Monday 6 March 2017, 7.30pm
Rodrigo Amado / tenor saxophone
Joe McPhee / pocket trumpet, alto saxophone
Kent Kessler / double bass
Chris Corsano / drums
Portugese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado makes a welcome return to OTO alongside the all-star quartet with whom he recorded 2015's raptuously-received This Is Our Language.
“This Is Our Language is a natural extension of the similarly titled This Is Our Music by the Ornette Coleman Quartet (Atlantic, 1961). Amado’s group enjoys the same clairvoyant chemistry as Coleman’s did, and are no less equipped to deliver their message. Amado et al. summarize and expound upon the fifty-odd years of achievements in free jazz that have passed since Coleman’s opus.” – Peter Gough, Free Jazz Blog
“It’s astonishing what such an aggregation of individualists can achieve when they’re collectively steeped in a common language, when they can reformulate its syntax with such spontaneity and depth of feeling.” – Dalston Sound on ‘This Is Our Language’
Joe McPhee grew up in New York, is a multi-instrumentalist and plays since the late 60ties within the creative and free jazz music world. His play is energetic, demanding and breathtaking sensitive - still with over 80 years! He learnt to play trumpet as a kid and - inspired by John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and Ornette Colemann - he thought himself saxophone in his thirties. McPhee's first recording was with Clifford Thornton in 1967 on the album "Freedom and Unity". He became involved and known in Europe in the midd 70ties and since the 90ties he also plays with a younger generation from Chicago and New York. He played/plays regular for example with Ken Vandermark, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Dominic Duval, Jay Rosen, Jeb Bishop, The Thing, Clifton Hyde, Jérôme Bourdellon, Raymond Boni, Joe Giardullo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_McPhee
Chris Corsano (b. 1975, USA) is a New York-based drummer who has been active at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and experimental music since the late 1990's. He's been the rim-batterer of choice for some of the greatest contemporary purveyors of "jazz" (Joe McPhee, Paul Flaherty, Mette Rasmussen, Zoh Amba) and "rock" (Sir Richard Bishop, Bill Orcutt, Jim O'Rourke), as well as artists beyond categorization (Björk for her Volta album and world tour, Michael Flower, Okkyung Lee).
Corsano began a long-standing, high-energy musical partnership with saxophonist Paul Flaherty in 1998. Their style, which they occasionally refer to with (semi-)tongue-in-cheek humor as "The Hated Music", combines modern free-jazz's ecstatic collectivism with the urgency and intensity of hardcore punk. A move from western Massachusetts to the UK in 2005 led Corsano to develop his solo music -- a dynamic, spontaneously-composed orchestra-of-one utilizing extended techniques for drum set, non-percussive instruments of his own creation (e.g. bowed violin strings stretched across drum heads), circular breathing on modified reed instruments, and stockpiles of resonant metals. He spent 2007-08 as the drummer on Björk's Volta world tour, all the while weaving in shows and recordings on his days off with the likes of Evan Parker, Michael Flower, and Jandek. He moved back to the U.S. in 2009 and continued touring in an ultrawide array of ever-evolving collaborations. In 2017 he won the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. A renowned solo performer in his own right, Corsano has a new solo record, The Key (Became The Important Thing [and Then Just Faded Away] out on the Drag City label.
His dedication to collective improvisation has led to Corsano to join forces with many kindred spirits and his appearance on over 180 records and thousands of live performances. He's worked with, among others: Paul Dunmall (released by the label: ESP-Disk), Joe McPhee (Roaratorio), Okkyung Lee (Open Mouth), Bill Orcutt (Palilalia), Mette Rasmussen (Hot Cars Warp Records & Clean Feed), John Edwards (OTOroku & Dancing Wayang), Sylvie Courvoisier (Relative Pitch), Nate Wooley (No Business & Astral Spirits), Jim O'Rourke & Akira Sakata (Drag City & Polystar), Merzbow (Family Vineyard), Jessica Rylan (Load Records), Rodrigo Amado (Trost), Nels Cline (Strange Attractors), Heather Leigh (Volcanic Tongue), Ghédalia Tazartès (Ultra Eczema), Ken Vandermark (Audiographic), and Sunburned Hand Of Man (Manhand).
https://chriscorsano.bandcamp.com/music
“At the shifting boundary between free jazz and improvised music, Rodrigo Amado’s position is clear: he plays jazz. He is so clearly a jazz musician that he doesn’t require any pre-determined elements of rhythm, harmony, chorus lengths or melody to play jazz. There’s a rhythmic impetus, a bite in his sound, part grain, part beat, and it drives his lines forward, a sound and an impulse that are part him and part history, a fundamental impress on the world that tenor saxophonists like Coleman Hawkins, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Sonny Rollins, and Archie Shepp have been making for generations. On his CD Searching for Adam, Rodrigo Amado quotes another saxophonist, Sam Rivers: “Freedom does not mean unconditional renunciation of melody and rhythm, but the freedom of being able to choose what I want to play” It’s a fitting credo for Amado, whose music dances across the boundaries of free jazz and improvised music. There’s rarely a theme in earshot, but there’s an abundance of energized particles and a strongly focused voice. In the past decade, he has matched impulses with a series of international partners while building distinctive Lisbon bands like Motion Trio or the Wire Quartet. Amado is an emerging master of a great tradition, more apparent with each new recording or performance.” - Stuart Broomer
