Susan Alcorn, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark - Invitation To A Dream
The Free Jazz Collective 100
By Eyal Hareuveni
Clouded reflections
Broken dreams
Nightmare creatures
Flying
(First verse of Joe McPhee’s poem “Less Than Zero”)
Some matches are made in heaven and can be brought to a studio in Austin, Texas. Baltimore-based pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, Poughkeepsie-based sax and pocket trumpet player Joe McPhee, and Chicagoan reeds player Ken Vandermark player is, no doubt, one of these rare matches.
Alcorn and McPhee performed for the first time at the 2016 edition of the Cropped Out Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. A year later, both were invited by Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (who has collaborated many times before with McPhee, with The thing and in duo performances and recordings) to his Austin’s Sonic Transmission festival, but this time with Vandermark. McPhee and Vandermark have been collaborating together for more than twenty years now, since they recorded their first album together, A Meeting in Chicago (Okka Disk, 1998, with Kent Kessler) in February 1996, and most recently with the release of the box-set of the DKV trio with McPhee, The Fire Each Time (Not Two, 2019). The recording of Invitation To A Dream, which took place in September 2017, was the first time that Alcorn, McPhee and Vandermark played together as trio.
McPhee’s decision to bring to the recording session the soprano sax, instead of the often-used tenor sax, in addition to his pocket trumpet, set the chamber, poetic atmosphere of Invitation To A Dream. Vandermark left out his baritone sax and focused on the tenor sax and clarinet. Alcorn, McPhee and Vandermark created instantly a strong and coherent sound, dynamic, and identity for this trio. You can feel this kind of disarming magic already on opening, title-piece, the first piece that the trio played, with no warm up improvisations, no false starts, just the most profound, spiritual music.
You sense immediately that the trio hardly had to rely on rhythmic patterns at all and opted for reserved, abstract dynamics and not for dramatic, energetic ones (except on the short “Rise and Rise”). These kind of European, abstract, free-associative improvisations are based on deep listening and openly emotional and imaginative sculpting and shaping of sounds. Often, the conversational-contemplative interplay extends and expands on fleeting themes and ideas but refuses again and again to attach itself to any of them. It may sound like a recipe for a chaotic, off-balanced structural turmoil, but Alcorn, McPhee and Vandermark are experienced enough to allow this unpredictable tension and architecture feed and invigorate their music, letting these dreamy-cryptic events just happen and suggest their own inner logic and reasoning. The longer pieces as “Bing Says Ming” and “The Eyes of Memory” captures best the trio essence (and even their titles make perfect sense while listening to them).
How could this happen
What does it mean
Empty echoes
Fading
(Second verse of McPhee’s poem that accompanies this album)
One of the best albums of 2019, and happened to be the 100th release of the independent Astral Spirits label. You should get your own copy of the limited-edition vinyl with artwork by Bill Nace.
Invitation To A Dream by Alcorn / McPhee / Vandermark
The Free Jazz Collective 80
By Keith Prosk
Invitation To A Dream is the first recorded meeting of Susan Alcorn (pedal steel guitar), Joe McPhee (soprano saxophone and pocket trumpet), and Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone and clarinet) as a trio. Alcorn and McPhee recorded together on the masterstroke Concentration. And McPhee and Vandermark have recorded together frequently since the late ‘90s, perhaps most famously as part of Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, and just recently with this year’s The Fire Each Time. But this is the first time Alcorn and Vandermark have recorded together. The results are almost as stirring as the three names on the marquee would have you believe.
This studio session, from September 2017, occurred the same week as the trio’s first live performance. The macrostructure of these seven tracks, which span 49 minutes, appears to reflect the scouting phase of their interplay. Four longer tracks explore the possible combinations between McPhee and Vandermark: (1) tenor/trumpet; (2) clarinet/soprano; (4) tenor/soprano; (5) clarinet/trumpet. Three shorter tracks explore the possible combinations of duos: (3) Alcorn/Vandermark; (6) Alcorn/McPhee; (7) McPhee/Vandermark. And these shorter tracks rotate through McPhee and Vandermark’s instruments as well: (3) pedal steel/tenor; (6) pedal steel/soprano; (7) clarinet/trumpet. Alcorn almost acts like an anchor in most tracks, with the most play time, as if McPhee and Vandermark give more ear than mouth to better incorporate the most unfamiliar member of the trio. All of this serves to create a feeling of deliberate development in the trio’s dialect.
But the familiar styles of these musicians is here. Vandermark’s tenor staccato stops, slaps, and clicks interspersed with resonant, sonorous swells; his nimble, pastoral clarinet. McPhee’s alternately gnarled, skronky or soulful and lyrical soprano; the Cherry flurries and breathy blusters of his pocket trumpet sowed with voicings like Michelangelo’s slaves writhing in pain as they’re entombed by the gorgon. Alcorn’s tones stretched like taffy and peppered with twinkling melodies, reverbed riffs, apocalyptic arpeggios, something that sounds like a tape machine. The pacing is often relaxed, with Vandermark and McPhee giving Alcorn and each other a lot of space, resulting in what can feel less like communication with each other than contribution to the atmosphere. The experience is dreamlike or collaged. Languorous until awakened, or realizing the dream is nightmarish.
It’s a strong trio performance with strong individual performances. I imagine I’ll be drawn to return to it for quite some time. But there is a feeling that each musician has ascended higher before. There’s aspects of these musician’s characteristic energy, soul, and cerebralness that feel incomplete here. I hope they continue to perform and record together, and I look forward to a less deliberate exploration of their dynamics and a more natural channeling of their growing relationship.
Invitation To A Dream is available digitally, on CD, and on LP.
Invitation To A Dream by Alcorn / McPhee / Vandermark Fri Aug 23 04:00:00 GMT 2019