About

Alto saxophonist/clarinetist Randy McKean is carrying on the tradition of those performer/composers who have revitalized creative music from the inside out, drawing upon its rich history of ideas to produce his own unique forms of expression.  Taking sax heroes Sonny Rollins, Lee Konitz, Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman as initial reference points, McKean’s music draws upon methods of distillation and synthesis pioneered by composers such as Anthony Braxton and Iannis Xenakis in order to fashion an individualized but systematically coherent musical world.  Not only music but a multitude of sources inform McKean’s work: the abstract expressionist films of Stan Brakhage and the paintings of Mark Rothko, the multi-tiered writings of Julio Cortazar, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Philip K. Dick, concepts from chaos theory and modern physics, all have influenced his use of form and representation.  Motivic and transformational devices such as “articulation zones,” “ghost tones” and “rhythm molds” are at work in McKean’s music, which includes compositions for symphony orchestra, woodwind quintet, string quartet, and saxophone quartet.

McKean leads or co-leads several bands, including the chamber jazz quartet Bristle, the African-trance ensemble Tumble, the saxophone quartet Goggle, and the sax/drums duo TMBR.  He is a long-time member of Beaucoup Chapeaux, David Dvorin’s Flounder, and Ludi Hinrichs’ Chickenbonz.  McKean’s releases include the CDs Wild Horsey Ride, Flounder’s I’m the Flounder (Cure-All), Goggle’s Eeyahdi (Cure-All), Tumble’s Waves (Cure-All) and Music for Trio (Bandcamp), Bristle’s Future(s) Now(s) (Queen Bee) and Bulletproof (Edgetone), So Dig This Big Crux (Rastascan), the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet’s Child King Dictator Fool (New World), and the electronic releases Pac and Seep’s Cap and Piece and Live at Earthtone (Bandcamp), and Gargantius Effect +1+2+3 (w/Han-earl Park, Gino Robair & Scott Looney).  He studied with trumpeter Paul Smoker and composers Anthony Braxton and David Rosenboom.  He has lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, and since 2002, he has lived in Grass Valley, California, located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.  His radio show The Outpost aired on Nevada City’s KVMR from 2007 to 2012.