McPhee / Corsano duo back at OTO for one night only!

JOE MCPHEE

Born in Miami in 1939, Joe McPhee was playing the trumpet by the time he was eight years old. From the late 1960's onward, he worked a variety of instruments (all kinds of saxophones, clarinets, trombone, piano). Influenced by John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman (pivotal figure in his beginnings as a musician), Joe McPhee is one of the most relevant free and transgressive spirits in reshaping the forms and vocabularies of jazz, and of other creative areas that he helped become adjacent to it. Working early on with some of the most forward thinking musicians of his generation, people with like-minded aesthetical and spiritual concerns, towards the vibrant and the unknown, not only did he play with the cream of the crop of the most clairvoyant European and

American jazz, but he also collaborated with the vanguard of electronic music in the 1970's, as is the case with Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening Band, a pioneer of continuous music. McPhee's curriculum contains more than half a century's worth of albums, several under his own name released by the HatHut label, which was initially conceived with the exact purpose of releasing his music. He worked with an endless cast of seminal artists over the last four decades, and is today, as much as he was in the past, a major reference as to what new grounds jazz music is treading.

Joe McPhee website
Joe McPhee Discography

"Juggling success between tradition and future, [McPhee & Corsano's ] Under A Double Moon is one of the most enjoyable free jazz albums of the year." - Soundeyet

CHRIS CORSANO

Having collaborated with such distinguished musicians as Paul Flaherty, Thurston Moore or Björk, Chris Corsano has developed a percussive language of extraordinary amplitude and infinite resources. He is capable of generating narrative out of permanent ecstasy, leading the eternal cry of sax players and blowers of the 60's to its logical consequence - a supreme continuous howl, marveling us with the resonances and with all the plastic/acoustic possibilities of the skin on his kit. Capable of interacting in the most disparate creative and vocabular settings (he's got a wide interest in many musical forms), he never ceases to be profoundly affirmative and imposing of his language, and being an absolute and charismatic virtuoso, he simultaneously is one of the most noble and generous improvisers of the few last decades.

Chris Corsano website

"Suffice to say Under A Double Moon goes beyond the scorched-earth Fire Music you might expect. The two long tracks that comprise side one, “Dark Matter: Parts 1 And 2”, shows Corsano at his most flexible as he switches from gamelan-inflected tuned percussion to subtle brushwork to omnivorous hard bop, providing a multiplicity of textures for McPhee’s assorted reeds. McPhee is dominant in the mix, which can obscure the sheer multi-dimensionality of Corsano’s drumming, but both players leave ample room for the other to solo. In fact, both use silence like a weapon – loading the pauses with dramatic intent before unleashing another blizzard of ideas.

“For Giuseppe Logan” is an exuberant tribute to the underrated ESP-Disk alto player and is probably the most melodically engaging piece, while album closer “In Lieu Of Flowers” is a beautifully ponderous, starspangled soprano workout that shows yet another dimension to their repertoire. This is an intricately detailed set by two titanic players, spanning two generations. The fire ain’t out yet, baby." - Alex Neilson, The Wire

McPhee/Corsano photo by Adam Bubolz