downtownmusic.net
Blues fans are familiar with Muddy Water’s 1969 album “Fathers and Sons,” which pairs Muddy and his longtime piano man Otis Span with a younger generation of bluesmen like Mike Bloomfield, who spent his teenage years studying at Muddy’s feet on the South Side of Chicago. In fact, every artist is inspired by older generations of artists. These elder statesmen take on parental-like proportions in our artistic lives and imaginations.
The ongoing collaboration between multi-instrumentalists Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark is one such paternal musical relationship. Not only is McPhee, whose first recordings as leader date back to 1969, an important figure in the tradition of so-called free jazz, he figures centrally in the development of Vandermark’s awareness of and approach to improvisation. “He was the trigger for my appreciation of free jazz,” Vandermark told me back in June, citing McPhee's 1976 solo album "Tenor" as an enduring favorite, “When I heard his music I said, ‘That’s what I want to do with my life.’ Joe is so melodically strong and clear in construction, yet able to incorporate abstract elements. He showed me how to hear.” Vandermark has clearly learned McPhee’s lessons well: the Chicago-based composer and multi-instrumentalist has received the coveted MacArthur Fellowship and spends over half of each year touring Europe, North America, Brazil, Russia and Japan.
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Both McPhee and Vandermark will be teaching Milwaukee how to hear on Sunday, November 22, 7 p.m., at the Sugar Maple for “Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark: Poetry and Clarinets with Absinthe On The Side.” The event will be the first time that McPhee’s poetry will figure into his collaboration with Vandermark.
