Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

“Antonio knows how to exploit the dynamic qualities of the piano, and he honours the spaces between the notes. He’s achieved a truly timeless trio sound that really gives your imagination space to wander. His trio both play with empathy and unleash t…

**CD Digipak issued with 28 page book and a slip case** This album of waltzes by the Clarke-Boland band is a compilation of pieces from four different sessions, the first of which, in February 1966, produced the album Swing, Waltz, Swing. This LP was…

"Clap Hands, Here comes Charlie Drewo, the most famous of all the Viennese tenorists! – Well now, without exaggeration – Karl Drewo, 32 years of age – or Charlie as his American friends like to call him – is undoubtedly one of those rare specimen of …

Inspiration in jazz has many sources. Who would have thought that British prisons could have inspired a Belgian-born composer, arranger, co-leader of a truly international band? The fact is that when the Clarke-Boland band came to this country at the…

There is a school of thought which maintains that it is something of a tragedy that Benny has had to earn his living and play his trade as an American emigre in Europe, far from the centre of major jazz activities in his native United States. His con…

The opinion of jazz musicians concerning Charles Mingus’ compositions and his protean musical world is that for a long time they represented an area that should be avoided or, at most, dealt with care. Just a few years after his death, of which his t…

*2020 small repress*  Here is music for your strange mood. The piano starts the first track, slow tempo beat, a strict beat, a swinging beat. Lillemor—here minor harmonies give the tune a rural, romantic feeling of some place in Spain or France. The …

Three – instead of – four this figure can mean a whole different world, when it comes to beats. Whereas the even number lets you march straight, turns right-angled, divides itself symmetrically, the odd rhythm goes around in circles and whirls. One h…

One of consolations of the electronic age is that those great moments in music which once were ephemeral and irretrievable can be faithfully captured, preserved for all time and savoured over and over again. Thus, some of the great musical peaks in t…

It was a really great idea to search for pieces, with the taste of a collector, and to produce this compilation, with jazz pieces and pieces extracted from refined sound tracks which have a subtle and intelligent taste, among the production of some o…

On his second Blue Note album Smoke Stack, pianist and composer Andrew Hill used an unusual line-up of two bassists (Richard Davis and Eddie Khan) along with the masterful Roy Haynes on drums. Blue Note founder Alfred Lion considered Hill to have as …

Recorded in April 1964, In ‘N Out falls square in the middle of the formidable run of five classic Blue Note albums that launched tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson’s legendary career. The line-up featured the transcendent frontline of Henderson and tru…

After his six years with the seminal John Coltrane Quartet, the mighty drummer Elvin Jones signed with Blue Note Records in 1968 and made a series of 10 fantastic albums including 1972’s Mr. Jones, produced by Francis Wolff and George Butler, and fea…

Though he first recorded in the late-1940s, Dexter Gordon’s Blue Note debut Doin’ Allright—recorded and released in 1961—marked a rebirth for the great tenor saxophonist after a decade in which drug addiction and legal troubles limited his output. Bu…

Just 2 days after saxophonist Dexter Gordon recorded his classic album GO! in August 1962 he brought the same quartet with pianist Sonny Clark, bassist Butch Warren, and drummer Billy Higgins back into Rudy Van Gelder’s studio to record the equally s…

For his third Blue Note album Blue Mode (1969), organist Reuben Wilson kept it right in the pocket and laid down one of the funkiest soul jazz workouts of the late-60s. Produced by Francis Wolff, the date featured Wilson at the helm of an airtight qu…

Grant Green's debut album, Grant's First Stand, still ranks as one of his greatest pure soul-jazz outings, a set of killer grooves laid down by a hard-swinging organ trio. For having such a small lineup, just organist Baby Face Willette and drummer B…

After a prolific 5-year run from 1961-1965 when he made more than 20 great hard bop & soul jazz albums for Blue Note, guitarist Grant Green took a 4-year hiatus from recording. When he returned to Blue Note in 1969, Green’s style had moved into funki…

It was way back in 1979 when multi-instrumentalist Dawan Muhammad joined forces with a swathe of talented fellow jazz musicians to record and ultimately release Deep Stream, a private press exploration of spiritual jazz that has long been a must-have…

**250 copies** Here comes a special duo recording, featuring the crème de la crème of the younger generation of Finnish players – Max Zenger and Teemu Åkerblom. A unique live set that stands the test of time, hear Max and Teemu improvise their way ov…

In case you weren't there, Bocian present documentation of a pretty unhinged Cafe Oto session between gifted improvisers, Mats Gustafsson (reeds), John Russell (guitar) & Phil Minton (voice). Just imagine stumbling in on this one unprepared - a trio …

**First pressing of 175 copies with red cassette shells** The longer one works as an artist, the more secure one’s own identity becomes — whether visual, sonic, textual, or otherwise, the goal is to be clearly oneself. It may seem overly simple to cu…

**Seminal Spiritual Jazz from Detroit, 1977. Officially licensed and re-mastered re-issue**. Comes with fold-out insert of Ade Olatunji’s Poetry that features on the album and never before seen artwork designed by New Zealand based designer David Bro…

"Some albums show you right away what kind of spirit backs them. Ronald Snijders solo debut from 1977, Natural Sources, is one of these. It begins with a free improvised, sometimes scatting flute and while the flute goes more and more crazy some scat…

"Free improvisation is as much an act of discovery as of creation. On their breathtaking debut, Expanding Light, the brand-new Whit Dickey Trio shines their collective illumination into the heretofore unexplored darkness between them. The album teams…

**175 copies** "A joint release between Noel Meek's New Zealand label Called God In The Music and Astral Spirits, the trio of Meek himself on electronics, Arrington de Dionyso on saxophone and Rodrigo Rico on drums are caught live at Gallery 1412 in …

**175 copies** "Quietly lurking as it prepares to attack, this Kobra is the free improvising quaret of Aurora Nealand on accordion, alto saxophone, voice and objects, Steve Marquette on acoustic and electric guitars, Anton Hatwich on bass, and Paul T…

**500 copies** Performing live at Lily Pad in Cambridge, MA, the trio of free jazz piano legend Burton Greene with bassist Damon Smith and drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses, in six collective improvisations, with impressive playing from all three as they se…

*200 copies.* Quoniam facta sum vilis (For I have become vile in the eyes of the lord) is the newest solo album of the award winning composer and virtuoso bassist, Brandon Lopez. Created, in part, as an answer to the musical "reason" of the Bach cell…

**300 copies** "This recording, a document of a live concert, was originally supposed to have taken place on February 12, 2017. We’d been on the road for a week in Canada and had had cold but clear weather the whole time. That couldn’t last. Sure eno…

*300 copies.* Contrary to the fabled image, they didn’t really throw rotten tomatoes during Shakespeare’s time at The Globe Theatre. Vegetables, yes, but there are no tomatoes on record in Britain for another seven-score years after Shakespeare. No m…

The debut recording of New York double bassist Sean Ali's improvising string trio with violist Joanna Mattrey and cellist Leila Bordreuil, having worked together since 2015, each brings impressive technique and a somewhat twisted approach to their st…

This previously unissued recording of cornetist Bobby Bradford and woodwinds player John Carter at Caltech’s Baxter Lecture Hall, with two bassists - Stanley Carter and Roberto Miranda - and drummer William Jeffrey, is the earliest known documentatio…

I am not sure whether the French or English translation do credit to Japanese haiku master Bashō's original verse, yet the music on this fantastic album by the French trio Daunik Lazro on baritone saxophone, Benjamin Duboc on bass and Didier Lasserre…

**CD version** Swedish sax player Anna Högberg's all-female sextet Attack's debut album is one of the most expected releases this year. Attack premiered in the 2013 edition of the Stockholm Jazz Festival and since then its performances gained praises…

Turkish pianist Arman Ratip's "Spy From Istanbul" is a killer LP originally issued in Lansdowne Series UK Jazz. Featuring Soft Machine sidemen from 1973, this is one of Top 10 British Jazz albums, and it's indeed superb. Also it's supposedly the soun…

Ahmad Jamal is a jazz giant and The Awakening is his iconic masterpiece. The landmark deep trio session - recorded in NYC and released on Impulse! in 1970 - is an essential album and perennially sought-after on vinyl, so Be With Records are delighted…

Recorded on September 25th 2018.  The Krakow Improvisers Orchestra is a creative space for the collaboration of improvising musicians with backgrounds in free jazz, classical, and experimental music. Founded by Paulina Owczarek, the Orchestra was ins…

To celebrate the forty years of career of the Slovenian musician the label Not Two has now releases Diversity, a sumptuous box of five CDs recorded live and in studio in the company of the best of the old and new European avant-garde, with Evan Parke…

Tip! **50 numbered copies** "Kyle Quass is a composer, trumpet player and sound artist based in Bloomington, Indiana. He holds a MM in Jazz Studies from Indiana University. He has studied, played, and/or collaborated with, among many others, David Ba…