Ken Vandermark – saxophones, clarinet
Katinka Kleijn – cello/electronics
Beth McDonald – tuba/electronics
Nick Macri – acoustic and electric bass
Lily Finnegan – drums
Edition 55 is the most recent of Ken Vandermark’s ensembles, an addition to an ongoing series of bands that have been internationally and critically acclaimed, which include The Vandermark 5, FME, The Resonance Ensemble, The Territory Band, Made To Break, and Marker.
The music of Edition 55 includes the range of Vandermark’s interests and influences, incorporating the experimental jazz of the AACM; the different schools of improvised music based in England, Netherlands, and Germany; post-punk, Tropicalia, dub, and funk. The band debuted at the Catalytic Sound Festival held in Chicago on December 2nd, 2022 and has a concert schedule planned for 2023 that includes a weekly residency at Elastic Arts in Chicago during February, a U.S. tour in April, and a tour in Europe during November. Also taking place in April is the group’s first recording, which will be released later in time for its initial trip overseas.
Ken Vandermark (USA 1964) is an improvising musician and composer who plays tenor and baritone saxophone, Bb and bass clarinet. He moved to Chicago from Boston in 1989, and has worked from the early 1990s onward, both as a performer and organizer in North America and Europe, recording in an array of contexts with many internationally renowned musicians (such as Fred Anderson, Ab Baars, Peter Brötzmann, Sylvie Courvoisier, Tim Daisy, Kris Davis, Dieb 13, Hamid Drake, Terrie Ex, Mats Gustafsson, Elisabeth Harnik, Steve Heather, Didi Kern, Kent Kessler, Christof Kurzmann, Paul Lytton, Joe McPhee, Andy Moor, Jason Moran, Ikue Mori, Joe Morris, Paal Nilssen-Love, Eddie Prevóst, Mette Rasmussen, Tom Rainey, Eric Revis, Jasper Stadhouders, Chad Taylor, John Tilbury, Mars Williams, and Nate Wooley).
His current group activity includes the bands Bent Atlas, Lean Left, The DKV Trio, DEK, his large ensemble Entr’acte, the ongoing Momentum projects; duos with Terrie Ex, Christof Kurzmann, Damon Locks, Paal Nilssen-Love, Mars Williams, and Nate Wooley; and work as a solo performer. Ken co-founded Catalytic Sound in 2012, an organization dedicated to the economic sustainability of creative improvising musicians, and since then has been its director. In 2014 he began Audiographic Records, an independent music label. Since June of 2015 Ken has been co-curator of Option, a music and interview series held at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. Half of each year is spent touring in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Japan; his concerts and numerous recordings have been critically acclaimed at home and abroad. Ken’s activity as a writer includes liner notes for a variety of recordings; and contributions to the eighth edition of John Zorn’s Arcana: musicians on music, the music journal Sound American, the Spanish language periodical, “El Estado Mental,” and “Catalytic Quarterly.” In 1999 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in music.
