Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Recorded at the Choreographers’ Workshop in New York, 1963, Waaghals Records presents two songs from Sun Ra’s Continuation sessions on vinyl for the first time. Known for its lo-fi recording quality coupled with heavy use of echo and reverberation, t…

From Chicago saxophonist Prince Billy Mahdi Wright's only album and the pinnacle of 80s spiritual jazz, "You Got Dat Wright," comes a delightful 7-inch cut of the mellow jazz-funk "Summer Love," featuring the pleasant sounds of kalimba and saxophone …

Tip! Tip! Tip! *300 copies limited edition* We are about to release the debut LP from Secular Music Group, emerged from the home workshop of Christian Ruggiero, a renowned composer for film and television with a passion for classic recordings and leg…

Peter Brötzmann collaborated with many artists in his career, regularly adding new compatriots into the fold, and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love became one of his staunchest allies after the percussionist joined the Chicago Tentet in 2004. They …

1995 release ** Quinzaine de MontrealThe Spectrum, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; April 11, 1992Tristan Honsinger, cello; Martin Schütz, cello; Eric Longsworth, cello; Michelle Kinney, broom-cello; Ken Butler, broom-cello; Helmut Lipsky, violin; J. A. Dea…

1995 release ** The Akbank Conduction, Akbank IIIstanbul, Turkey; October 16 & 17, 1992The Süleyman Erguner Ensemble: Hasan Esen, kemence; Mehmet Emin Bitmez, ud; Göksel Baktagir, kanun; Süleyman Erguner, ney; Lê Quan Ninh, percussion; Bryan Carrott,…

1995 release ** Conduction #31: Angelica Festival of International Music: Bologna, Italy; May 16, 1993 Dietmar Diesner, soprano sax; Peter Kowald, bass; Wolter Wierbos, trombone; Steve Beresford, piano; Hans Reichel, guitar; Tom Cora, cello; Han Benn…

1995 release **Conduction #38: in Freud's Garden: Muffathalle, Germany; December 11, 1993Myra Melford, piano; Zeena Parkins, harp; Bryan Carrott, vibes; Brandon Ross, acoustic guitar; J. A. Deane, trombone; live sampling; Motoharu Yoshizawa, electric…

1995 release ** New World, New World - Opperman Music Hall, Florida State University School of Music; February 4, 1994Jesse Canterbury, clarinet; Mimi Patterson, clarinet; Scott Deeter, sax; Philip Gelb, shakuhachi; Gregor Harvey, guitar; Ethan Schaf…

"A standard takes on a new shape when it is realized through Trio New York’s methods. Their improvised preludes promote refreshed readings studded with bright accents and pungent embellishments, reinforcing the qualities that have enabled these tunes…

Joe Maneri’s last Microtonal recordings from the year 2002. These are not typically arranged songs, but asymmetrical, asynchronous constructs that develop from simultaneous, complimentary but peripheral gestures of the mind and heart. The harmonic co…

First visit to the audio equivalent of a graphic novel.

Big Tip! As poets from Shakespeare to Heine have recognised, “the forest” is not just about grandeur and most expansive of gestures; it is also about intimacy and there is a remarkable intimacy to Christopher Kunz’s and Florian Fischer’s music. The f…

"No music making can be entirely non-idiomatic. Removing the metaphor, the claim is that it is characterless, without personality. But despite his best intentions, perhaps, one can hear a range of influences in Bailey’s own work – even if jazz isn't …

"A long life can contain a certain amount of waste. Live long enough and posterity doesn’t notice the  occasional unproductive gap. A short life adds value to every moment and every creative act. This new  issue of Albert Ayler’s brief association wi…

"Kontakte makes contacts between acoustic instrumental sounds and electronic music, its multidimensionality and its invitation to time travel, all promised a future in which humanity might transcend the limitations of material reality. In Spiegelung …

“We are in the business of transformation, applying our knowledge of improvising together for twenty-five years, interwoven with our resonance with these melodies and forms. We have found our collective way with honouring what these pieces express to…

Joe Henderson Our Thing To In ’N Out Revisited notes: The Blue Note label in the early and mid 1960s was a haven for musicians engaged in the process of expanding the jazz vocabulary with unconventional harmonic strategies and new compositional infra…

"Tadd Dameron remains better known and more widely admired among fellow musicians than with the record-buying public, and yet most will know at least some of his sophisticated compositions: “Lady Bird”, “On A  Misty Night”,  “If You Could See Me Now”…

"Marion Brown was already defying categorisation in 1966 when he recorded Three For Shepp, whose six tracks open Three For Shepp To Gespächsfetzen Revisited. Brown’s opening “New Blues” and Archie Shepp’s closing “Delicado,” though compelling,are re…

“He was nomadic. The strongest and most lasting thing you can say about Alan is that he was an original, as original as you can get. He didn’t want any academic guidelines to equip him to reinvent the wheel. If he saw something like that, he’d go t…

Temporary Super Offer! "This Revisited disc chronicles the trio in transition. Formed in autumn 1959, the group recorded its debut album in December. Following a coast-to-coast tour, it opened at Birdland in March 1960, when the first five tracks her…

Temporary Super Offer! “Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way – through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems and he would …

Reflecting both early experiences and recent developments with jazz’s avant-garde, these two albums are the most adventurous, and Let Freedom Ring quite possibly the most personal, music Jackie McLean ever recorded. – Art Lange

Temporary Super Offer! "Eric Dolphy’s legacy is well represented by these performances from The Five Spot and the sessions supervised by Alan Douglas. They confirm him to be an artist who  straddled the divide then so deep in jazz, drawing sustenance…

Temporary Super Offer! "One Step Beyond is rightly seen as a pivot point in Jackie McLean’s evolution, but its adventurousness was not without precedent. As A.B. Spellman noted in Four Lives in the Bebop Business, “Quadrangle” – the opening track for…

'Mention of Motian and LaFaro brings us to this disc, perhaps belatedly. But other  than observing that the music is presented here following immaculate and unprecedented  sound restoration, what more needs to be said about it? What more, usefully, c…

Temporary Super Offer! "Mingus the visionary composer. Mingus the virtuoso bassist. Mingus the volcanic bandleader. As the 1960s began, with the new decade bringing a radically expansive new view of the possibilities of jazz expression, Charles Mingu…

While his recordings with Archie Shepp and 7-Tette established Bill Dixon as a distinctive jazz modernist, ahead of the curve, creating a niche within a crowded field of emerging artists, it is Intents and Purposes (Orchestra) that established his si…

Temporary Super Offer! When Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie went into the recording studio together on 28 February 1945, they had already served a shared apprenticeship in the big bands of Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine, had jammed informally explo…

Temporary Super Offer!  "This one was working. This one always had been working. This one was always having something that was coming out of this one that was a solid thing, a charming thing, a lovely thing, a perplexing thing, a disconcerting thing,…

“The word ‘jazz,’ to me, only means I dare you.” - Wayne Shorter

Temporary Super Offer! Summertime from the LP My Name Is Albert Ayler made me discover Albert Ayler. His unique interpretation of Summertime motivated me to go to Lörrach crossing the border from Switzerland to Germany to listen to the concert of the…

Temporary Super Offer! Four For Trane became one of the classic, iconic albums of the post-bop era. The explanation is three-fold. First, the material. Rather than follow Coltrane’s lead into the most extreme of his free-blowing anthems, Shepp select…

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 …

Temporary Super Offer! "The title Ornette at 12 is something of a misnomer. Although Ornette is Denardo’s middle name, why wasn’t the album called Denardo at 12, his age at the time of the concert? Is there a hidden meaning related to Ornette’s own c…

Temporary Super Offer! Johnny Griffin came to Thelonius Monk with a reputation as a speed demon – double-timing the tempo was his default mechanism, elaborating melodies with a mixture of mellow swing and complex bop phrasing. Their contrasting natur…

Temporary Super Offer! "Rare performances and concerts. The Sound of the Munich Filmprodction and the concert of Helsinki are first releases. The Rotterdam concert was available in the Holy Ghost bootleg box." – Werner X. Uehlinger. "Albert Ayler’s l…

Temporary Super Offer! Allow me to expand on a much restated quote from Albert Ayler: "Coltrane was The Father, Pharoah was The Son, and I was...The Holy Ghost.” If we remain with the Christian iconography, that makes Archie Shepp, Simon Peter, or th…

"In the spring of 1949, the music was ready to undergo a transformation. Both Miles Davis and Tadd Dameron were experimenting with their larger groups, but they were also presented with the opportunity to travel to Paris, to present a programme of ne…