Hamid Drake - drums
Kent Kessler - bass
Ken Vandermark - reeds

None of this material has ever been previously released.

"The whole approach of modern artists is in this will to trap, to possess something that constantly slips away."
Alberto Giacometti

The DKV Trio formed in the summer of 1994. Our early years of work took place in Chicago at The Bop Shop on West Division Avenue, the Lunar Cabaret on North Lincoln Avenue, and at the original Velvet Lounge, when it was still on South Indiana Avenue. The band's first album, a limited edition CD recorded by Malachi Ritscher at the Lunar Cabaret and released by Bruno Johnson on his label, Okka Disk, underscored a transformation that was taking place on the Chicago music scene - new groups, new places to play, a new audience, new labels, new media coverage. Over the next several years Hamid Drake, Kent Kessler, and I expanded our Chicago base by touring in the U.S. and performing in Europe. We recorded a number of albums for Okka Disk along the way, three including other artists ("Deep Telling" with Joe Morris, "Double or Nothing" with the AALY Trio, and "Fred Anderson/DKV Trio"), but most of the performances and recordings were made as a trio. We developed our own language during this period, from the mid to late 1990s, one based on an approach to pure improvisation that created spontaneous "song-forms," self generating structures that were instantly composed. People often asked who wrote the pieces they heard us play, and most often our answer was that the material was created on the spot.

There was a significant exception to the approach that the trio took toward using completely improvised material - we loved the compositions of Don Cherry. Hamid had worked directly with him for many years and I believe the rapport he developed with Cherry's music had a profound impact on the music of DKV. When the band performed a breakthrough concert in Europe, at the "Music Unlimited" festival in Wels, Austria on November 8th, 1998 our perfor.......
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