Joe McPhee’s Intimate Conversations featuring Mikolaj Trzaska

Joe McPhee’s Intimate Conversations featuring Mikolaj Trzaska
Thursday, October 30 @ 10:30 pm
Living Theatre: 21 Clinton Street, near Houston
General Admission: $15
Students and Seniors: $10

Joe McPhee (saxophone & trumpet)
Jay Rozen (drums)
Mikolaj Trzaska (saxophone & bass clarinet)

made possible with generous support from the Polish Cultural Institute

www.joemcphee.com

Since his emergence on the creative jazz and new music scene in the late 1960s, Joe McPhee has been a deeply emotional composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist, as well as a thoughtful conceptualist and theoretician. McPhee's first recordings as leader appeared on the CjR label. These include Underground Railroad in 1969, Nation Time in 1970, and Trinity in 1971. By 1974, Swiss entrepreneur Werner X. Uehlinger had become aware of McPhee's recordings and unreleased tapes and was so impressed that he decided to form the Hat Hut label as a vehicle to release McPhee's work. The label's first LP was Black Magic Man, which had been recorded by McPhee in 1970. The Willisau Concert and the landmark solo recording, Tenor, then followed it. In the 1980's, McPhee met composer, accordionist, performer, and educator Pauline Oliveros, whose theories of "deep listening" strengthened his interests in extended instrumental and electronic techniques. During the 1990's, McPhee finally began to attract wider attention from the American creative jazz community. He has since been performing and recording prodigiously, appearing on such labels as CIMP, Okkadisk, Music & Arts, and Victo. His 2007 release on Not Two Records, entitled Intimate Conversations, features Mikolaj Trzaska and Jay Rosen.

Saxophonist, bass clarinetist and composer Mikolaj Trzaska is one of the founders of the yass scene in Poland (yass is an improvised, avant-garde style of jazz music). Thanks to the cooperation of Peter Friis Nielsen, Peter Ole Jorgensen and Peter Uuskyla, he is also a frequent collaborator with Scandinavian musicians as well. Other noted collaborators also include Lester Bowie, Peter Brötzmann, Tomasz Stanko, John Tchicai, Peter Ole Jorgensen, Clementine Gasser, and Jan Luc Cappozzo. He has recorded over 30 albums and is considered one of the most distinguished jazz musicians in Poland.