"Joe McPhee, born November 3,1939 in Miami, Florida, USA, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He began playing the trumpet at age eight, taught by his father, himself a trumpet player. He continued on that instrument through his formative school years and later in a U.S. Army band stationed in Germany, at which time he was introduced to performing traditional jazz. Clifford Thornton's Freedom and Unity, released in 1969 on the Third World label, is the first recording on which he appears as a side man. In 1968, inspired by the music of Albert Ayler, he took up the saxophone and began an active involvement in both acoustic and electronic music.

His first recordings as leader appeared on the CJ Records label, founded in 1969 by painter Craig Johnson. These include Underground Railroad by the Joe McPhee Quartet (1969), Nation Time (1970), Trinity (1971) and Pieces of Light (1974). In 1975, Swiss entrepreneur Werner X. Uehlinger release Black Magic Man by McPhee, on what was to become Hat Hut Records.

In 1981, he met composer, accordionist, performer, and educator Pauline Oliveros, whose theories of "deep listening" strengthened his interests in extended instrumental and electronic techniques. he also discovered Edward de Bono's book Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity, which presents concepts for solving problems by "disrupting an apparent sequence and arriving at the solution from another angle." de Bono's theories inspired McPhee to apply this "sideways thinking" to his own work in creative improvisation, resulting in the concept of "Po Music." McPhee describes "Po Music" as a "process of provocation" (Po is a language indicator to show that provocation is being used) to "move from one fixed set of ideas in an attempt to discover new ones." He concludes, "It is a Positive, Possible, Poetic Hypothesis." The results of this application of Po principles to creative improvisation can be heard on several Hat Art recordings, including Topology, Linear B, and Oleo & a Future Retrospective.

In 1997, McPhee discovered two like-minded improvisers in bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen. The trio premiered at the Vision Jazz Festival in 1998 but the concert went unnoticed by the press. McPhee, Duval, and Rosen therefore decided that an apt title for the group would be Trio X. In 2004 he created Survival Unit III with Fred Lonberg-Holm and Michael Zerang to expand his musical horizons and with a career spanning nearly 50 years and over 100 recordings, he continues to tour internationally, forge new connections while reaching for music's outer limits."

""It's so important to me, to be able to hear interesting and creative music," says James Keepnews. "It's in my DNA."

Indeed, it is, although the guitarist, performance artist, writer, and curator of Beacon jazz and experimental music events didn't always know it. His father's cousin was Orrin Keepnews, the legendary producer and jazz journalist who ran the Riverside Records label and worked with Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Wes Montgomery, and other giants-but as a young kid in the sedate Westchester County town of Pelham, James was aware of neither jazz nor his iconic relative's role in it. "My immediate family wasn't really into music, and my dad really wasn't a fan of Orrin," says the promoter, whose father was a straitlaced insurance superintendent. "He saw him as just this irresponsible hepcat who hung out with the jazz musicians in Greenwich Village. It wasn't until I'd become a DJ on my college radio station and started seeing Orrin's name on all of these important records that I made the connection. He was indefatigable."

Indefatigable is also an apt descriptor for James Keepnews, who discovered jazz on his own in his teens and began taking guitar lessons during his senior year in high school. "I bought John Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard Again! album," he recalls. "I thought, 'I gotta find out more about this stuff.'" He majored in English and participated in the electronic music program at Hamilton College, where in 1986 he organized his first concert, an appearance by saxophonist David Murray.

Keepnews, who is also a technical writer and arts journalist, studied under Robert Fripp in the legendary art rocker's Guitar Craft program in New York, where he immersed himself in the city's experimental jazz and rock scenes. Having earned an MFA in electronic arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he currently commutes by train several days a week to Manhattan for work as a Web developer. His multimedia background occasionally blurs over into his creative side: In 2014, he launched "I Gotta Breathe: A Post-Singularity Blues," a video/music art project and mobile app, and in 2015 he staged "Feed," a performance-art installation blending video, spoken word, electronics, and live music.

Keepnews lived in Peekskill from 1999 until 2010, when he relocated to a loft in Cold Spring. Although he was able to present some jazz events at its historic Chapel Restoration, he ultimately found the latter town's antiques-dominated atmosphere lacked the raw edge he craved. He began casting his eyes and ears slightly upriver, to Beacon. "I would come up just to look at all the amazing old buildings," he says. In 2013, a year after he'd moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Beacon, the owners of local music venue/restaurant Quinn's invited him to curate a Monday night jazz series. "I just started making calls, and right away we had the first few months booked," says Keepnews. Since the series' inception, the club has hosted top names like Marc Ribot, Joe McPhee, Mary Halvorson, Karl Berger, and Andrea Parkins. "Most artists do two sets, and usually there's no cover," explains the organizer. "We just ask for a donation.""