For the past 20 years, Ken Vandermark has been exploring and expanding the possibilities of improvised and composed music.

Since moving to Chicago in 1989, he’s worked within a variety of contexts with many internationally renowned improving musicians. Currently, the majority of his work has been directed toward the Vandermark 5, Bridge 61, the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, FME, Sonore, the Nilssen-Love/Vandermark Duo, the Territory Band and Free Fall.

Beyond creating music, Ken has made many significant, and highly respected contributions to both the local and international jazz/improvised music collectives. In 1996, he and writer John Corbett began co-organizing the Empty Bottle "Wednesday Night Jazz Series," concerts that continue to bring improvisers from Chicago, North America, and Europe to audiences on a weekly basis. Ken became the head curator of these performances in January 2002, and began directing the "Chicago Improvisers Series" at that club which now features local ensembles for month long Tuesday night residencies. His work as a presenter led to being invited to act as the creative director for the ACME Festival, a four-day event held in Athens, Georgia, April, 2004, which featured concerts and workshops involving 21 musicians from Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States.

• Was selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 1999.

• One of the "Chicagoans of the Year in the Arts, 1994" (Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1995) for the Vandermark Quartet

• Selected as one of the "25 For The Future," the most significant
improvising musicians under the age of 40 by Down Beat Magazine, June 1998

• In 2004, Ken was named one of the "Musicians Of The Year" by All About Jazz, New York.

SONORE

Peter Brötzmann, Mats Gustafsson, and Ken Vandermark are three of the leading voices in contemporary improvised music. Together they have formed SONORE, a reed trio organized to investigate the melodic, rhythmic, and textural possibilities of freely improvised music. Working together in the PETER BRÖTZMANN CHICAGO TENTET since 1998, these musicians first performed in a trio formation during the June, 2002 North American tour with the TENTET for a radio broadcast on CKUT in Montreal. It was clear from that first concert that this line-up was musically unique. They worked together again that fall, performing and recording during a festival organized by Gustafsson in Ystad, Sweden. Both of these initial encounters provided a fascinating starting ground for the trio's instrumental combinations and communication, but it was during their first tour of Europe in October, 2003 that the group's identity and approach fully developed. Two weeks of concerts that saw the three playing every night in cities ranging from Vienna to Istanbul, Ljubljana to Cologne, travelling by plane, train, and van with their equipment (alto, tenor, baritone saxophones; Eb, A, Bb, and bass clarinets; taragato and flageolet) enabled them to explore an open-ended range of improvisation on a daily basis and accelerated SONORE's creative growth. Luckily, a number of these concerts were recorded, including the final performance of their tour which took place in Cologne. This document was released as "No One Ever Works Alone," on Okka Disk in September, 2004 as the group's first album. The trio organized a North American to coincide with the CD's release to bring their music to audiences in the U.S. and Canada for the first time.

For more than three decades German multi-instrumentalist Peter Brötzmann has been a central figure for the European improvised music scene. Today he leads two of the most significant ensembles playing this music, the DIE LIKE A DOG TRIO and the CHICAGO TENTET. Mats Gustafsson is one of the most innovative improvisers of his generation, working on a regular basis with musicians like Joe McPhee, Barry Guy, and Thurston Moore, as well as leading the free jazz ensemble, THE THING. Since the mid-Nineties, Chicago has been one of the major international centers for improvised music and Ken Vandermark has been at the cutting edge of its development both as a musician and as a presenter and organizer. SONORE's music integrates the varied musical backgrounds of these three musicians, blending common ground and building new directions in improvisation.

Unlike the traditional jazz saxophone quartet, this group doesn't attempt to replicate a classical string ensemble by placing the musicians in hierarchical roles (i.e. the lowest member of the band laying down a foundation through ostinatos, vamps, or other means of support for the higher pitched instruments to be featured over, either through the main melodic content or featured solos). In SONORE, solos, duos, and trios built from various reed combinations shift and develop through spontaneous musical requirements. The group explores sonic textures, melodies, integrated rhythmic statements, or whatever other musical techniques seem to inspire them and the music during their improvised performances. SONORE's music is intense, beautiful, introspective, cutting-edge, and could be played by no one else.

Vandermark 5

Ken Vandermark (reeds) formed the Vandermark 5 in the Spring of 1996 as an outlet for compositional and improvisational ideas he’d developed over years of work with such renowned bands as the NRG Ensemble, the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, the AALY Trio, the Vandermark Quartet, the Steel Wool Trio, Cinghiale, Steam, the Barrage Double trio, The Sound in Action Trio, and Tripleplay. Looking for a combo with the capability to sound like a large ensemble, he chose four exceptional musicians who have years of performance experience with different kinds of improvised music to join him on the project: Jeb Bishop (trombone/guitar), Kent Kessler (bass), Tim Mulvenna (drums), and Dave Rempis (alto/tenor saxophone) (Mars Williams was replaced by Dave Rempis in March of 1998). The range of instrumentation and stylistic potential contained in this unit has allowed Vandermark to write charts that run the gamut of musical possibilities, incorporating elements of jazz history, contemporary composition, funk, rock, and traditional music from around the world into the ensemble’s material. The focus remains, however, an improvisation, and he has allowed ample room for the members of the group to interpret and reinterpret his writing with their spontaneous ideas.

The Vandermark 5 has always concentrated on live performance as a means to hone its skills and has played regularly since its inception (of special importance is their ongoing Tuesday night series at the Empty Bottle in Chicago that began in November of 1996). 1998 was especially productive, with a two-week tour of Eastern America in the fall and two International Festivals within four months (Rive de Gier, France and Mainz, Germany). The band’s work has been documented on four CD’s so far, with a fifth to be released in June of 1999. It’s second studio CD, Target or Flag, was picked as the best record of 1998 by Cadence Magazine (Jan 1999) “Reader’s Poll”.

The Vandermark 5’s music has been called “the most consistently exciting stuff I’ve heard by any small U.S. band since the Art Ensemble of Chicago” (Cadence Magazine, June 1997).

DKV Trio

The DKV Trio has been called “the best working band in Chicago jazz” (Chicago Reader, Jan 31, 1997), and is one of the premier free-improv units in the United States. Unlike many groups that use this approach, DKV improvises using “song structures” (many of their pieces sound like they are based on written material), and it focuses on intensive explorations of different kinds of rhythm (moving from “free time” to serious grooves). Hamid Drake (drums), Kent Kessler (bass), and Ken Vandermark (reeds) also incorporate influences from other cultures (African, Greek, Middle Eastern) and non-jazz styles (funk, late 20th Century composition, delta blues) into their music. Formed in the summer of 1994, this trio has developed a unique and amazing rapport through regular performances, playing with unbelievable focus as they intuitively create strong musical forms through their special use of melody, rhythm and sound. The band will sometimes incorporate the compositions of Don Cherry into their spontaneous music, using his pieces as another one of their sonic resources. Since its inception, the DKV Trio has also performed as a quartet with Fred Anderson, Peter Brotzmann, Georg Graewe, Mats Gustafsson, Joe Morris, and Peter van Bergen.

The Members of the DKV Trio:

Hamid Drake is one of the most in-demand contemporary jazz drummers in the world today. He has had long standing associations with Peter Brotzmann, Fred Anderson, George Grawe, Bill Laswell, and Pharaoh Sanders (among others) and has worked extensively with Don Cherry from 1978 until Cherry’s passing in 1995. Aside from his work with improvised music, Hamid has performed and recorded with a number of reggae ensembles, such as the I-Tals, the Heptones, and Africassa. Mr. Drake has performed in clubs, concert halls, and festivals all over the globe and his work has been recorded on dozens of classic recordings.

Kent Kessler is probably the most important bassist living in Chicago today, performing with a huge array of visiting musicians (Peter Brotzmann, Georg Graewe, Mats Gustafsson, Joe Morris, and Joe McPhee, to name a few) as well as regularly working with some of the most recognized ensembles playing in the city (Vandermark Five, NRG Ensemble, DKV Trio, Jeb Bishop Trio). Kent can be heard on the Vandermark Five recordings on Atavistic: NRG Ensemble on ECM, Quinnah, Delmark, and Atavistic: FJF’s CD, Blowhard, the Georg Graewe Quartet CD, Melodie Und Rhythms (with Hamid Drake and Frank Gratkowski), and A Meeting in Chicago (with Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark) on Okka Disk. Mr. Kessler has performed at some of the most prestigious jazz festivals in the world, including the Tampere Jazz Happening, the Nickelsdorf Jazz Festival, the Ulricksburg Jazz Festival, and the Vancouver Jazz Festival.

Ken Vandermark has been a significant part of the Chicago improvised music scene since 1992 when the Vandermark Quartet was formed (the group, which also included Kent Kessler, was selected for their contributions to music as “Chicagoans of the Year in the Arts: 1994” by the Chicago Tribune Jan. 1, 1995)). Since then, Ken has led some of the best new jazz groups to come out of the city: the Vandermark Five, Steam, Cinghiale, Signal to Noise Unit, the Sound in Action Trio, and the Chicago Bridge Unit. With John Corbett he has helped organize the “Empty Bottle Jazz Series” which has put on weekly concerts and two international festivals since January of 1996. Like Mr. Kessler, Ken has been fortunate enough to work with some of the best improvisers in the world and has performed at a number of international jazz festivals.