Multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee and trumpet virtuoso, and past ISSUE Artist-In-Residence, Peter Evans both have extensive collaborative histories and employ an expressive range on their instruments. They began playing duo concerts in 2013, convening once or twice a year since then. Focusing mainly on the combination of McPhee's pocket trumpet and Evans' piccolo trumpet, the pair explores a universe of sound with tiny instruments; noise, melody and silence weave together in an intense yet unhurried conversation. An established master and a much more recent arrival to the scene collaborate to explore the unknown and the unexpected in a rare improvisational encounter Saturday, August 13th at 8pm at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Place theater.
Peter Evans has been a member of the New York musical community since 2003, when he moved to the city after graduating Oberlin Conservatory with B.A. in classical trumpet. Peter works in many areas of creative music, including solo performance, chamber ensembles, freely improvised settings, electro-acoustic music, and notated composition. As a performer, Evans has been working to broaden the expressive range of his instrument and enjoys playing with steady configurations of players and composers. Current ensembles include the Peter Evans Quintet, the Zebulon trio, the collaborative trio Pulverize the Sound with Tim Dahl and Mike Pride, and Rocket Science, with Sam Pluta, Craig Taborn and Evan Parker. Evans has been performing and recording solo trumpet music since 2003 and is widely recognized as a leading voice in that field. As a composer Evans has been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival, and the Jerome Foundation's Emerging Artist Program, and the Doris Duke Foundation for the Newport Jazz Festival. He has presented and/or performed his works at major festivals worldwide and tours his own groups extensively. He maintains an interest in collaborative performing and has worked with some of the leading figures in new music: Tyshawn Sorey, Jim Black, John Zorn, Dave Taylor, Kassa Overall, Jim Black, Weasel Walter, Nate Wooley, Mary Halvorson, Joe McPhee. Evans performs with both the International Contemporary Ensemble and the Wet Ink Ensemble. He has been releasing his recordings on his own label, More is More, since 2011.
Joe McPhee, born November 3,1939 in Miami, Florida, USA, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He began playing the trumpet at age eight, taught by his father, himself a trumpet player. He continued on that instrument through his formative school years and later in a U.S. Army band stationed in Germany, at which time he was introduced to performing traditional jazz. Clifford Thornton’s Freedom and Unity, released in 1969 on the Third World label, is the first recording on which he appears as a side man. In 1968, inspired by the music of Albert Ayler, he took up the saxophone and began an active involvement in both acoustic and electronic music.
