Ecotone
Opening with an Apocalypse a dis-covering where everything is assembled anew, where a snare drum gets dismembered. The drums instantly reanimate into a new body without organs, opening a breach, opening a space. The drummer lifts his sticks and hits; a vertical landscape emerges inbetween, unidentified as it first breaks into the ears, as some atmospheric depression: variations in grain, tracing, electronic mass disparate energy where some new chemistry arises, all between skin and memory. Each impact, each collapsing, each crumbling of the surface sets anew the fiction of the encounter, of the game; devoid of catharsis, but definitely vital.

Ken Vandermark & Damon Locks
Ken Vandermark (born 1964) is an improviser, composer, saxophonist/clarinetist, curator, and writer. In 1989 he moved to Chicago from Boston and has worked continuously from the early 1990s onward, both as a performer and organizer in North America and Europe, recording in a large array of contexts with many internationally renowned musicians. In 1999 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in music.

Damon Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician. He teaches art with Prisons and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Correctional Center. He is a recipient of the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Achievement Award in the Arts as well as a 3Arts Awardee. He is a Soros Justice Media Fellow. Damon leads the group Black Monument Ensemble and is a founding member of the group The Eternals. He is also the primary vocalist in Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra.

Damon Locks and Ken Vandermark collaborate as a duo for the second time in their careers. The material created will be based on their collective histories, which include decades of work with a variety of musical aesthetics and artists, which have taken place in hundreds of concerts and dozens of recordings, at home and abroad. This performance will be unique, and focused on the spontaneous interaction and creation. (Hyde Park Jazzfestival)