Ken Vandermark’s Made to Break Quartet
Keeping up with Ken Vandermark’s new bands is a little like keeping up with the Chicago weather: Turn your head and you may miss a new development. The Made for Break Quartet is one of his most far-reaching projects. It teams him with electronics artist and reed player Christof Kurzmann, an Austrian living in Argentina. Vandermark met him on the concert circuit in Europe; Kurzmann asked him to join his band, El Infierno Musical, and Vandermark asked him to join Made to Break.
The quartet also includes bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Tim Daisy. “The material is modular and parts can be combined spontaneously by the various members of the band, so the structure is improvised as well as the solos,” said Vandermark. His musical influences, it should be emphasized, go well beyond jazz, taking in modern classical composers such as Morton Feldman, John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He also has immersed himself in Ethiopian music. His fascination with sounds, modern and traditional, never rests.
