Joe McPhee

Since emerging within creative jazz and new music circles during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Joe McPhee has operated as a composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist defined by deep emotional resonance. His Black Magic Man album from 1970 served as Hat Hut Records’ inaugural release and extended the approaches of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. That trajectory continued across the following fifty years through alliances with numerous figures such as Jimmy Giuffre and Andre Jaume on River Station in 1993, Ken Vandermark on A Meeting in Chicago in 1997, and Peter Brötzmann on Guts in 2013, alongside regular activity in Trio X with bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen. Hundreds of recordings document his presence. The Sweet Spot arrived in 2021 alongside drummer Michael Bisio, percussionist Juma Sultan, and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm. Existential Moments appeared in 2022 with bassist John Edwards and drummer Klaus Kugel. Across his extended career McPhee has demonstrated that emotional substance and theoretical structure remain fully compatible within creative improvised music.

Born November 3, 1939, in Miami, Florida, McPhee took up the trumpet at age eight and maintained that focus through high school and into a U.S. Army band stationed in Germany, where he first encountered traditional jazz. Clifford Thornton’s Freedom and Unity, issued on the Third World label in 1967, marks his initial appearance on record. He adopted the saxophone in 1968 and thereafter explored an expansive instrumental palette that includes pocket trumpet, clarinet, valve trombone, and piano, while engaging both acoustic and electronic realms.

McPhee’s earliest recordings as a leader appeared on the CjR label, which he established with painter Craig Johnson in 1969. These encompass Underground Railroad by the Joe McPhee Quartet in 1969, Nation Time by Joe McPhee in 1970, and Trinity by Joe McPhee, Harold E. Smith, and Mike Kull in 1971. Swiss entrepreneur Werner X. Uehlinger discovered McPhee’s issued and unreleased material by 1974 and formed Hat Hut expressly to document his output. The label’s first LP was Black Magic Man, captured by McPhee in 1970. Subsequent Hat Hut releases included The Willisau Concert and the landmark solo recording Tenor in 1976. Many early McPhee sessions reflect the revolutionary climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s; Nation Time, for instance, honors poet Amiri Baraka, while Joe McPhee & Survival Unit II at WBAI’s Free Music Store, 1971 (issued as a Hat Art CD in 1996) delivers a post-Coltrane expression of anguish, freedom, and liberation. Later endeavors, however, have drawn less from political impulses and more from the intrinsic pleasures of sonic discovery.

At the start of the 1980s, already represented on several Hat Art releases, McPhee encountered composer, accordionist, performer, and educator Pauline Oliveros, whose “deep listening” principles reinforced his pursuit of extended instrumental and electronic methods. He also studied Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity, which outlines strategies for problem-solving through disruption of conventional sequences. De Bono’s framework prompted McPhee to adapt “sideways thinking” to creative improvisation, yielding the concept of “Po Music,” which he characterizes as a “process of provocation” employed to “move from one fixed set of ideas in an attempt to discover new ones.” He summarizes the approach: “It is a Positive, Possible, Poetic Hypothesis.” The application of these principles appears on Hat Art albums such as Topology, Linear B, and Oleo & a Future Retrospective.

Although Hat Hut had extensively documented his work, McPhee had yet to obtain a contract with a United States label and remained relatively unrecognized domestically as the decade advanced; he subsequently paused activity to attend to his aging parents. He resurfaced during the 1990s and gradually drew broader notice from the North American creative jazz community. Since then he has performed and recorded extensively as both leader and collaborator on labels including CIMP, Okka Disc, Music & Arts, and Victo. In 1996, twenty years after Tenor, Hatology issued As Serious as Your Life, a second solo recording featuring McPhee on multiple instruments. A productive association with Chicago reedman Ken Vandermark produced the improvisational exchanges documented on the 1998 Okka Disc release A Meeting in Chicago, which also included bassist Kent Kessler. That connection further placed McPhee on the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Octet/Tentet three-CD box set issued by Okka Disc the same year.

Toward the close of the 1990s McPhee formed a trio with bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen that debuted at a New York City jazz festival. Limited press coverage led the musicians to adopt the name Trio X. Numerous Trio X recordings subsequently appeared on Cadence Jazz and CIMP, among them Rapture (1998), The Watermelon Suite (1999), On Tour: Toronto/Rochester (2001), In Black and White (2002), Journey (2003), and The Sugar Hill Suite (2004); the ensemble also received positive critical response for live and festival performances. In October 2008 Trio X undertook a tenth-anniversary tour across the United States and issued a limited-edition seven-CD box set capturing seven concerts from the Midwest and New York state. Additional twenty-first-century releases include No Greater Love (2000), Voices: Ten Improvisations (2008), and Tomorrow Came Today (2009).

McPhee’s activities during the second decade of the century remained intensive, encompassing nearly continuous touring and an array of new and archival recording projects. Blue Chicago Blues, a duo with bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, appeared in 2010; Trio X simultaneously issued a four-disc box of live material from the 2000s and 2010s. Corbett vs. Dempsey released the retrospective Solo (1968-1973) that same year. 2011 yielded at least six releases, including Creole Gardens (A New Orleans Suite) with drummer Michael Zerang, Ibsen’s Ghosts with Haker Flaten, Jeb Bishop, and Zerang, and OTO with Decoy. In 2012 McPhee participated in an international tribute concert marking the fortieth anniversary of Albert Ayler’s passing and closed the event with a solo performance later issued by Rogue Art on 13 Miniatures for Albert Ayler; further collaborations with Haker Flaten and Decoy, as well as Ithaca with pianist Eli Keszler, also surfaced. Ten releases across varied contexts followed in 2013, among them Nation Time: The Complete Recordings (Corbett vs. Dempsey), the duo What / If / They Both Could Fly with Evan Parker, the solo Sonic Elements (both on Clean Feed), Last Notes with Thurston Moore and Bill Nace, Red Sky with drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, and featured appearances on Trespass Trio’s Human Encore and the Deep Listening Band’s Looking Back.

Trio X touring occupied substantial time in 2014 and generated additional concert recordings, yet McPhee also released Quod with Jean-Marc Foussat and Sylvain Guérineau and the Konstrukt collaboration Babylon. That partnership extended into 2015 with If You Have Time. Skullduggery, a collaboration with the Amsterdam-based trio Universal Indians, returned McPhee to Clean Feed in 2015; Not Two issued the quartet session This Is Our Language with Rodrigo Amado, Chris Corsano, and Kent Kessler. Archival collections that year comprised Solos: The Lost Tapes 1980/1981/1984 on Roaratorio and the extended EP Alone Together: The Solo Ensemble Recordings 1974 & 1979 from Corbett vs. Dempsey. PNL released Soul Stream, a quartet featuring drummer Lasse Marhaug and Japanese koto master Michiyo Yagi, and Candy, a seven-disc box set of Nilssen-Love’s duos with McPhee.

During the first eight months of 2016 McPhee toured the United States and Europe, including a performance with Universal Indians at AylerFest 2016. Releases included The Paris Concert in trio with guitarist Raymond Boni and synthesist Jean-Marc Foussat, the archival Zurich (1979), and a vinyl edition of Soul Stream. The live album My Undocumented Alien Clarinet, documenting a 2006 performance with electronics-based musician Bryan Eubanks, appeared in 2017. In 2018 he engaged in multiple collaborations: Brace for Impact with Mats Gustafsson, Keep Going with Hamid Drake, and A History of Nothing with saxophonist Amado. Ten albums featured McPhee in 2019, including pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn’s Invitation to a Dream with Ken Vandermark, At the Hill of James Magee with saxophonist John Butcher, Song for the Big Chief and Lift Every Voice and Sing with drummer/percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love. In 2020 the improv trio Decoy reunited with McPhee for AC / DC, their third recording together in a decade; he and Marhaug issued the duo Harmonia Macrocosmica; and he joined saxophonist Dave Rempis, cellist Tomeka Reid, bassist Brandon Lopez, and Nilssen-Love on the limited-edition LP Of Things Beyond Thule, Vol. 1. Corbett vs. Dempsey also released the double-length Black Is the Color, containing 1969 live recordings by the Contemporary Improvisational Ensemble and a quartet concert co-led by McPhee and vocalist Octavius Graham.

Early in 2021 Corbett vs. Dempsey issued the solo Route 84 Quarantine Blues, recorded at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mahakala Music released Blue Reality Quartet!, documenting a new ensemble with clarinetist Michael Marcus and drummers Jay Rosen and Warren Smith. Idyllic Noise presented Tell Me How Long Has Trane Been Gone (For James Baldwin & John Coltrane), a duo recording with bassist John Edwards. McPhee concluded the year with The Sweet Spot, an improvised studio quartet session featuring cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, drummer Michael Bisio, and percussionist Juma Sultan for Rogue Art. In March 2022 Poland’s Not Two label released Existential Moments, a live 2019 trio recording with Edwards and Klaus Kugel.