Okkyung Lee, Joe McPhee, Chris Corsano, Bill Orcutt: Two Nights of Collaborative Sets

Joe McPhee

Joe McPhee (born November 3, 1939) is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist: a player of saxophone and pocket trumpet.  McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is most notable for his extensive jazz work and collaborations, done from the late 1960s to the present day. His first recording came in 1967, when he appeared on the Clifford Thornton album titled Freedom and Unity. He taught himself saxophone at age 32 after experiencing the music of John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and Ornette Coleman.

In 1975, the Swiss record label, Hat Hut Records, was formed to  showcase the music of McPhee. In the 1980s, he met Pauline Oliveros, began studying her musical theories and concepts of “Deep Listening”.  To this day, McPhee continues to push himself into new and uncharted collaborations – and he regularly works with a swath of creative music musicians, including Ken Vandermark, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson/The Thing, Eli Keszler, Susan Alcorn, Graham Lambkin, and many others.

Recently McPhee’s seminal and highly influential albums from the 70’s (such as Pieces of Light and Nation Time) have received re-issue treatments. In 2005, McPhee was awarded the Resounding Vision Award by Nameless Sound, and in July 2018 Chicago art gallery, Corbett vs. Dempsey, awarded McPhee with the Instant Award in Improvised Music, a first of its kind celebrating improvised music.

Okkyung Lee

Okkyung Lee is a cellist, composer, and improviser who moves freely between of artistic disciples and contingencies. Since moving to New York in 2000 she has worked in disparate contexts as a solo artist and collaborator with creators in a wide range of disciplines. A native of South Korea, Lee has taken a broad array of inspirations—including noise, improvisation, jazz, western classical, and the traditional and popular music of her homeland—and used them to forge a highly distinctive approach. Her curiosity and a determined sense of exploration guide the work she has made in disparate contexts.

She has appeared on more than 30 albums, including a diverse variety of recordings as a leader, whether the acclaimed solo improvisation effort Ghil, produced by Norwegian sound artist Lasse Marhaug for Ideologic Organ/Editions Mego, or composition-driven collections like Noisy Love Songs (for George Dyer), released by Tzadik in 2011. In 2018 she releases Cheol-Kkot-Sae (Steel Flower Bird), an ambitious piece drawing upon free improvisation and traditional Korean music.

Lee is perhaps known best for her visceral improvisational work, and routinely explores the spaces she performs in, responding to atmosphere, audience, or objects surrounding her, to produce an immersive experience. Over the last two decades Lee has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Mark Fell, Jenny Hval, Vijay Iyer, Ikue Mori, Bill Orcutt, Jim O’Rourke, Marina Rosenfeld, and John Zorn among others. In recent years she’s performed in equally varied contexts, whether embarking on an extended tour with the legendary experimental rock band Swans or part of the Whitney Museum’s Calder: Hypermobility exhibition—featured interactions with repurposed objects activated by artist Christian Marclay.

She received a dual bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Writing & Production and Film Scoring from Berklee College of Music in 1998 and a master’s degree in Contemporary Improvisation from New England Conservatory of Music in 2000.

Chris Corsano

Chris Corsano is a drummer who has been working at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and noise musics since the late 1990s. His work incorporates spontaneously composed amalgams of extended techniques for drum set and non-percussion instruments of his own making that are incorporated into his kit. Examples of these invented instruments include violin strings stretched across drum heads, and modified reed instruments that transform the drums into resonators which can, in turn, be used to incite strips of metal to react to the drum membranes’ Chladni-plate-like modes of vibration.

Corsano’s solo recordings include The Young Cricketer (Hot Cars Warp, 2006); Blood Pressure (Hot Cars Warp, 2006); Another Dull Dawn (Ultra Eczema, 2009); and Cut (Hot Cars Warp, 2012). In addition to his solo work, Corsano has a long-standing, high-energy musical partnership with saxophonist Paul Flaherty. Their style, which they occasionally refer to with (semi-)tongue-in-cheek humor as “The Hated Music,” infuses modern free-jazz’s ecstatic collectivism with the urgency and intensity of hardcore punk.

Corsano’s dedication to collective improvisation has resulted in his appearance on over 140 records and over 1000 live performances. He has collaborated with, among others, Björk (Volta world tour, 2007-8), Bill Nace,  Rangda (with Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny), Joe McPhee,  Mette Rasmussen,  John Edwards, Jim O’Rourke, Sylvie Courvoisie, Nate Wooley, and Darin Gray (as Chikamorachi).
Corsano was an Artist-in-Residence at Incubate Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands (2011) and at Café OTO in London (2014), as well as an Improviser-in-Residence at the Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, NC (2012).

Bill Orcutt

As one of experimental music’s most singular guitarists, Bill Orcutt weaves looping melodic lines and angular attack into a dense, fissured landscape of American primitivism, outsider jazz, and a stripped-down re-envisioning of the possibilities of the guitar. Whether he’s playing his decrepit Kay acoustic or gutted electric Telecaster (both stripped of two of their strings, as has been Orcutt’s custom since 1985), Orcutt’s jagged sound is utterly unique and instantly recognizable, compared with equal frequency to avant-garde composers and rural bluesmen. The New York Times has called him a “powerful musician… a go-for-broke guitar improviser,” and described his sound as “articulated sprays of arpeggiated chords and dissonance.”

Orcutt originally appeared on the underground scene as a co-founder of Harry Pussy, whose explosive music combined ‘70s no wave, the ferocity of ‘80s hardcore, and the acrobatic intricacy of Cecil Taylor. The band built the prototype for noise-rock in the ‘90s and beyond.  They toured extensively, performing or traveling with bands like Sonic Youth, Sebadoh, The Dead C, and Guided by Voices, before screeching to a halt in 1997.

After a hiatus of over a decade, Orcutt reemerged as a solo artist, at first performing solely on acoustic guitar. Drawing influences from Cecil Taylor (again), Dylan’s Basement Tapes, and the recursive voice of Gertrude Stein, Orcutt began exploring the invisible threads linking free improvisation to the forgotten crevices of the American songbook, from blues to minstrelsy.

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Workshops (all are free and open to the public)

Okkyung Lee – Workshop & Artist Talk. Thursday, September 20th, 3pm – SLU’s Xavier Hall Studio Theatre. email newmusiccircle.info@gmail.com for additional info

Joe McPhee – Solo Performance (In response to CAM’s Basquiat exhibit). 1pm, Saturday, Sept 22nd at CAM. Info here: camstl.org/event/performance-joe-mcphee/