Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Extraordinary NYC trio Attitude! combine free jazz and post-punk with pointed commentary about issues of race, gender, the pandemic, and political autonomy. Rose Tang, a Mongol from Sichuan, sings/recites and plays guitar, piano, and percussion. Her …

Gerhard Gschlössl, Gebhard Ullmann, Jan Leipnitz, and Johannes Fink improvise as composers would do. From scratch they create a holistic sound sculpture - each time unique and unpredictable - always with a formal approach. Michael Haves was invited t…

In a two-decade career, Raymond Byron Magic Raposa has recorded six albums as Castanets, another as Raymond Byron and the White Freighter, and has worked with musicians ranging from Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Matthew Houck (Phosphorescent), and Sufja…

Jones Jones is a funny name for an all-star band. To grant such distinctive musicians so anonymous, Google-proof a moniker is whimsical in the extreme. But, given its members' long and distinguished work in the service of music, this group should not…

WeFreeStrings was founded in 2011. This is the group's second album. Leader Melanie Dyer (not to be confused with the Australian country pop songwriter of the same name) is a jazz viola player and composer based in New York City who currently perform…

After paying his dues with bluesmen Albert King and Bobby "Blue" Bland and jazzman Jaki Byard, Michael Marcus had his first album released in 1991, when he was 39. He's been much more prolific since then, co-leading Cosmosamatics with Sonny Simmons, …

The eighteenth duo album by Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp. "We believe it's our best effort so far," says Perelman. "Every rhythmic and melodic gesture [in 'Nine'] that tenor saxist and pianist feed each other in this remarkable duet is met with a m…

Allen Lowe writes: "America: The Rough Cut is my statement not only on American music and American song, but also my commentary on the way American musicians of all styles handle that old-time music and those old song forms . . . The old things - not…

Allen Lowe writes: "In the Dark is a commemoration (sic) of the worst time of my life - a period during which, having been operated on to remove a cancerous tumor in my sinus, I slept for only brief periods of time. Sometimes I made it as long as two…

The most well-informed aficionados of NYC's jazz avant-garde speak of pianist John Blum with reverential respect, yet his discography is shockingly small for someone with a three-decade career: five albums as a leader, four as a sideman. Blum studied…

ESP-Disk presents They Tried To Kill Me Yesterday. Frequently lyrical, sometimes hard-hitting, nostalgic for jazz and R&B, proud of African-American heroes, Paul r. Harding has been around, has seen and heard things he reflects on and refracts to us …

Look at those players Alon Nechushtan brought together for this gig! The late, great Roy Campbell; reed masters Daniel Carter and Sabir Mateen; mayor of the NYC avant-jazz scene William Parker; versatile drummer Federico Ughi. Then listen: they all l…

Guillermo Gregorio has been exploring space and form and gesture in music for a very long time. In 1969, with composers Norberto Chavarri and Roque de Pedro, he cofounded the collective Movimiento Música Más, which for a while staged public intervent…

This group evolves in leaps and bounds. You've never heard a jazz piano trio sound like this album - not even this band on its previous album, the much-praised World Construct. That said, there is a through line from the first Matthew Shipp Trio albu…

Creativity is theoretically infinite. Just as improvisors can play the same song every night and have it sound different every time, existing recordings can have their materials combined in different ways, re-mixed, re-ordered, re-everything'd. Some …

Frank London writes in his liner notes: "Spirit Stronger Than Blood pays homage to some of the recordings that shaped my musical-spiritual aesthetic: Charles Mingus's Changes 1&2, Booker Little's Strength and Sanity, Pharaoh Sanders's Peace and Love,…

Volume 1. One might think that an album titled Louis Armstrong's America is a tribute to the famed trumpeter, and certainly he's a focus here, but a normal tribute would feature compositions by him, or at least associated with him. Allen Lowe doesn't…

Performed live by Thollem McDonas at Sala Perriera, Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, Palermo, Sicilia, 13 May 2023. Recorded and mixed by Simone Sfamelli. Mastered by Sean Mac Erlaine at Studio Saile, Dublin. Design and artwork by ACVilla. From the line…

When Michael Bisio heard Korean pianist Eunhye Jeong's ESP-Disk 2021 album NOLDA, he expressed interest in working with her. After a successful and riveting duo concert in Kingston, NY showed what a good match they were, ESP was eager to document the…

Written, produced, recorded, and mixed by Buck Curran at Via Paleocapa, Bergamo, Italy between April 2024 and January 2025. Mastered by Harris Newman, Grey Market Mastering, Montreal, Canada. Curran's ninth solo album finds an elemental, full-form re…

Entropic Hop's sophomore studio album, their first on ESP-Disk', is a covert extraterrestrial mind control program utilizing controversial sonic hypnosis techniques; a prurient hyperreal triad unraveling in sonic flux while rupturing auditory expecta…

Amazingly, this is Charles Downs's first album as sole leader, recorded shortly after he turned 81. Starting in the 1970s, he performed as Rashid Bakr, a name he chose out of admiration for drummer Rashid Ali; this is how he was known while performin…

After paying his dues with bluesmen Albert King and Bobby "Blue" Bland and jazzman Jaki Byard, Michael Marcus had his first album released in 1991, when he was 39. He's been prolific since then, co-leading Cosmosamatics with Sonny Simmons, SaxEmble w…

This album is part of two ESP-Disk' initiatives. The one that came first is the idea of teaming up artists who haven't worked together before. In this case, longtime collaborators Ullmann and Swell play with a rhythm section new to Ullmann: Morris an…

The core of Gschlössl, Ullmann, and Leipnitz remains; Haves has become a constant as well. This time out they are joined by Messerschmidt and Hillbig. GULF of BERLIN is a sextet consisting of five musicians and a real-time sound designer, exploring t…

Notes by Bruce: water under the bridge: "... and now we've returned to the work as different people, imaginations stretched in unimagined ways. With this new recording, rehearsal and performance dates set, the quartet is once again finding its footin…

Giancarlo Schiaffini composes, arranges and conducts a brass-heavy ensemble from the trombone, recorded at Trafalgar Studios in March 2007. With Giovanni Maier on bass, Beppe Caruso on tuba, Gianpiero Malfatto on euphonium, Martin Mayes on French hor…

Solo piano by Franco D'Andrea, recorded live at Teatro Morlacchi in Perugia on 12 July 1994. Six pieces in about fifty minutes, including the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony alongside D'Andrea's own Sketch in Blue, Air Waves and Lychees. Relea…

Bassist Nello Toscano with Enrico Rava on trumpet and flugelhorn, recorded at Ciminiera Studio in Catania on 6 and 7 January 1994. With Mauro Negri on clarinet and tenor sax, Alberto Alibrandi and Giuseppe Emmanuele on piano and Mimmo Cafiero on drum…

About Monk is Giancarlo Schiaffini's album named after Thelonious Monk, recorded in April 1992 at Regson Studio in Milan. All compositions are Schiaffini's own. The band includes Gianluigi Trovesi on alto sax and clarinets, Eugenio Colombo on flute a…

Now available on CD the Roman sessions of the great jazz dueo Smith Pieranunzi. A work that has his roots in the 70s up to the 90s for a selection that will see you involved in pleasant Dejavu' and interesting news. The two great Jazz Player perform …

Enzo Scoppa has been playing tenor saxophone on the Roman scene since the late 1950s, and since 1958 he has shared the front line with trumpeter Cicci Santucci: next to the Basso-Valdambrini sextet, the Santucci-Scoppa quintet is the longest-running …

2CD version. A new edition of Joshua Abrams’ 2015 2xLP magnum opus Magnetoception is at last here. Out-of-print on vinyl for a decade+, Magnetoception is the 3rd album, & 1st double album, in the saga of Natural Information Society. In a Berwyn, Illi…

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers with Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Timmons and Jymie Merritt, recorded at Van Gelder Studio on March 6, 1960. Blue Note Classic Vinyl reissue.

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers with Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Timmons and Jymie Merritt, recorded at Van Gelder Studio on March 14, 1961, first issued in 1967. Japanese UHQCD reissue (UCCQ-9727).

Kenny Burrell's third Blue Note session as a leader, with Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Doug Watkins and Louis Hayes, recorded in Hackensack on 10 February 1957 and first issued in Japan in 1979. Mono Tone Poet reissue, 180g.

Live recording by the Donald Byrd quintet with Pepper Adams, Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Lex Humphries, taped at the Half Note Cafe, New York, on 11 November 1960 and first issued by Blue Note in 1961. Tone Poet 180g LP reissue.

The second of two Blue Note volumes recorded live at the Half Note Cafe, New York, on November 11, 1960, by Donald Byrd's quintet with Pepper Adams, Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Lex Humphries.

Donald Byrd's jazz-funk album produced by Larry and Fonce Mizell, with Harvey Mason, Chuck Rainey and strings arranged by Wade Marcus, recorded at the Sound Factory in Los Angeles in August 1975 and released by Blue Note that year. Classic Vinyl 180g…

Dexter Gordon's second Blue Note album, a quartet with Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones, recorded at Van Gelder Studio on May 9, 1961. Blue Note Tone Poet LP reissue.