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This year, Vandermark is touring and
recording with some of his steadiest
units—like the Vandermark 5—as well
as fledgling ones. Sonore, his free-improv trio
with fellow reedists Mats Gustafsson and Peter
Brötzmann, has a new album coming out on
Okka Disk, and the label will also release the
debut album from his Chicago-based Frame
Quartet (with Daisy, McBride and Lonberg-
Holm). The Norwegian label Smalltown
Superjazz will release a new album by his
chamber trio Free Fall (with pianist Håvard
Wiik and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten), the
debut of a new quartet called Lean Left (with
Nilsen-Love and guitarists Terrie Ex and Andy
Moore from The Ex), and two new volumes of
improvised duo recordings with Nilssen-Love.
He also just finished his first film score, for
Roads Of Water by Italian director Augusto
Contento.
Later this year he’ll tour Europe with his latest
large band effort the Resonance Project,
which he first launched in Poland in November
2007, a joint initiative between himself and
Krakow’s Marek Winiarski, owner of the
increasingly impressive Not Two label.
Vandermark had been finding his various
ensembles playing at the Krakow club
Alchemia more than any other venue in Europe,
but he had little interaction with Polish musicians.
In the end, only saxophonist Mikolaj
Trzaska participated, joining an international
cast that included drummers Michael Zerang
and Daisy, and reedist Rempis (all Chicagoans),
along with New York trombonist Steve Swell,
Swedish trumpeter Magnus Broo, and
Ukrainian bassist Mark Tokar and reedist Yuriy
Yaremchuk.
Vandermark put the whole project together
in Krakow. “I had been writing some notes and
sketches, but I had a week in Krakow for composing,
with nothing else to do but compose,”
he said, nothing that it was the first time in his
career he had the luxury of devoting himself
exclusively to a specific project without interruption.
“I hadn’t thought about how much I
missed writing for a larger group until I started
working on it.”
Over the last few years, Vandermark has
spent an ever-increasing amount of time in
Europe. Although his collaborators have
become more international, the main reason is
simple economics: The U.S. doesn’t support
improvised music in the same manner that
Europe does. The situation has forced him to
make some tough adjustments. Last fall he
walked away from his day-to-day involvement
in Umbrella Music, a musician-run coterie of
Chicago presenters that he helped launch in
2006, although since the mid-’90s Vandermark
essentially set a new precedent for musician-run
series in the city. As he notes, the practice
picked up on the standard set by the AACM
back in the ’60s.
“It was a difficult decision because I’m a
control freak,” he laughed. “It’s the first time
since I can remember not being involved in a
weekly program in Chicago. Those kinds of
changes are alien to me, but that change essentially
made no change in things, and that says a
lot about where things are versus where they
were a decade or 15 years ago. That resiliency
says a lot about the substructure of what’s going
on in Chicago.”
Of course, Vandermark embodies a similar
resiliency. He’s determined and seems unwilling
to be crushed by the non-musical forces that
seem to conspire against jazz. He continues to
be an inspiration to young players in Chicago,
but his approach has made believers of musicians
several decades older than him as well.
“Ken is one my heroes,” said McPhee, who’s
been riding a wave of increased visibility since
Vandermark first brought him to Chicago to
perform and record in 1995. “The essence of
what Ken’s about is his sense of adventure, his
willingness to tackle anything head on and not
be afraid of it. It’s just a new experience for
him, and I find that incredibly refreshing.” DB
June 2009 DOWNBEAT 51