Friday November 5 * 7pm * outside at Rhizome * TICKETS
Transparent Productions presents:
Joe McPhee on reeds; Joe Giardullo on piano, reeds and flute; and Michael Bisio on bass. Celebrating the music and spirits of Hamiet Bluiett and Dominic Duval. $20. MASKS REQUIRED.
Joe McPhee, born November 3,1939 in Miami, Florida, USA, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He began playing the trumpet at age eight, taught by his father, himself a trumpet player. He continued on that instrument through his formative school years and later in a U.S. Army band stationed in Germany, at which time he was introduced to performing traditional jazz. Clifford Thornton’s Freedom and Unity, released in 1969 on the Third World label, is the first recording on which he appears as a side man. In 1968, inspired by the music of Albert Ayler, he took up the saxophone and began an active involvement in both acoustic and electronic music.
His first recordings as leader appeared on the CJ Records label, founded in 1969 by painter Craig Johnson. These include Underground Railroad by the Joe McPhee Quartet (1969), Nation Time (1970), Trinity (1971) and Pieces of Light (1974). In 1975, Swiss entrepreneur Werner X. Uehlinger release Black Magic Man by McPhee, on what was to become Hat Hut Records. In 1981, he met composer, accordionist, performer, and educator Pauline Oliveros, whose theories of “deep listening” strengthened his interests in extended instrumental and electronic techniques. he also discovered Edward de Bono’s book Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity, which presents concepts for solving problems by “disrupting an apparent sequence and arriving at the solution from another angle.” de Bono’s theories inspired McPhee to apply this “sideways thinking” to his own work in creative improvisation, resulting in the concept of “Po Music.” McPhee describes “Po Music” as a “process of provocation” (Po is a language indicator to show that provocation is being used) to “move from one fixed set of ideas in an attempt to discover new ones.” He concludes, “It is a Positive, Possible, Poetic Hypothesis.” The results of this application of Po principles to creative improvisation can be heard on several Hat Art recordings, including Topology, Linear B, and Oleo & a Future Retrospective.
In 1997, McPhee discovered two like-minded improvisers in bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen. The trio premiered at the Vision Jazz Festival in 1998 but the concert went unnoticed by the press. McPhee, Duval, and Rosen therefore decided that an apt title for the group would be Trio X. In 2004 he created Survival Unit III with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Michael Zerang to expand his musical horizons and with a career spanning nearly 50 years and over 100 recordings, he continues to tour internationally, forge new connections while reaching for music’s outer limits.
Joe Giardullo is Brooklyn-born, and raised on the South Shore of Long Island, New York. He grew up on R&B music, playing tenor sax in club and regional bands and moved north to the Woodstock area in the 1960's. It was a rich environment for hearing and playing original music, and it was here that he got his first soprano saxophone. The local scene included great players like saxophonist Gene Dinwiddie (Paul Butterfield Blues Band), multi-instrumentalist Howard Johnson (Archie Shepp Band), and a whole segment of the original ESP Records lineup! Joe played all kinds of music -improvised, jazz, rock, blues, club date, weddings-you name it. But things grew stale and in 1977, he packed up and moved to Amsterdam, Holland. Amsterdam was alive with great music--Burton Greene, Han Bennink, Charles Tyler, Philip Wilson and a thriving local scene as well. It was a good season to be living and working there. After a short period based in Amsterdam, Joe returned to live 100 miles north of New York where, after a few years, he slipped into a 10 year hiatus from public performance, although he continued to play in private.Then he met up with saxophonist/trumpeter Joe McPhee one night at a club. That meeting in 1991 marked the beginning of a continuing collaboration. And it has also reintroduced audiences in the US, Canada and Europe to Giardullo's music.
Since then, Joe has been active in the US and Europe with so many of the most regarded musicians: Joe McPhee, Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening Band, Bill Dixon, Warren Smith, Borah Bergman, Marilyn Crispell, Susan Alcorn, Thomas Buckner, Steve Lacy, Milford Graves, Weave Soundpainting Orchestra, Carlos Zingaro, Carlos Santos, Vitor Joaquim, Roy Campbell, Jackson Krall, Ken Filiano, Full Metal Revolutionary Jazz Ensemble, Lisbon Improvisational Players, and Bobby Bradford.
Michael Bisio, bassist/composer, has eighty five recordings in his discography, twenty four of these are split evenly between leader/co-leader, ten of them document his extraordinary association with modern piano icon Matthew Shipp. Michael has been called a poet, a wonder and one of the most
virtuosic and imaginative performers on the double bass.
Nate Chinen in the New York Times writes : "The physicality of Mr. Bisio's bass playing puts him in touch with numerous predecessors in the avant-garde, but his expressive touch is distinctive;..."
As a composer Michael has been awarded nine grants and an Artist Trust Fellowship. Collaborators include Matthew Shipp, Joe McPhee, Charles Gayle, Connie Crothers, Whit Dickey, Ivo Perelman, Barbara Donald, Newman Taylor Baker, Rob Brown, Sonny Simmons and Sabir Mateen.