Liner Notes |
The music should speak for itself. If so, what’s
the reason for these liner notes?
When the first Territory Band album, Transatlantic Bridge,
was released in February of 2001 there seemed to be some confusion over the piece "R-M",
which included two long silences. Several copies of the album were actually returned
to Okka Disk because their owners thought there had been a mistake in the mastering
(though why they thought an error like that would have escaped the label is hard
to understand). More disturbing, however, was the number of music critics who
asked me if the use of those silences was intentional. The fact that they felt the need
to even ask this question suggests that they think I don’t fully consider my materials
or the way that they function. This is insulting, to say the least. The lengths of
those silences were primarily determined, and definitely pushed, by Paul Lytton.
Compositionally, it was my attempt to get the listener to "hear" their environment
for some moments, a kind of homage to Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades and the way they get
me to see something everyday as something new.
I believe, if the intentions and presentations are true, the music will speak for
itself. However, the problem is that today the journalists and critics who cover
improvised music are too often ignorant about their subject. In the long run the music
will have the final say, but for the time being improvised music is frequently described
and analyzed by writers who, frankly, don’t understand what they’re talking about. For
many years I avoided using liner notes because I got tired of seeing them used as
primary material for a review — the critic’s job was to assess the music themselves,
not transcribe what someone else had written about it. I had hoped that by only using
basic details about dates, titles and personnel I would force them to form their own
conclusions. Unfortunately, when they did, there were too many cases where those
conclusions misrepresented the music through misinformation and/or ignorance,
whether their opinions were positive or negative. These notes are an attempt to
prevent this from happening for Atlas. My apologies to those writers who
do their job well. For those of you who don’t, you should start considering
how many musicians you’ve pissed off because of the lack of responsibility you
feel towards your subject — we’re getting fed up.
The
first version of the Territory Band was based on the idea of pairs:
two brass (Jeb Bishop and Axel Dörner), two reeds (Dave Rempis
and myself), two strings (Kent Kessler and Fred Lonberg-Holm), and two
rum sets (Paul Lytton and Tim Mulvenna). Jim Baker was included on
piano because of his brilliance and originality. The second version
of the group added to the original lineup through expanding the brass
and reed sections (Per-Åke Holmlander and Fredrik Ljungkvist
respectively) and adding electronics (Kevin Drumm). This version of
the band convened in Chicago during February of 2001, about a year
after the first project took place, to work on new material for
performance and studio documentation.
The
extended range of sounds that were now available (especially the
addition of Kevin Drumm’s use of electronics) and my growing interest
in, for lack of a better term, "unresolved abstraction" (the best
example being the form on "Neiger"), seemed to initially confuse some
members of the band, not least of which myself. The process with the
materials that seemed so clear on the first set of music (contained on
Transatlantic Bridge) was, at first, much more ambiguous on the
second project. I give my extreme thanks to the ensemble for their
ongoing patience with my conflicting directions as the pieces were
shaped. The four compositions on Atlas: "Add and Subtract",
"Neiger", "Catalog", and "Now", need to be understood as frameworks
for large group improvisation. The eleven other musicians are, I
believe, as good as players get in this department and the final form
the written material took was in very large part developed by their
spontaneous reinterpretations of what the scores indicated. I think
that it’s unnecessary to describe the musical events on these
recordings; it should be possible to hear them. Many musicians "solo"
on each piece, but "Neiger" was meant to feature the work of Kevin
Drumm, "Catalog" was written with Fred Lonberg-Holm in mind, and "Now"
was meant to feature Jim Baker and Paul Lytton.
In
closing I’d like to say a few words about the people who helped
inspire the compositions. "Add and Subtract" is dedicated to the
painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. His pieces are magnificent, and I have
a particular fondness for the "jazz paintings" which capture the
kinetic energy of be-bop and its lexicon. "Neiger" is for Michael
Snow — filmmaker, visual artist, and musician. Aside from the
artistry he has brought to the avant garde for decades, he has added
to it a much needed sense of humor and grace. As stated before,
"Catalog" was written for Fred Lonberg-Holm, in part because he kept
bugging me to do it, but mostly because of the opportunity it provided
to compose something that specifically featured one of my favorite
musicians. The last piece, "Now", is for Samuel Beckett. I hope that
someday I’ll be able to express my ideas with the level of clarity and
strength found in his writing. As with many of the pieces I’ve
written for various artists and friends over the years, these
compositions aren’t meant to replicate or reinterpret someone else’s
work or personality, they’re a way of saying thanks for making this
world a better place. Right now, in these bitter times, their gifts
are needed more than ever.
— Ken Vandermark, June 2002 |
Reviews |
(this is a review of a live concert on February 16, 2001 by Territory Band - 2)
In the 1920s, jazz “territory bands” toured pockets of the Southwest,
developing their styles in performance and in relative isolation. They
fostered a regional approach to articulation and rhythm that
ultimately had a profound effect on jazz at large, by influencing the
influential Count Basie.
Composer and saxophonist Ken Vandermark’s 12-piece
Territory Band 2 — the slightly smaller TB1 has a new CD
on OkkaDisk
— fosters a distinctly Chicago approach that’s anything
but provincial, and has wider implications. Thanks in no small part to
its leader, players here work with European colleagues far more often
than improvisers in other American cities. TB2 includes Swedish tubist
Per-Åke Holmlander and saxophonist Fredrik Ljungkvist, German
trumpeter Axel Dörner and English drummer Paul Lytton. And
Vandermark sifts through their improvisational dialects for ideas he
can use himself.
Throughout the band’s boisterous 90-minute set at the
Claudia Cassidy Theater Wednesday evening, one could hear
echoes of still other Europeans he’s worked
with. He’ll map out shifting combinations of players in
advance, while leaving the content of their improvisations
open, a la Dutch bandleader Misha Mengelberg. He’ll
offset free-jazz horn barrages with more subtle passages, a la
German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, in
which Vandermark is a key presence. With a hand gesture,
he’ll cut off an improvisation, or inject a short bit of
scored material into the action, a la the Dutch band LOOS.
The rest of Territory Band 2 is made up of worthy Chicagoans,
including raunchy cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and the
increasingly impressive trombonist Jeb Bishop. The differences
between American and European improvising styles were
symbolized by the two drummers: at times Tim Mulvenna’s
airy swing contrasted sharply with Lytton’s metallic
clanging and more open pulse. But the strongest contrast was
between two locals: pianist Jim Baker, injecting welcome
lyricism into the mix, and Kevin Drumm on agreeably disruptive
crackling electronics.
Vandermark fully exploits such disparate personalities; the
band thrives on variety. Every few seconds, it seemed, a new
combination of players came to the fore, then receded into the
background, as another took its place, or some disarmingly
pretty little melody rose above the fray. The risk with such
episodic music is, the episodes are almost inevitably of
uneven quality. Sometimes the short written horn fanfares made
more of an impression than the improvisations they
punctuated. Dörner, a very capable trumpet player, is rather
too fond of blowing air through his horn without sounding a
note. It’s become a schtick.
Overall, Vandermark’s diverse gambits feel not like
nervous hopping from one style to another, in the manner of
1980s postmodernism, but a gloriously expansive ensemble
vocabulary. His one misstep is to let most pieces run on too
long, covering too much territory, when one climax would be
enough. But he learns by doing. Expect TB3 to be better yet.
— Kevin Whitehead, Chicago Sun-Times
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