Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Neither musician has to be dominant to prove that he has something to say. Instead of trying to outdo each other, they develop a compelling, very soulful world of their own. In the history of jazz they are two more rhapsodists continuing the tradition, while changing the context of the stories and thus making them plausible. What is amazing is their calm maturity that does completely without the frills of elec- tronics. Dense and compact but at the same time transparent and delicate the music pr…

Temporary Super Offer! In 1908, Charles Ives wrote a work called “The Unanswered Question”. It was for the unusual instrumentation of offstage string ensemble, woodwind quartet and, most significant for our purposes here, solo trumpet. Though it was inspired, we think, by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Sphinx”, Ives provided his own explanatory text. The trumpet asks “The Perennial Question of Existence” seven times, to which the woodwinds provide only six increasingly disordered answers, while…

Temporary Super Offer! It is surely significant that both Lovens and Stoffner use all four limbs to control their instrument. Lower limbs used principally to play bass drum and hi-hat in the case of Lovens, volume control and effects pedal for Stoffner. Right and left limbs, right and left brain hemispheres  It is not surprising that there is plenty going on in their music. “Whatever happened to the Art of the Individual?!” Han Bennink once asked rhetorically to a crowded backstage.  Well here i…

Temporary Super Offer!  Musicians as different as Bill Dixon, Wadada Leo Smith, Axel Dörner, Susana Santos Silva have experimented with the lonely, no-safety-net discipline of solo trumpet playing. It is one of the hardest avocations in music: no harmony instrument, no pedal notes, no supportive pick-up if things go wrong. Schmid seems to follow in that line and yet the solo performances on Augmented Space, for all the extreme discipline of his technique, seems very different to the artists abov…

Temporary Super Offer!  The Quartet Prismo is the continuation of the collaboration of Sergio Armaroli and Fritz Hauser with an extended circle of musicians. Sergio has proposed his wife Francesca Gemmo, I proposed my esteemed colleague Martina Brodbeck. Around the two recorded versions of Structuring the silence, we recorded combinations of instruments put together by lot. Without time limit, without formal requirements, without rules. Pure improvisation. Together we selected the tracks to be i…

When I arrived in Geneva, Claude picked me up in his Aston Martin. He had a tape deck playing Lowell Fulsom – a guy who used to come to Memphis a lot and I knew some of his musicians. I grew up around the Blues, so this was a natural sound for me. Claude didn’t tell me until much, much later that he played Blues harmonica. He took us to the hotel where we had a warm and cordial welcome. Montreux was a quaint and sleepy town in 1967. However, there was a palpable excitement in the air and we coul…

He is la giusi, I am il piera. We'll explain why we have these nicknames another time. We started rehearsing in 1996. Three years and three recordings passed before we decided to release our first CD, "19 Calefactions" Takla Rec. Since then we have never stopped seeing each other and sharing experiences and paths. As a duo we have released three more works: "Due" Z.rec., "Big Margotta" Brokenresearch, and "Nel margine" Red Toucan. We have always liked trio collaborations and we have released the…

The J&F Band is on the move once again! The new musical journey taken by the band with "Star Motel: an American music  experience" spans from the North-East Chicago blues, with Route 66, to the funk of the deep South, going West to L.A. via Nogales, Arizona, to meet the Mingus ghost and his visions, back through the Great Plains where the Rez is the way of life for many. To end where it all began, in the South-East country and funky vibe... The 30-minute Mingus celebration, in the 100th annivers…

In the second half of the eighties, I heard the duo of Charles Gayle and Peter Kowald at the Jazz Days in Novi Sad. A few years later, when Szilárd Mezei and I met, and played music together, I told him a lot about the experience that this concert had given me. I remember that the intensity, the density, the strikingly different quality of Gayle's music-making was beyond my comprehension, or even my measure. And then the world changed, and what seemed unattainable at the time became reality. A j…

This year, one of the greatest pianists of improvised music, Marilyn Crispell became the winner of the famous NEA Jazz Masters 2025 award, thus joining the ranks of such jazz wizards as, among others. in Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Sun Ra, Gil Evans, Sarah Vaughan, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Muhal Richard Abrams and Anthony Braxton, with whom, by the way, Marilyn spent several years in his second great quartet. As all of us intrigu…

"The starry floor/The watery shore/Is given thee til the break of day.“ - William Blake Music records a dream in which your other body goes out for a walk with a friend or two or more and brings back things you can grasp in the real world. If the ground beneath you is water and reflects the stars you may dream you're walking on stars. One morning, the Somnambulist woke up from his dream-walk with a record in his hand and miraculously they were all there: the uncanny encounters, spooling elucubra…

Everything is True is an album of a personal and sentimental nature, where various musical styles blend, influenced by music from different cultures, contemporary, orchestral, and electronic music. The instrumentarium is equally diverse, combining acoustic, electronic, and even unconventional instruments such as lithophones or prototypes of string instruments like the bassdesmophon. This fusion creates timeless-sounding pieces with exceptional tonality. Most of the tracks on the album were recor…

*100 copies limited edition* A Radical Horizon is comprised of a series of duets between cellist Lori Goldston and pianist Stefan Christoff, recorded on a late Fall afternoon in Brooklyn, NY. A conversation between friends, these improvised excursions reflect a willingness to be open to the spirits in the space and between the notes; a spirit of communion that, as Stefan writes, "guides and dances with our dialogue together". Stefan Christoff is a Canadian musician, community organizer, and jour…

A tribute to NY reedist & wind player Mark Whitecage, who passed away in March 2021, in a concert at Rochester's BopShop in 2018 by the band he is probably best known for: Nu Band, with trumpeter Thomas Heberer taking Roy Campbell's original seat, plus Lou Grassi on drums and Joe Fonda on bass, a great concert blending modern creative jazz with passionate playing and a bit of hard bop.

Former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. As he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage: 'Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at random from Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the e…

Musician A.M. Frison, known mononymously as Coultrain, is well-known for his experimental, psychedelic and world-building music. Coultrain is an esteemed experimental artist and active member of 577 Records’ sub-label, Positive Elevations, which is dedicated to electronic experimentation and avant soul. On MUNDUS, Coultrain overlays spoken word performance and his honeyed voice over smooth soul-inspired instrumentation, gentle snare and electronic melodies. The result is a lyrically-focused albu…

Último Sosiego is a collaboration between Chilean musicians Benjamín Vergara on Trumpet and Amanda Irarrazabal on Double Bass, both active South American musicians. Both artists have previously released music with the label, but this is the first project where they unite forces for a 577 record. On the album, textures, melodies and spaces draw from Chile’s extreme southern territory and soundscape, building slowly from open, sparse arrangements to the explosive, like a silent eruption of a volca…

Iconic New York music master Daniel Carter is perhaps best known for his masterful command of saxophones, trumpet, and many other instruments. However, his immense talent doesn’t just manifest through his considerable musical ability, Carter’s genius also lies in his ability to create ensembles. Daniel knows how to put just the right musicians together even when externally everything about them seems completely different. Once he’s created these groups, Daniel operates in gentle ways to guide ar…

Building off of their debut album last year, legendary musicians and 577 mainstays reunite for a second volume. As in the first, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, pianist Leo Genovese, bassist William Parker (also playing Gralla and Shakuhachi on this album), and drummer and vocalist Francisco Mela, unite for another cosmic album. This project again draw from classic jazz arrangements, juxtaposed with a modern experimentalism and a huge range of instrumentation. Shine Hear, Vo…

*2022 stock. In process of stocking* Strut present a definitive vinyl edition of the groundbreaking compilation 'Nigeria 70'. Originally released in 2001, the collection set the benchmark for a new generation of archive labels and releases mining the vaults for rare Afro funk and Afro jazz fusions and helped to paint the wider picture of the 1970s Lagos scene beyond Fela Kuti's catalogue for a legion of soul, funk and dance music enthusiasts. Check!

Award-Winning Master Pianist Leo Genovese Releases First Solo Album with 577 Records. For over 20 years, master Pianist Leonardo Genovese has been traveling the globe playing unforgettable cosmic music for the people.  As one of 577 Records’ main collaborators, he has made many popular albums with the label.  Now they’re teaming up again for his debut solo release with the company. The dreamlike, two-track Forward features captivating abstract music that can only be described as wild, free, and …

* Digipack CD edition * On a brilliantly sunny mid-December afternoon in 2023, Parisian experimental music veterans, Patrick Müller (trAce Label, Orchestre Inachevé), Thierry Müller (Illitch, Ruth) and Quentin Rollet (Nurse With Wound, David Grubbs) convened in the Bastille studio of Paul Collins (P_LAB, Glenn Branca) to make music, to make sound, to raise hell, to record. "Correspondant à une lettre" is the result of that meeting of the minds and fingers. Patrick, the go-to recording engineer f…

John Cassavetes’ directorial debut Shadows was a largely improvised film set in the bohemian jazz scene of 1950s New York; often referred to as the first truly independent film of American cinema, it featured a brief disjointed soundtrack improvised by Charles Mingus and his saxophonist Shafi Hadi, with various percussionists slotting in, including Phineas Newborn Jr. Gloriously messy, reportedly unfinished and referred to with scorn by Mingus, the Shadows soundtrack sketches ultimately yielded …

PolyTropos / Of Many Turns is the highly-anticipated new release from influential saxophonist / composer Steve Coleman. Comprised of two live sets recorded during a tour in France, it features his band Five Elements, with long-running partners Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet and Sean Rickman on drums, with new addition Rich Brown on bass. Recorded in concert in Paris and Voiron, the performances are raw, relying on spontaneous conversions of rhythmic and tonal shapes that weave musical figures int…

‘The Susceptible Now’ is the new record by drummer and 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner Tyshawn Sorey, who on this occasion offers covers of some of his favourite tracks. With his trio consisting of Aaron Diehl on piano and Harish Raghavan on bass, Sorey continues in the wake of his masterful ‘Continuing’, a record that placed fourth in the 2023 rankings voted by over 150 jazz critics in the Francis Davis Poll and was described by The Guardian as: ‘5 stars: seething with reinventions of ancient magic.…

Zealous Angles is the first documentation of pianist/composer Matt Mitchell’s long-running trio featuring bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dan Weiss.Pi Recordings’ not-so-secret weapon, Mitchell now has six releases as a leader or co-leader and fourteen appearances on the label. His 2024 release Illimitable (on his and Kate Gentile's Obliquity Records) was called “one of greatest albums of spontaneously composed solo piano music, ever…. a masterpiece of twenty-first century solo piano music” by…

Bassist Kim Cass is among a vanguard group of Brooklyn-based improvisors who are creating works at the leading-edge of rhythmic acuity. Levs, his debut with Pi Recordings, features pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, who called Cass “a singular composer and player: the man can do things that don’t seem possible on the bass, displaying a technical command of the instrument on the level of the most celebrated virtuosic performers in any genre of music.”The compositions on Levs were in…

Unknown Rivers is bassist Luke Stewart’s debut for Pi Recordings. An omnipresent and galvanizing force on the music scene, Stewart is a leader or co-leader of such bands as Irreversible Entanglements, Exposure Quintet, Blacks’ Myths, Heart of the Ghost, and Remembrance Quintet. He is also among the most in-demand collaborators, having performed with the likes of David Murray, Nicole Mitchell, Moor Mother, Jaimie Branch, Nate Wooley, Ken Vandermark and countless others. Stewart is also a curator …

Brian Marsella is one of the most accomplished keyboard virtuosos in the Downtown scene. A vital member of projects by Cyro Baptista and John Zorn for decades, his fluid keyboard stylings and intense energy is legendary—and Medietas is his masterwork: a sprawling three-hour long work that embraces jazz, rock, funk, classical, world music, exotica, folk, soundtrack moods, and so much more. Segueing from song to song seamlessly, this is a work that puts you into an ecstatic dream world—a psychedel…

This long-awaited third volume featuring John Zorn's newest and most exciting ensemble, New Masada Quartet was recorded live at Roulette, one of Zorn's home bases in NYC. White hot and razor sharp, an intense electricity is in the air from the very first note. Resplendent with burning solos, telepathic group interaction, heartfelt lyricism, hypnotic grooves, and of course Zorn’s ever-surprising conducting techniques, this is truly one of the most transcendent sets they have yet performed. With a…

In Straight Up, Without Wings, Joe McPhee surveys sixty years in creative music. Starting with his trumpeter-father's influence and formative years in the U.S. Army, McPhee recounts experiences as a Black-hippy-cum-budding-musician based in upstate New York, perched at an ideal distance from Manhattan’s free jazz demimonde of the 1960s and its loft scene of the 1970s. A natural storyteller, revealing never-told tales and reveling in the joys of noise, McPhee puts the influence of – and encounter…

"Space Jungle Luv" emerged in 1976 (a year after the classic "African Rhythms" set) and marked a distinct change of direction for Plunky and co. Their feet were still in the ghetto, but this time they were looking at the stars; headed up by the strong, sweet vocal stylings of Jacqueline Holman (aka Lady Eka-Ete) and Branch's often effects drenched saxophones, this is cosmic dancefloor jazz of the first water.

The Bill Evans Trio's 1973 concert in Tokyo was his first recording for Fantasy and it produced yet another Grammy-nomination for the presentation. With bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Marty Morell, this LP mixes offbeat songs with overlooked gems, familiar standards, and surprisingly, only one Evans composition, the demanding "T.T.T.T. (Twelve Tone Tune Two)”. The Tokyo concert reveals the trio functioning at a high level, with each member by this time able to anticipate whatever direction the …

"Duck Baker should be a national treasure. He should be an international treasure. Should be? In my book he already is. I first came across his work in the 1970s on early Kicking Mule LPs in my local library in the UK, which was his temporary base then, and is his permanent home now. Many years later I was astounded by Spinning Song, his CD of Herbie Nichols compositions. Around the same time, I made contact with him by way of thanks following a review he wrote of my work on Stuff Smith and, lat…

This package combines two LPs on one CD. Pathways was originally released on vinyl in the mid-70s at the very end of Sun Ra's relationship with Impulse and remained in print for less than one year. Evidence has remixed the original four track tapes and has added a track that was intended for the original album but omitted for technical reasons that have now been corrected. Like Cymbals and Crystal Spears, Friendly Love is an early 70s album that is being released for the first time. Sun Ra biogr…

Another much sought after and long unavailable title recorded in 1974 with a smallish ensemble consisting (probably) of stalwarts Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Danny David, James Jacson, Akh Tal Ebah, Clifford Jarvis, Artakatune, and a new electric guitarist, Sly, and released on Saturn in the same year. This sounds like a studio recording and carefully thought out - most of the compositions appear only on this record (apart from versions of 'Nature's God' and 'Space Is The Place'), and include …

Comet Records present the new release out of the Comet new reissue series, Noel McGhie’s only full-length LP, released in France in 1975 at cult private label Disques Esperance! A true rare groove classic, a one-of-a-kind spiritual jazz funk record with a fusion touch. Includes ‘Trapeze’, ‘Dancer’ and ‘Mademoiselle Tuloch’.

CD Version Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On is the new album by Scottish composers Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman. The pair have orbited each others worlds for a number of years through audio visual collaborations spanning record releases, films and sound installations. Wasylyk’s cinematic compositions have been nominated for the Scottish Album of the Year Award and been awarded BBC Radio 6 Music’s Gideon Coe’s Album of the Year. He has collaborated with former National Poet for Scotland, Liz Lo…

*Limited Edition of 100. Pink Vinyl! 2024 stock* Super groups are not a riskless endeavor—but when they’re made up of longtime friends and master improvisers, they tend to work. On their collaboration, simply titled Volume 1, up-and-coming American saxophonist John Dikeman (When The Time Is Right, 577 Records, 2021) is accompanied by a group of UK-based music masters: pianist Pat Thomas, a 577 Records mainstay (Shifa Live at Cafe Oto 2019, BleySchool 2019, Shifa Live in Oslo 2020, Educated Guess…

*2024 stock* Can music liberate us? Francisco Mela, who worked and partnered with the legendary jazz musician McCoy Tyner, believes so. On this album, the second volume of Music Frees Our Souls, Mela collaborates with pianist Cooper-Moore and bassist William Parker to build a 2-part extended track project of advanced dialogue between 3 of the genre's most important instruments. Tyner was well-known for his boundless musical talent, and perhaps best-known for playing in John Coltrane’s quartet, w…