he was an undergraduate at McGill University. He graduated in 1986 with a degree in English but focusing on cinema. After graduation, he led or co-led groups (including Lombard Street and
Mr. Furious) in Boston.
Compositions/arrangements for the Boston-based groups set the groundwork for and predicted approaches to recordings and live performances developed in Chicago. Although a trio, Lombard Street incorporated "suite forms" characteristic of later arrangements for groups of both substantial and limited instrumentation. Vandermark's "dedication pieces" are found first in Lombard Street performances, as in the case of "The Politics of Sound," which was dedicated to the musicians in Boston-based ensembles
Shock Exchange, The Fringe, and the
Joe Morris Trio. Works performed by Mr. Furious, such as "Cold Coffee," include some of the most convincing early examples of Vandermark's signature free-ranging charts. Developed further in Barrage Double Trio (e.g., "Agamemnon Sleeps") this simultaneously linear and episodic perspective on arrangement broadly has been the overarching architecture in most of his works for large-ensembles since that time.
Chicago
Vandermark has lived in Chicago since autumn 1989. Since then, he has performed or recorded with many musicians (including
Hal Russell
Hal Russell (born Harold Russell Luttenbacher, August 28, 1926 – September 5, 1992) was an American free jazz composer, band leader and multi-instrumentalist who performed mainly on saxophone and drums but occasionally on trumpet or vibrapho ...
,
Paal Nilssen-Love
Paal Nilssen-Love (born 24 December 1974) is a Norwegian drummer and composer in the jazz, free jazz and free improvisation genres. (in Norwegian)
Early life
Nilssen-Love was born in Molde, Norway. His parents ran a jazz club in Stavanger, and ...
,
Hamid Drake
Hamid Drake (born August 3, 1955) is an American jazz drummer and percussionist.
By the close of the 1990s, Hamid Drake was widely regarded as one of the best percussionists in jazz and improvised music. Incorporating Afro-Cuban, Indian, and Afr ...
,
Fred Anderson,
David Stackenäs,
Paul Lytton
Paul Lytton (born 8 March 1947, London) is an English free jazz and free improvising percussionist.
Lytton began on drums at age 16. He played jazz in London in the late 1960s while taking lessons on the tabla from P.R. Desai. In 1969 he began ...
,
Joe Morris,
Ab Baars
Ab Baars (born November 21, 1955 in Axel, Netherlands) is a Dutch saxophonist and clarinetist who has had an active performance career since the 1970s. He has recorded several albums for the Geestgronden Records, Atavistic Records, and WIG record ...
,
The Ex,
Mikolaj Trzaska,
Marcin Oles,
Waclaw Zimpel,
Axel Doerner,
Mats Gustafsson
Mats Olof Gustafsson (born 29 October 1964) is a Swedish free jazz saxophone player.
Career
Gustafsson came to the attention of lovers of improvised music as part of a duo with Christian Munthe (started in 1986), as member of Gunter Chri ...
,
Bartlomiej Oles
Bartlomiej Brat Oles (born 1973 in Sosnowiec, Poland) is a jazz and free improvisation drummer, composer and record producer. He is the twin brother of Marcin Oles and Art-director of the Polish independent Jazz Label Fenommedia.
Career
Bartlom ...
,
Wolter Wierbos
Wolter Wierbos (born 1 September 1957, in Holten, Overijssel) is a Dutch trombonist.
Wierbos has played throughout Europe, Canada, USA and Asia. Wierbos has many awards to his name, including the Podiumprijs for Jazz and Improvised music and the ...
,
Joe McPhee
Joe McPhee (born November 3, 1939) is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist born in Miami, Florida, a player of tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, the trumpet, flugelhorn and valve trombone. McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is ...
,
Zu,
Peter Brötzmann
Peter Brötzmann (born 6 March 1941) is a German saxophonist and clarinetist.
Biography Early life
Brötzmann was born in Remscheid, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He studied painting in Wuppertal and was involved with the Fluxus movement ...
,
Fredrik Ljungkvist
Håkan ''Fredrik'' Ljungkvist (born 29 November 1969 in Kristinehamn, Sweden), is a Swedish jazz musician (saxophone and clarinet), the son of saxophonist Håkan Ljungkvist and married to the jazz singer Lina Nyberg.
Career
Ljungkvist was ...
,
Paul Lovens
Paul Lovens (born 6 June 1949) is a German musician. He plays drums, percussion, singing saw, and cymbals. He has performed with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra and Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra.
He was born in Aachen, Germany. In the early ...
,
Lasse Marhaug,
Yakuza
, also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media, by request of the police, call them , while the ''yakuza'' call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ...
,
Kevin Drumm
Kevin Drumm (born 1970) is an experimental musician based in Chicago, United States.
Biography
Emerging from the city's improvised music scene, in the 1990s he became one of the world's pre-eminent prepared guitar players. Since then his wor ...
, and members of
Superchunk
Superchunk is an American indie rock band from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States, consisting of singer-guitarist Mac McCaughan, guitarist Jim Wilbur, bassist Laura Ballance, and drummer Jon Wurster. Formed in 1989, they were one of the ...
). He first gained widespread attention while with the NRG Ensemble from 1992 to 1996. He was once a member of Witches and Devils and the
Flying Luttenbachers and has led or co-led several groups, including DKV Trio, Free Fall, Territory Band, CINC, Sonore, the Vandermark 5, the Free Music Ensemble, School Days, the Sound in Action Trio, Steam and Powerhouse Sound.
The ''Joe Harriott Project'', a brief celebration of Harriott in 1998 in the Chicago area, consisted of Ken Vandermark (reeds),
Jeb Bishop
Jeb Bishop (born 1962) is an American jazz trombone player.
He grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended Jesse O. Sanderson High School. He has studied music (classical trombone performance) at Northwestern University, engineering and ...
(trombone),
Kent Kessler
Kent Kessler (born January 28, 1957) is an American jazz double-bassist.
Career
Although born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, Kessler grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He began playing trombone at age ten. When he was thirteen, he moved with his f ...
(bass), and
Tim Mulvenna (drums). The band played the music of
Joe Harriott
Joseph Arthurlin Harriott (15 July 1928 – 2 January 1973) was a Jamaican jazz musician and composer, whose principal instrument was the alto saxophone.
Initially a bebopper, he became a pioneer of free-form jazz. Born in Kingston, Harriott ...
, transcribed and arranged by Vandermark.
In 2002 Vandermark recorded ''Furniture Music'', his first released performances as an unaccompanied soloist.
After several years of Vandermark 5 performances of his arrangements of works by
Sonny Rollins
Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a ...
,
Joe McPhee
Joe McPhee (born November 3, 1939) is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist born in Miami, Florida, a player of tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, the trumpet, flugelhorn and valve trombone. McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is ...
,
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet.
Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex ...
, and others, Vandermark in 2005 announced, "Though I have learned a great deal by rearranging some of my favorite composers' work for the Vandermark 5, it's time to leave that process behind and focus more completely on my own ideas."
Vandermark is the subject of ''Musician'' (2007), one of a series of Daniel Kraus video documentaries on contemporary occupations.
Awards
Vandermark won the ''Cadence'' magazine poll in 1998 for best artist and best recording. He was a finalist for the 1998
Herb Alpert Fellowship.
In 1999 Vandermark was awarded a $265,000
MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to ...
, a prize then awarded on an age-based scale to creative leaders and meant to enable them to pursue their creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. The fellowship was controversial, due to Vandermark's relative youth and obscurity: he was 35 and known mostly in Chicago, while other jazz performers awarded the fellowship were older and better-known (e.g.,
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet.
Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex ...
,
George Russell).
Groups and collaborations
In the mid-1990s, Vandermark was known, in part, for his many collaborations with other musicians. Some groups were ''ad hoc'' settings, while others were more stable. He worked not only in jazz, but
free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its ...
,
noise
Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arise ...
,
rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from Africa ...
of various stripes, and other settings. Due in part to wanting to focus more on his own compositions, Vandermark decided in about 2000 to limit his collaborations.
DKV Trio
Composed of drummer
Hamid Drake
Hamid Drake (born August 3, 1955) is an American jazz drummer and percussionist.
By the close of the 1990s, Hamid Drake was widely regarded as one of the best percussionists in jazz and improvised music. Incorporating Afro-Cuban, Indian, and Afr ...
, bassist
Kent Kessler
Kent Kessler (born January 28, 1957) is an American jazz double-bassist.
Career
Although born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, Kessler grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He began playing trombone at age ten. When he was thirteen, he moved with his f ...
, and Vandermark. The group is active only irregularly, except for annual end-of-year concert(s) in Chicago. However, in 2017 DKV played two tours, one with
Joe McPhee
Joe McPhee (born November 3, 1939) is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist born in Miami, Florida, a player of tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, the trumpet, flugelhorn and valve trombone. McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is ...
, and in 2020 there was no end-of-year concert, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
.
Spaceways Inc.
Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake, and bassist Nate McBride. Originally devoted to interpretations of the music of
Sun Ra
Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific out ...
and the
P-Funk
Parliament-Funkadelic (abbreviated as P-Funk) is an American music collective of rotating musicians headed by George Clinton, primarily consisting of the funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic, both active since the 1960s. Their distinctive ...
/
George Clinton family, Spaceways Inc. later branched into versions of classic
reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...
songs as well as Vandermark originals.
The Vandermark 5
Perhaps Vandermark's main compositional vehicle, the Vandermark 5 released their first album in 1997. Initial personnel were Vandermark, Mars Williams (saxophone), Jeb Bishop (trombone and electric guitar, though the latter was gradually phased out), Kessler (bass) and
Tim Mulvenna (drums). Williams left and was replaced by saxophonist
Dave Rempis; while Tim Daisy took over Mulvenna's seat at the drums. Bishop left the group in 2005, and was replaced with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm.
Their music could be broadly classified as
post bop
Post or POST commonly refers to:
*Mail, the postal system, especially in Commonwealth of Nations countries
** An Post, the Irish national postal service
**Canada Post, Canadian postal service
**Deutsche Post, German postal service
** Iraqi Post, I ...
, though their earlier era had strong leanings towards
punk rock and
noise
Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arise ...
due to Bishop's ragged guitar contributions. In 2010 Vandermark announced the disbanding of the ensemble, although he continues to work with band members in other contexts (e.g., with Kessler in DKV).
Free Fall Trio
Active c. 2004–2007, the Free Fall Trio included Vandermark and two Norwegian musicians: pianist Håvard Wiik and bassist Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten. This group was loosely inspired by
Jimmy Giuffre
James Peter Giuffre (, ; April 26, 1921 – April 24, 2008) was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He is known for developing forms of jazz which allowed for free interplay between the musicians, anticipating f ...
's groundbreaking early 1960s trio, which featured the same instrumentation. Like Giuffre, Vandermark played
clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound.
Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
and emphasized a rather hushed and subdued
chamber jazz
Chamber jazz is a genre of jazz involving small, acoustic-based ensembles where group interplay is important. It is influenced aesthetically by the small ensembles of chamber music in musical neoclassicism and is often influenced by classical f ...
that still managed to swing and take creative leaps.
Territory Band
After being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 1999, Vandermark used some of the financial windfall to assemble the Territory Band, a
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s an ...
composed of musicians from North America and Europe. Vandermark describes Territory Band as "an intersection of my two primary musical interests, American Jazz and European Improvised Music." Personnel has varied but has always included Vandermark, Rempis and Fredrik Ljungkvist on reeds; Axel Dörner on trumpet and Per-Åke Holmlander on tuba; Jim Baker on piano; Kessler on bass and Lonberg-Holm on cello; and Paal Nilssen-Love and Paul Lytton on drums. Territory Band also incorporates elements of
noise
Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arise ...
and
electroacoustic improvisation
Live electronic music (also known as live electronics) is a form of music that can include traditional electronic sound-generating devices, modified electric musical instruments, hacked sound generating technologies, and computers. Initially the pr ...
via the contributions of
Kevin Drumm
Kevin Drumm (born 1970) is an experimental musician based in Chicago, United States.
Biography
Emerging from the city's improvised music scene, in the 1990s he became one of the world's pre-eminent prepared guitar players. Since then his wor ...
, who departed in about 2005 and was replaced by
Lasse Marhaug.
RARA AVIS
In June 2012, Vandermark recorded ''Mutations/Multicellulars Mutations'', the first album by a newly created ensemble called RARA AVIS, featuring Stefano Ferrian (soprano/tenor saxophone), Stefano Quatrana (piano), Luca Pissavini (double bass) and SEC_ (tape recorder, instant sound treatment). The ensemble premiered on April 26, 2013 at
Novara Jazz Winter.
Marker
Vandermark named his group Marker for filmmaker
Chris Marker
Chris Marker (; 29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and Essay#Film, film essayist. His best known films are ''La Jetée'' (1962), ''A Grin Without a Cat'' (1977) and ''S ...
. In addition to Vandermark, the group, based in Chicago, features the much younger musicians
Macie Stewart
Finom (formerly known as OHMME, and Homme) is a rock band from Chicago, which singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist duo Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart formed in 2014. Since 2016, Matt Carroll has been FINOM's drummer.
Background
Both Cun ...
(violin, keyboard), Steve Marquette (guitar), Andrew Clinkman (guitar), and Phil Sudderberg (drums). Marker's album ''Wired for Sound'' was recorded in 2017 and released in 2018, and a second live album was recorded and released in 2018. Marker toured in 2018.
[
][
][
] (Since 2017 through 2020, Vandermark and Stewart, often along with , ,
Sima Cunningham, and
Liam Kazar (Cunningham), usually participated in the annual winter performances in Chicago of the Yes We Can Band led by and , which covers
New Orleans rhythm & blues
New Orleans rhythm and blues is a style of rhythm and blues that originated in New Orleans. It was a direct precursor to rock and roll and strongly influenced ska. Instrumentation typically includes drums, bass, piano, horns, electric guitar, and ...
/
funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...
tunes, especially those of
Allen Toussaint
Allen Richard Toussaint (; January 14, 1938 – November 10, 2015) was an American musician, songwriter, arranger and record producer. He was an influential figure in New Orleans rhythm and blues from the 1950s to the end of the century, descri ...
and the
Meters
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...
.
)
Discography
References
External links
Official siteDiscography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vandermark, Ken
Avant-garde jazz musicians
1964 births
Living people
American jazz saxophonists
American male saxophonists
MacArthur Fellows
Musicians from Chicago
Boxhead Ensemble members
The Flying Luttenbachers members
21st-century American saxophonists
Jazz musicians from Illinois
American male jazz musicians
NRG Ensemble members
The Denison/Kimball Trio members
Clean Feed Records artists
Smalltown Supersound artists
Atavistic Records artists
21st-century American male musicians
Okka Disk artists