Reeds:
Ken Vandermark -baritone saxophone & Bb clarinet
Dave Rempis - alto & tenor saxophone
Mikokaj Trzaska- alto saxophone & bass clarinet
Waclaw Zimpel -Bb & alto clarinet

Brass:
Magnus Broo - trumpet
Per-Ake Holmlander - tuba
Steve Swell - trombone

Bass:
Mark Tokar

Drums:
Tim Daisy
Michael Zerang

Other:
Christof Kurzmann: lloopp

Recorded by Rafał Drewniany at the Manggha Culture Center, Krakow on November 24, 2013
Mixed by Bob Weston and Ken Vandermark at Chicago Mastering Service. Mastered by Bob Weston at CMS.

The work of composing

rehearsing, and performing Double Arc took place in November, 2013. Now, more than a year and a half later, I am writing the liner notes to complete the last aspect of the project. The extended distance in time between the recording and mixing/mastering of the musi gave me a different perspective toward the material than I have for most albums. Working on now — 19 months after the performance was documented at the Manggha Culture Center in Krakow — what strikes me most is that this piece seems to be my Pierrot le Fou. No insult intende toward Jean-Luc Godard by comparing his work to mine but, as that film can be seen as a such motion of ideas and filmic strategies that he had developed up until that point, Double Arc can be heard as taking similar place within my own creative development.

It is the longest piece I’ve written since Collide, for the Territory Band and Fred Anderson in the summer of 2006. Like that composition, Double Arc features a guest joining an established ensemble- in this case the incomparable Christof Kurzmann performing on lloopp. Over the course of an hour it is possible to hear my interests in the variety of genres that had influenced me most until that stage: soundtracks from American action films of the 1970s (The French Connection [composed by Don Ellis], The Taking of Pelham 123 [composed by David Shire]); the early period of the New York School composers (John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff); the work of the “Midwest School” of improvising composers based in Chicago and St. Louis in the late 1960 through mid 1970s (particularly that of Julius Hemphill); the free jazz of the 1960s (both in America and Europe); 70s funk from the United States, Nigeria, and Ghana; “free improvisation” languages developed in Europe during the 1970s and 80s; the arrangements that Gil Evans created for Mile Davis in the 1950s. Though unintentional.......
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