Tag Archives: Jazz

JOE MCPHEE/KEN VANDERMARK/CHRIS CORSANO TRIO at Roots 101 African-American Museum, Friday September 4th

The Other Side of Life and Roots 101 African-American Museum are proud to present a very special performance by the:

JOE MCPHEE/KEN VANDERMARK/CHRIS CORSANO TRIO

Friday September 4th, 2026
at Roots 101 African-American Museum
121 N 1st Street
Louisville, KY 40202

Buy Tickets

ALL AGES WELCOME
$25 advance tickets, $30 day of show
Advance tickets now available online at TicketLeap;
Physical tickets now available for in-person purchase at:

ROOTS 101 AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM, 121 N 1st Street, Louisville KY 40202 (cash or card)
10% discount for this event for all ROOTS 101 AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM members! Applicable when purchased at the museum only.

Better Days Records, 921 Barret Ave, Louisville, KY 40204 (cash or card)
Surface Noise, 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204 (cash only)

7:00 PM doors
8:00 PM music

JOE MCPHEE (b. 1939, USA) is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser, known for his pioneering work in avant-garde jazz and experimental music. Primarily recognized for his virtuosic saxophone playing, MCPHEE also performs on trumpet, pocket trumpet, and a variety of other instruments. His career spans over five decades, during which he has collaborated with leading figures in the free jazz and experimental music scenes, including William Hooker, KEN VANDERMARK, Pauline Oliveros, and Roscoe Mitchell, among many others. MCPHEE’s work blends elements of jazz, free improvisation, and contemporary classical music, marked by emotional depth and innovative approaches to sound. Throughout his career, he has maintained a commitment to pushing the boundaries of music, both in solo performances and collaborative projects.

KEN VANDERMARK (b. 1964, USA) is an avant-garde composer, improviser, saxophonist/clarinetist, curator, and writer whose unique history has given him the opportunity to perform extensively and record with key figures of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), New York’s Downtown scene, Free Music Productions (Germany), the English improvisation scene, post-punk, Ethiopian music, and Japanese free jazz. He’s been the director of the Catalytic Sound musician cooperative since 2012, has run Audiographic Records since 2014, in 1999 was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in music, and in 2024 he curated the Music Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria. VANDERMARK moved to Chicago from Boston in 1989 and has worked continuously from the early 1990s onward, both as a performer and organizer in North America, Europe, Latin America, Japan, and Ethiopia, recording in a large array of contexts, with many internationally renowned musicians.
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CHRIS CORSANO (b. 1975, USA) is a drummer who’s been active at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and noise music since the late 1990’s. He’s worked with JOE MCPHEE, Bill Orcutt, Björk, and many others — appearing on over 200 albums and touring constantly in an ultra-wide array of collaborations. CORSANO has built an inventive and highly personal musical language through extended percussion techniques and creative augmentations to his kit, with circular-breathed reeds, bowed strings, and resonant materials expanding the drums’ melodic and textural possibilities in addition to their rhythmic ones.
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The trio of JOE MCPHEE (sax/voice), KEN VANDERMARK (reeds), and CHRIS CORSANO (drums/percussion) will be performing together for the first time in a limited series of concerts in Louisville, Cincinnati, and Lexington, concluding their tour at the Sound & Gravity Festival in Chicago on September 6th. Though this is their initial music as a group, there have been a number of previous collaborations from these musicians, some of them longstanding: JOE and KEN first played together at the recording session for A Meeting in Chicago in 1996. Since then, they have worked together many times, most notably in the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet. Their latest album performances together are as a duo and documented on Musings of a Bahamian Son: Poems and Other Words by Joe McPhee, released by Corbett vs. Dempsey in 2024.

JOE and CHRIS have worked together extensively for more than 15 years, with many recordings and concerts as a duo and in groups with important figures in the music like Eddie Prévost, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, and Steve Swell. KEN and CHRIS have also played together in many configurations, beginning with a trio concert at the Festival Germinal in Mexico City with pianist Sylvie Courvoisier during November of 2014 and, since then, they have continued to develop a special musical rapport.

Though the music from this new trio by MCPHEE, VANDERMARK, and CORSANO will be completely improvised and spontaneous, it will be informed by their collective histories, a background which includes decades of work with a variety of musical aesthetics and artists that has taken place during hundreds of concerts and dozens of recordings, at home and abroad.

Founded by Lamont Collins in 2020, the ROOTS 101 AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM is a place where visitors can see themselves in history, explore the African-American story in its entirety, and gain a greater understanding of the achievements, cultural contributions, and experiences of our community.

Special thanks to Lamont Collins and the ROOTS 101 AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM staff.

Live music events in Louisville, KY. Show announcements, music and news, and other ephemera at: https://bsky.app/profile/theothersideoflife.bsky.social.

Victor Vieira-Branco’s BARK CULTURE; and the LIVE DEBUTS of ZEUS, AGAIN and THE GLEAMING CORRIDOR at B-Side, Saturday August 15th

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The Other Side of Life is proud to present:

Victor Vieira-Branco’s BARK CULTURE

plus the LIVE DEBUTS of

ZEUS, AGAIN

and

THE GLEAMING CORRIDOR

Saturday August 15th, 2026
at B-Side
1076 E. Washington Street, 2nd Floor
Louisville, KY 40206

$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show
Advance tickets available online at TicketLeap;
Physical tickets on sale for in-person purchase at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204

21+
7:00 PM doors
8:00 PM music

“The music throughout [Victor Vieira-Branco’s BARK CULTURE‘s] The Giant is Awkward is enthralling, mysterious, intelligent, disconcerting, and beautiful.” – Aquarium Drunkard

Victor Vieira-Branco’s BARK CULTURE is a trio led by vibraphonist Victor Vieira-Branco featuring drummer Joey Sullivan and bassist John Moran. With over four years of immersive collaboration, the trio is known for their strong ensemble identity, high-energy live performances and extensive touring. Their record “Warm Wisdom” was cited as the Debut Release of 2024 by New York Times Jazz Critic Hank Shteamer and listed as Best Jazz on Bandcamp September 2024. More recently, the trio was enlisted by Rob Mazurek to perform on the soundtrack of Kelly Reichardt’s new film The Mastermind which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. For the group’s second album The Giant Is Awkward, the trio is joined by pianist and composer Sam Yulsman for five pieces that mirror the prismatic nature of a sound Vieira-Branco has been tirelessly crafting with the group since 2021. With the addition of Yulsman, the group reveals, as Peter Margasak states, “a heightened sensitivity and grace, with increased harmonic splendor thanks to the added chordal voice. The record also marks the vibraphonist’s clear growth as a composer.”

ZEUS, AGAIN is the musical project of Ken Brown, Bob Dixon, and Mathias Kolehmainen. They perform on electric bass, electric guitar, and drums. Collectively they have many decades of experience in performing and recording groups that have been based in Chicago, Louisville, and the Bay Area. Their music builds on their experiences in post rock, post punk, jazz, noise, ambient, traditional settings; references the work of their peers in the contemporary neo-minimalist community; and explores novel interpretations of their personal canons.

THE GLEAMING CORRIDOR is the instrumental electronic solo recording project of Ben Sears, a longtime Louisville area drummer and cartoonist. After six years and three self-recorded/released full length cassettes, he is making his live debut in late summer 2026.

Special thanks to Ben Sears.

Live music events in Louisville, KY. Show announcements, music and news, and other ephemera at: https://bsky.app/profile/theothersideoflife.bsky.social.

R.I.P. Byard Lancaster and Tom Bruno

CHIKAMORACHI with special guests STEVE GOOD and TIM BARNES at the NACHBAR, Sunday January 29th

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Black Velvet Fuckere, Cropped Out and The Other Side of Life are proud to present:

CHIKAMORACHI (Chris Corsano and Darin Gray)

with special guests:

STEVE GOOD and TIM BARNES

Sunday, January 29th
at NACHBAR
969 Charles Street (at the corner of Charles and Krieger)
First set at 9 PM, second set at 10:30 PM — 21 and over
FREE!

Since 2005 DARIN GRAY (upright bass) and CHRIS CORSANO (drums) have performed side by side as CHIKAMORACHI. Working either in a trio with saxophonist Akira Sakata or a quartet that adds Jim O’Rourke on guitar, they’ve released six albums to date, including 2011’s And That’s the Story of Jazz double CD and Live at Hungry Brain LP. The high-speed empathy that Gray and Corsano have developed over the years will be brought to the fore in 2012, when the duo strike out on their own for a tour of the Midwest. Neither member is a stranger to the possibilities afforded when the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic duties are left to an upright bass and drum duo. Gray‘s group On Fillmore with Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche has been going strong for the past ten years. For his part, Corsano has gigged and recorded as a duo with double bassists John Edwards and Matt Heyner.

Darin Gray is best known as Jim O’Rourke’s go-to bassist for nearly 20 years, as half of the duo On Fillmore, and as the bassist for Grand Ulena, Dazzling Killmen, and Brise-Glace. As an improviser he has performed and recorded with among others: Loren Connors, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Josh Abrams, Jason Roebke, Axel Dorner, Kevin Drumm, Alan Licht, Thollem Mcdonas, and Jim O’Rourke. As a session bassist he has played on recordings by Will Oldham, Cheer-Accident, Rope, Bobby Conn, Daneilson Family, Early Day Miners, Bunnygrunt, Jim O’Rourke, etc… He has toured extensively in the United States, Japan, Brazil, Canada, and Europe.

Chris Corsano began a long-standing, high-energy partnership with saxophonist Paul Flaherty in 1998. A move from western Massachusetts, USA to the UK in 2005 led Chris to develop a solo music of his own, incorporating sax reeds, violin strings, pot lids, adhesive tape and other household devices into his drum kit. 2007 and ’08 were spent as the drummer on Björk’s Volta world tour. Returning back to the U.S. in 2009, Corsano shifted focus back to his own projects, most notably a duo with Michael Flower, Rangda (with Sir Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny) and solo work. In addition to the those mentioned above, he’s also worked with, among others: Evan Parker, Paul Dunmall, Nels Cline, Thurston Moore, Jessica Rylan, Jandek, Sunburned Hand Of Man, and Joe McPhee.

Watch a video of Chikamorachi with Akira Sakata here:

During the second set of the performance, CHIKAMORACHI will be joined by the addition of STEVE GOOD (saxophones, clarinet) and TIM BARNES (percussion). A vital natural resource in the Louisville music scene for multiple decades, Steve Good‘s musical vocabulary orbits lightly through a vast expansive local history: doing time with The Web, E-Or, Juanita, Ut Gret, Sapat, Crappy Nightmareville, Parlour, The Liberation Prophecy and many, many others. He has documented via audio recording many thousands of local shows. Slint played in his basement, he recorded the first Will Oldham single, he ran sound and documented the weekly experimental music series at Artswatch through the 1990s, and yes, he shared a stage in Switzerland with Donovan back in the 1970s. Louisville resident and drummer extraordinaire, the list of Tim Barnes‘s collaborators is too long to list here, but it includes Jim O’Rourke, Silver Jews, Neil Michael Hagerty and the Howling Hex, The Tower Recordings, and countless others. Most recently, Tim Barnes played drums with the newly resurrected lineup of The For Carnation, as well as with MV+EE at Cropped Out in November, 2011.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/154038334705749.

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