John Tchicai (1936-2012) was a Danish-Congolese alto saxophonist and one of the most distinctive voices in free jazz. A key figure in both the American and European avant-garde, he played on landmark recordings including John Coltrane's Ascension and Albert Ayler's New York Eye and Ear Control, before returning to Europe and founding Cadentia Nova Danica.
* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert * So… Steinmetz. Hugh Steinmetz. A Danish trumpet player my mentor Peter Brötzmann always talked highly about. 'Aaaaah jaaaaa - those crazy Danes!' Steinmetz was one of very few Scandinavian musicians who actually travelled south and collaborated with European musicians in the late 60s. He is a legend. And a key to understand the early developments of free jazz. The possibilities given to S…
Two sunken treasures from the same Copenhagen underground, gathered here as a pair. On one LP, Predetermination: The Contemporary Jazz Quartet caught in 1964 alongside Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock - the rhythm section of Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity - on music that stayed hidden for sixty years. Free jazz before the norm was set, exploding out of Denmark years ahead of the rest of Scandinavia.
On the other, Beautiful United Harmony Happening / The Education of an Amphibian: John Tchicai at hi…
* 150 copies Small repress* “Beautiful United Harmony Happening” / “The Education of an Amphibian” - the second release by Alga Marghen’s brand new free jazz imprint, Formalibera - is also dedicated to the output of John Tchicai following his return to Copenhagen during the mid 1960s. Comprising two pieces, remarkably, this single LP effectively bookends a rich period of activity for the saxophonist, capturing one of his earliest group formations as a leader from 1966, as well as one of his last…
1992 release (light wear) ** July 1964: the soundtrack to Michael Snow's film, and one of the great collective improvisations ever recorded - a record whose influence runs so deep that entire schools of music stand on it without always knowing. Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, John Tchicai, Roswell Rudd, Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray, with no leader, no themes, no solo order, no safety net of any kind - just six master musicians building form out of pure attention. The blueprint for everything from the…
1974 re-issue on Impluse! of the Edition I of the 1966 album featuring Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, John Tchicai, Marion Brown, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner.
This 2LP bundle includes the two latest Formalibera albums: John Tchicai "Wigmore Hall 1968", and John Tchicai, Peter Kowald "John Tchicai Quintet, John Tchicai Peter Kowald Duo".John Tchicai "Wigmore Hall 1968" (LP)* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai (1936-2012) was one of the most visionary free jazz saxophonists of the 20th century - a rare artist whose voice stood apart even among giants. Born in Copenhagen…
*Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai was extraordinarily prolific during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and this second archival release from Formalibera captures two essential, previously undocumented chapters of his story. Side one takes us to Danish Radio House, Copenhagen, October 1969, where Tchicai leads a remarkable hybrid quintet fresh from a European tour: Danish collaborators Hugh Steinmetz and Pierre …
*Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai (1936-2012) was one of the most visionary free jazz saxophonists of the 20th century - a rare artist whose voice stood apart even among giants. Born in Copenhagen to a Danish mother and a Congolese father, his path to New York came through a chance encounter at a socialist youth festival in Helsinki, where Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp heard him play and urged him to make the mo…
Originally released in 1966. Featured artists: Albert Ayler (tenor sax), Ed Blackwell(trumpet), Don Cherry (trumpet, cornet), Sunny Murray (drums), Gary Peacock (bass), Roswell Rudd (trombone), John Tchicai (saxophone, alto sax). Michael Snow is a Canadian national treasure, a true Renaissance man. He assembled a stellar group to improvise a sound track for his art film, titled Walking Woman, featuring a silhouette that is rumored to have been inspired by Carla Bley. Digitally remastered. Manufa…
The first 1979 LP on FMP with gatefold sleeve original innersleeve by the Orchestra featuring John Tchicai and a host of German musicians, never re-issued on either CD or LP.
2000 release (no OBI) ** "It may be unfair to compare this recording to the seminal album recorded on ESP almost 35 years earlier, but such comparisons are hard to resist. In truth, the group -- now with Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) assuming an expanded role and bassist Reggie Workman substituting for the late Lewis Worell -- sounds as fresh and, yes, revolutionary as it did back in the heyday of 1960s radicalism. To be sure, each member has changed, but the sounds here are surprisingly r…
2002 release ** "With a curriculum vitae as one of the original New Thingers stretching back to 1960s membership in the New York Art Quartet (NYAQ) and an appearance on John Coltrane’s ASCENSION, reedman John Tchicai has never lacked for playing partners. Adapting orchestral sequencing plus variations on different ethnic musics to a formula that already reflected his Danish-Congolese background and American experience; Tchicai was a unique presence on the scene. Moving back and forth from Europe…
1991 release ** Saxophone sextex composed of Ad Peijnenburg, Dies LeDuc, Frans Vermeerssen, John Tchicai, Klaas Hekman, Mariette Rouppe Van Der Voort play music by Peijnenburg, LeDuc, Vermeerssen, Tchicai, Hekman, Rouppe Van Der Voort and Henry Cowell.
* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. * John Tchicai (1936 – 2012) was one of the most important free improvising saxophonists of the 20th Century: an artist of rare vision and aptitude whose lines soared and stood out even in the most hallowed company, and whose body of work as a leader / composer is among the most singular and distinct within the entire canon of that music. But Tchicai’s importance doesn’t end there. Born in…
** 2026 restock, long out of print - few copies available ** Here’s an astonishing fact: This album was recorded during John Tchicai’s first and only weeklong residency at a New York jazz club. Tchicai — co-founder of the New York Art Quartet, one of the most innovative bands of the 1960s; member of Albert Ayer's New York Eye and Ear Control; participant in John Coltrane’s Ascension, perhaps the most influential of Coltrane’s late works; practitioner of world music-jazz fusions in bands such as…
*2024 stock* Altoist John Tchicai, who has made his name on numerous free jazz sessions, including Archie Shepp's New York Contemporary Five and John Coltrane's Ascension, in a duo with Polish stunning bass player Witold Lek. Spiritual session!
2026 Stock, last copies. 5LP deluxe box and a 156-page clothbound book packaged in a custom white-birch wood box, limited to 665 hand-numbered copies The book features music manuscripts and notebook pages from the musicians' archives, an extensive itinerary, the complete history of the NYAQ, artists' bios, and musical analysis. 2013 release. Five LPs of entirely uncirculated music by the New York Art Quartet, featuring Roswell Rudd, John Tchicai, and Milford Graves; the bass chair is alternativ…
Temporary Super Offer! "If we just could have hung on for another year,” Rudd said of both NYAQ and the Jazz Composers Guild, “things could have turned out much differently. Things were about to flip, in a good way. A lot of government programs were starting up that we could have gotten
grants from. There was a change in perception about the music that was happening. People were starting to consider it as art. The music was moving out of the bars and coffee houses and into museums and concert …