Following on from such celebrated bands as The Vandermark 5, FME or The Resonance Ensemble, Ken Vandermark takes a new direction in this compositional continuum with the – open – writing for this combo entitled Edition Redux. A quartet made up of Erez Dessel on keyboards, Lily Finnegan on drums and Beth McDonald on tuba and electronics, as well as Vandermark himself on saxophone and clarinet, it bridges the gap between the leader’s well-established generation and a new artistic movement in Chicago. Born in March of last year, the band quickly and progressively became more unified over a series of concerts that culminated in the recording of ‘Better A Rook Than A Pawn’ in April of the same year. Bringing together his diverse influences, ranging from the ever-important legacy of the AACM in his hometown, to the various “schools” of European improvisation, dub and funk, Vandermark gives his collaborators space to inhabit his compositions and take them to new places, as if reviving his premises at every moment at the will of his performers. It’s living music, which in 17 pieces pays sincere homage to names as disparate as King Tubby, Robert Bresson or Susan Sontag, and is capable of shuffling and re-shuffling jazzy renditions full of melody, improvised riffs, oblique funk, almost dub movements or prayers of collective ecstasy that always hit the mark. BS

Anthony Pateras is a composer, pianist & electroacoustic musician active since the late 90s. His practice spans concert works, piano performance, acousmatic diffusion, film soundtrack, psychoacoustic experiments, percussion ensemble, as well as playing in bands Sulla Lingua & PIVIXKI. Diverse in scope, he has made records with avant-metal icons (Mike Patton, Stephen O’Malley), worked with major orchestras (Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony), performed with free jazz legends (Paul Lovens, Han Bennink), soundtracked distinguished writers (Sylvère Lotringer, Christos Tsiolkas), sculpted musique concrète (Jérôme Noetinger, Valerio Tricoli), sonofied visual artworks (Slave Pianos, Yves Netzhammer) & composed for string virtuosi (Richard Tognetti, Erkki Veltheim).

Cultivating singular languages in the Pateras/Baxter/Brown & North of North trios, he remains committed to improvisation as a method of assimilating instrumental practice with compositional thought.

His work is broadly published, including albums on John Zorn’s Tzadik & Peter Rehberg’s Editions Mego. Among countless international engagements, he’s been commissioned by INA-GRM twice, increasingly integrating acousmatic techniques into his overall compositional strategy. This can be heard on his 2023 solo albums Two Solos (Futura Resistenza) & A Dread Of Voids (Another Timbre). His appearance at ZDB is a part of a Europe-wide tour celebrating 25 years of international activity.