A Kansas City jazz musician complained about what he perceived as a lack of performance opportunities during an otherwise satisfactory set in a prominent club earlier this year. In creating an entirely new scene for clangorous improvised music, Seth Andrew Davis and Evan Verploegh have proven that there’s no excuse for such woebegone resignation.
While their sound isn’t yet welcome at most conventional Kansas City venues, Davis, Verploegh and their colleagues in the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society (EMAS) possess an admirable enthusiasm for playing in punk clubs, record stores, coffee shops, arts centers and private residences in North America and Europe.
The do-it-yourself attitude may be born out of necessity, but it’s precisely the sort of nonpartisan engagement that’s more conducive to a flourishing future for improvised music than institutional hermeticism. Many of the collective’s performances- Live in London and Badger State Games among them- are promptly made available at Bandcamp.
The albums are among the more than two dozen live and studio recordings released by members of EMAS in 2022. With an impressive list of gigs already on next year’s calendar, the collective’s catalog should continue to rapidly expand.
A few of the recordings feature the notable touring artists they bring to Kansas City. Visiting collaborators in 2022 included Phillip Greenlief and Josh Sinton. These events vastly improved the lives of Kansas City’s free jazz enthusiasts. Davis and Verploegh, consequently, are Plastic Sax’s People of the Year.
The previous recipients of the designation are Rod Fleeman (2021), Charlie Parker (2020), Logan Richardson (2019), Peter Schlamb (2018), John Scott (2017), Eddie Moore (2016), Larry Kopitnik (2015), Deborah Brown (2014), Stan Kessler (2013), Doug and Lori Chandler (2012), Jeff Harshbarger (2011), Mark Lowrey (2010) and Hermon Mehari (2009). Bobby Watson was named the Plastic Sax Person of the Decade in 2009 and again in 2019.
