Various Artists
The Bottle Tapes, Selections from the Empty Bottle Jazz and Improvised Music Series 1996-2005
Fall release
Launch event / mini festival at the Empty Bottle, November 1st
Tickets HERE
Chicago Reader article HERE
For the first time, a release of select music performed at Chicago's Empty Bottle in the heyday of the creative music boom of the 1990s. From 1996-2005, writer and producer John Corbett and musician and composer Ken Vandermark teamed up to curate a series of concerts, the Empty Bottle Jazz & Improvised Music Series. Together with annual international festivals, the series comprised more than 500 performances over its nine-year span, which was lauded in the international press and helped focus attention on Chicago as a hotspot for improvised music. The majority of the music was dutifully documented by Malachi Ritscher, from whose archives The Bottle Tapes: Selections from the Empty Bottle Jazz & Improvised Music Series, 1996-2005 is drawn. Over the course of six CDs, arranged in chronological sequence, the box set revels in the span of the music presented at the Bottle, from the hardest blown free jazz to microscopic free improvisation and other kinds of experimental music. The lineup incorporates nearly 100 international musicians, including Peter Brötzmann (who formed his Chicago Tentet at the Empty Bottle in 1997), Milford Graves (performing solo), a Bobby Bradford quartet with Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake and Wadada Leo Smith, Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble, the Dutch bands Available Jelly and Clusone 3, Von Freeman in his only performance with Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, Jim O'Rourke duetting with Cor Fuhler, Mats Gustafsson and Thurston Moore in their first face-off, Chicago Underground Quartet, Steve Lacy/Roswell Rudd Quartet, and much more. The package comes with a lavishly illustrated 64-page book, loaded with never-published photos and vintage ephemera, including Dan Grzeca's beautiful posters, as well as an in-depth essay by Corbett, with play-by-play notes on the music.
Joshua Abrams / Jason Ajemian / Fred Anderson / Michael Attias / Jean-Jacques Avenel / Jim Baker / Harrison Bankhead / Robert Barry / Conrad Bauer / Johannes Bauer / Han Bennink / Peter van Bergen / John Betsch / Jeb Bishop / Eric Boeren / Raymond Boni / David Boykin / Bobby Bradford / Peter Brötzmann / John Butcher / Wilbur Campbell / Anthony Coleman / Ron Dewar / Danielle D’Agaro / Tim Daisy / Tobias Delius / Axel Dörner / Hamid Drake / Kevin Drumm / Savoir Faire / Ingebrigt Håker Flaten / Floros Floridis / Von Freeman / Erik Friedlander / Wolfgang Fuchs / Cor Fuhler / Ernst Glerum / Milford Graves / Mats Gustafsson / Klaas Hekmann / Tony Herrera / François Houle / André Jaume / Kent Kessler / Hans Koch / Toshinori Kondo / Peter Kowald / Noel Kupersmith / Steve Lacy / Thomas Lehn / Fred Lonberg-Holm / Paul Lytton / Miya Masaoka / Rob Mazurek / Nate McBride / Joe McPhee / Nicole Mitchell / Misha Mengelberg / Michael Moore / Thurston Moore / Torsten Müller / Kjell Nordeson / Jim O’Rourke / Evan Parker / Jeff Parker / William Parker / Willie Pickens / Avreeyel Ra / Ernst Reijseger / Dave Rempis / Frank Rosaly / Ned Rothenberg / Roswell Rudd / Paul Rutherford / Alexander Schlippenbach / Irene Schweizer / Wadada Leo Smith / Günter Sommer / Chad Taylor / Ken Vandermark / Michael Vatcher / Phil Wachsmann / Nasheet Waits / Wolter Wierbos / Davey Williams / Mars Williams / Michael Zerang
In the spirit of the original series, the launch event/mini festival will include old guard and new blood. Joe McPhee, who is now internationally famed (also for his soundtrack music included in the TV show Severance), first played in Chicago at the Bottle in 1996. Nearly three decades later, he returns for a triumphant set of duets with drummer PNL, a frequent partner of McPhee's. Bottle Series co-curator Ken Vandermark will perform in a duet with Black Monument Ensemble's founder/leader Damon Locks, and Chicago improvisor Dorothy Carlos will perform a solo for cello and electronics. The afternoon festivities will include a new poster by Dan Grzeca, first dibs on the initial hundred copies of the box set (manufacturing gods willing), and a surprise set in the tradition of all Empty Bottle Jazz & Improvised Music festivals.