Shortly after he won his MacArthur “genius” grant in 1999, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Ken Vandermark began to conceive an ingenious way of using the largesse.
He created his evocatively titled Territory Band, which brought together Chicago and European players to perform original scores that defied categorization. Merging improvisation with composition, experimental techniques with long-standing tradition and, eventually, acoustic instrumentation with electronic apparatus, the Territory Band quickly emerged as one of the most innovative and alluring large groups on the cultural map.
Each edition of the Territory Band–which convened for just a few weeks every year–conveyed a somewhat different artistic thrust. And the version that made a rare appearance over the weekend at the Chicago Cultural Center, aptly titled Territory Band-4, may be the most persuasive of the lot.
Certainly the bold and complex nature of Vandermark’s compositions never was more forcefully articulated than by these players.
Vandermark has learned to marshal the tremendous energy and drive of the “free jazz” vocabulary while giving it structure and clarity, at certain junctures. Thus many of the original pieces that Territory Band-4 played Sunday afternoon in the Cultural Center’s Claudia Cassidy Theater contrasted moments of tremendous power and noise with passages of remarkable lyric eloquence. Roaring ferociously at one moment but whispering the next, offering massive reed and brass choirs in some instances but more intimate instrumental groupings at another, Territory Band-4 took on a different tone and timbre every few measures.
Yet, in most instances, this music did not break down into crisply defined phrases or distinct rhythmic patterns. Instead, like an abstract expressionistic painting, the music focused on bursts of color and texture, its tenor and character changing unpredictably.
So although Vandermark ignited his “Killing Floor” with characteristic eruptions on tenor saxophone backed by great blasts of sound from the rest of the band, the high-decibel oratory soon gave way to muted, melancholy passages built on unmistakable swing rhythm. No sooner did a small subset of Territory Band-4 establish this contemplative mood, however, than the rest of the ensemble shattered it with a thrilling, no-holds-barred finale.
In “Reverse,” computer-generated sonic effects were inseparable from the instrumental sound, the other-worldly tweaks of a laptop rumbling right alongside Dave Rempis’ mighty baritone saxophone riffs, Fred Lonberg-Holm’s piercing declarations on cello and Jeb Bishop’s telegraphic asides on trombone.
Each piece ultimately struck a different balance between noise and pitch, harmony and dissonance, rhythm and chaos. But the tour de force was “Franja,” an episodic tone poem named for a World War II partisan, the piece opening and closing with a haunting soliloquy from Jim Baker’s piano. Between those bookends, “Franja” held a sweeping bass solo by Kent Kessler, plangent trumpet work from Axel Doerner and some of the most compelling, large-ensemble swing passages this side of Duke Ellington.
The past, present and future of jazz converge in Territory Band-4, one of the indispensable units of our time.
