Ken Vandermark

MacArthur fellow Ken Vandermark is a composer, improviser, saxophonist, and clarinetist whose compositions and performances cut across stylistic influences from vanguard, modal, and post-bop jazz to classical, folk, reggae, rock, funk, and African folk. A fixture on Chicago's music scene since the early 1990s, his playing, arranging, and composing -- the latter balancing orchestration with improvisation-- established his reputation. He led improvising trios on 1995's Standards, and played in groups from duo to big band. 1999's Straight Lines from his Joe Harriot Project is an avant-jazz masterpiece that aided him in earning the MacArthur Foundation Award that year. Vandermark 5's four volumes of Free Jazz Classics between 2002 and 2005 showcased radical interpretations of the music by Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Giuffre and others. Two years later, he debuted the Spaceways Inc. trio, with drummer Hamid Drake and bassist Nate McBride who interpreted the music of Sun Ra, P-Funk/George Clinton, and classic reggae songs. 2008's Fire Room with Lasse Marhaug and Paal Nilssen-Love made numerous year-end lists, as did the ten-disc Resonance, compiling recordings with his band and European musicians. His 2016 residency at New York City's The Stone documented Vandermark with five trios and a quartet on the six-disc Momentum 1: Stone. In 2019 he issued Invitation to a Dream with Joe McPhee and Susan Alcorn and the seven-disc Unexpected Alchemy. 2021 saw the issue of the poetic solo set The Field Within a Line, inspired by visual artists, while 2023's Eternal River was a duo with Drake. 2024's This Is Not a Holiday was a duo with Terrie Ex. In 2025, he joined saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer Chad Taylor on Pivot. Vandermark grew up in Massachusetts, graduating from Natick High School. His father, Stu Vandermark, was the Boston correspondent for Cadence Magazine and a noted essayist on improvisation in jazz. Vandermark began playing trumpet in fourth grade and switched to tenor sax as a junior in high school. He attended Montreal's McGill University from 1982 to 1986. In 1986, he returned to Boston, where he led a trio called Lombard Street and studied the bass clarinet. In 1989, he moved from Boston to Chicago, where he attracted notice as a member of Hal Russell's NRG Ensemble. He began leading several ensembles of his own and promoted and booked events with influential jazz critic and label boss John Corbett. Vandermark became a constant on the Chicago arts scene and associated with a wide variety of bands including the DKV Trio, Witches & Devils, the Joe Harriot Project, Steam, Peter Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet, Spaceways Inc., and the Vandermark 5; the latter released more than ten albums, including 2001's Acoustic Machine, and Free Jazz Classics, Vols. 1 & 2. Volumes 3 & 4 appeared later in 2006 as well as their A Discontinuous Line.Vandermark's projects are dizzying in their diversity and approach, their experimentation and vision. He has collaborated with dancers, poets, painters, and more. His presence on the European scene in the 21st century has included stints with Paal Nilssen-Love, with whom he formed the Territory Band. After winning the MacArthur in 1999; the group released five albums between 2004 and 2007. In 2009, Vandermark released the ten-disc box Resonance in association with the Not Two label, documenting his big band of the same name's residency at Alchemia in Krakow, Poland. The same year, he issued recordings with Vandermark 5, Sonore, a pair of live albums with Lean Left, and two duo sets with Tim Daisy. A year later, he participated in El Infierno Musical, a tribute to Alejandra Pizarnik assembled by Christof Kurzmann. The album was released with an accompanying video of the performance. Besides Vandermark and its conceptualist, the band also included Martin Brandlmayr, Clayton Thomas, and Eva Reiter. His flurry of activity only increased. Over the next five years, Vandermark revived the DKV Trio, worked with Brötzmann's large group the Ex & Brass Unbound, formed the Margots (a jazz quintet with vocalist Adrienne Pierluissi, and cello and viola). He recorded Impressions of Po Music as Ken Vandermark’s Topology Nonet featuring Joe McPhee, as well as new material with his band Fire Music, three dates in Lisbon with Made to Break, and Verses, a duo album with Mats Gustafsson. The following year, Vandermark's highlights included the six-disc box Nine Ways to Reach the Bridge, a collection of duos with Kurzmann, Agustín Fernández, Joe Morris, and McPhee, and trios with John Tilbury, Eddie Prevost, Nate Wooley, and Paul Lytton. Not Two issued Occasional Poems, his 2015 duo set with bassist Barry Guy, as one of half-a-dozen albums. Some of the others included music from the Chicago Reed Quartet with Nick Mazzarella, Dave Rempis, and Mars Williams. Six more releases followed in 2016, including the box set Momentum 1: Stone, which featured more duos, trios, and quartets. There was a pair of duo recordings as well: Close Up (For Abbas Kiarostami) with Lasse Marhaug and Splinters with Terrie Hessels. In early 2017, Vandermark debuted a self-titled offering (on Audiographic) from Shelter, a new quartet with Wooley, drummer Steve Heather, and bassist and guitarist Jasper Stadhouders. In all, he appeared on 15 recordings that year alone. 2018 was equally busy. In addition to his own recordings such as Noise of Our Time with Sylvie Courvoisier, Tom Rainey, and Nate Wooley, and No-Exit Corner with drummer Klaus Kruger and bassist Mark Tokar, Vandermark also contributed to Prins Thomas' Smalltown Supersound 25: The Movement of the Free Spirit. The following year was among the artist's most prolific. In addition to leading or participating in over 15 recording sessions, he managed to release no less than three box sets including the six-disc The Fire Each Time by DKV Trio and Joe McPhee and the five-disc Momentum 4 (Consequent Duos: 2015-2019), with Kris Davis, Hamid Drake, Paul Lytton, Ikue Mori, and William Parker. He also participated in the trio date Invitation to a Dream with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn and McPhee. In March of 2020, Vandermark collaborated with the classical Ensemble Dal Niente in a live program performing the music of Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis, and Katinka Kleijn, including the world premiere of a new piece by Mitchell written especially for Dal Niente and Vandermark. He collaborated on Consequent Duos: Series 2c with Ikue Mori, and played in an international quartet on Open Border, with Drake, Luigi Ceccarelli, and Gianni Trovalusci. 2021 saw the release of four titles that included the globally celebrated solo outing The Field Within a Line, and Momentum 5 : Stammer (Triptych) with an octet. Vandermark issued two albums each in 2022 and 2023. They included the acclaimed Soundbridges with a quartet, and Eternal River with Drake.In 2024 Vandermark recorded and released two more duos: This Is Not a Holiday with post-punk/free jazz guitarist Terrie Ex and the wonderfully received Musings of a Bahamian Son: Poems & Other Words by Joe McPhee in duet with Vandermark. In June the following year, Pivot appeared on Swedish label Silkheart. The innovative and sometimes incendiary quartet outing included saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer Chad Taylor.
© Chris Kelsey /TiVo