Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Antibes Jazz Festival, 20 July 1977. Hannibal Marvin Peterson's trumpet, George Adams on tenor and flute, Diedre Murray's cello, Steve Neil on bass, Makaya Ntshoko on drums. Two pieces of about twenty minutes each, Ro and Swing Low Sweet Chariot, recorded for Enja.

Grant Green's Blue Note album recorded on November 4 and 15, 1963, at Van Gelder Studio, with Joe Henderson, Duke Pearson, Bobby Hutcherson, Bob Cranshaw and Al Harewood; first released in 1965.

Wuppertal Stadthalle, 26 April 1964: the Mingus sextet with Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Jaki Byard and Dannie Richmond, two months before Dolphy's death. A 37-minute Fables of Faubus, the Dolphy-Mingus duet Starting, and Meditations. Issued by Enja in 1980; the CD adds Meditations.

One day at Vanguard Studios, New York, 7 January 1982. Woody Shaw on trumpet with the band he had by then been working with for a couple of years: Steve Turre on trombone, Mulgrew Miller on piano, Stafford James on bass, Tony Reedus on drums. Produced for Enja by Horst Weber and Matthias Winckelmann. Shaw had come off a run of Columbia albums and was six weeks away from the Jazz Forum concerts that Elektra Musician would issue as Master of the Art and Night Music. This is the same quintet in the…

Munich, Studio 70, 24 June 1972. Four players who would otherwise never have been in the same room: Karl Berger on vibraphone and marimba, the Japanese pianist Masahiko Sato (the trio Trinity for Enja dates from the same period), the Austrian bassist Adelhard Roidinger, and Allen Blairman, the Pittsburgh drummer who had played with Albert Ayler and was then Mal Waldron's regular in Germany. Berger had been in Don Cherry's Paris band, had recorded for ESP and Milestone, and in 1972 was founding t…

Berlin, 7 November 1971, the week of the Berliner Jazztage. Terumasa Hino on trumpet and flute with the Frankfurt tenor Heinz Sauer, Peter Warren on bass and Pierre Favre on drums, for Enja's second year. Five long pieces, free and arranged in turns, including Into the Heaven and Dig It.

Yosuke Yamashita and Mal Waldron knew each other from Waldron's years of touring Japan; in 1985 they would record as a piano duo at the Pit Inn. A Tribute To Mal Waldron comes five years earlier, recorded at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg on 17 and 18 June 1980 and released by Enja the same year. This is the trio Yamashita formed after the Sakata-Moriyama years: Katsuo Kuninaka on bass, Shota Koyama on drums. Four pieces. Three Waldron compositions, Trane's Soul Eyes, a twelve-minute One-Upmansh…

Nuremberg, East-West Jazz Festival, 6 May 1972. Mal Waldron's trio with Jimmy Woode, the former Ellington bassist, and Allen Blairman on drums. Three long pieces, all by Waldron, taped live and issued by Enja only in 1975. Waldron had settled in Europe in 1965 and rebuilt his playing from scratch after a breakdown. By 1972 the new style was fully formed: dark, insistent, built from a few repeated cells that tighten over long stretches. The Enja records from these years (Black Glory, Plays the Bl…

Nuremberg, East-West Festival, 4 May 1974. Mal Waldron's quintet with Steve Lacy on soprano, Manfred Schoof on cornet, Isla Eckinger and Allen Blairman. Four Waldron compositions, live; AllMusic gives it four and a half stars and calls it a strong set where Schoof often steals the solo honours.

Cecil Taylor solo at the Talos Festival, Ruvo di Puglia, 10 September 2000: one continuous improvisation, unreleased for twenty-one years and issued by Enja in 2021 for its fiftieth anniversary. From the same week as the Willisau concert and the same trip that produced The Owner of the River Bank.

Eric Dolphy live in 1962-63, in Gunther Schuller's Twentieth-Century Innovations series at Carnegie Hall and in Syracuse: his own quartet with Richard Davis and J.C. Moses, three Schuller third-stream pieces with strings and Jim Hall, and a Donna Lee jam with Phil Woods, Benny Golson and Don Ellis.

Grant Green quartet session with Sonny Clark, Sam Jones and Art Blakey, recorded at Van Gelder Studio on 13 January 1962 and first issued by Blue Note in 1980 (LT-1032). Tone Poet 180g LP reissue.

One day at the MPS studio in Villingen, 21 January 1969. Dave Pike on vibes, Volker Kriegel on guitar and sitar, Hans Rettenbacher and Peter Baumeister, produced by Joachim-Ernst Berendt. The Dave Pike Set's debut, with the sitar piece Mathar and Kriegel's rework of Zappa's Mother People.

No big band. Haiku, recorded over four days from 1 to 4 June 1973 and released by MPS in 1974, puts Don Ellis's trumpet in front of a twelve-piece string orchestra and a small rhythm group, on ten of his own pieces, each named after and written from a Japanese haiku. It came right after Soaring, the album with Whiplash, and it is the opposite record. Scott Yanow at AllMusic calls it a very different Don Ellis, the trumpet well showcased over strings on ten moody originals, much of it mellow, a d…

Villingen, 29 June 1970. Mike Nock, the New Zealand pianist who had come up through Yusef Lateef's and Art Blakey's bands and was then leading the San Francisco fusion group the Fourth Way, records a session for MPS with the Fourth Way rhythm section, Ron McClure on bass and Eddie Marshall on drums, but without the violinist Michael White. Produced by Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer and Joachim-Ernst Berendt, credited to the Mike Nock Underground. The cover carries a quote from Bill Evans, from a Down…

Rolf Kühn and Phil Woods had worked together in New York in the late 1950s, when Kühn was there with Benny Goodman and the Tommy Dorsey orchestra. The Day After, released by MPS in 1972, is their reunion: Woods on alto, Kühn on clarinet, Joachim Kühn on piano, Peter Warren on bass, Oliver Johnson (Steve Lacy's drummer for a decade) on drums, and Naná Vasconcelos on percussion and berimbau. Five pieces, forty-one minutes. Ca. 1-9-5-2 looks back to the bop era but is played modally. The title trac…

Grant Green sextet session with Joe Henderson, James Spaulding, McCoy Tyner, Bob Cranshaw and Elvin Jones, recorded for Blue Note on 12 June 1964 and first released in 1979. Classic Vinyl 180g LP reissue.

Grant Green with Larry Young (organ), Bobby Hutcherson (vibraphone) and Elvin Jones (drums), recorded at Van Gelder Studio on November 16, 1964 and first issued in 1967. Blue Note Classic Vinyl reissue.

Illegal Crowns, the quartet of Taylor Ho Bynum, Mary Halvorson, Benoît Delbecq and Tomas Fujiwara, recorded at Firehouse 12 in June 2022, with three compositions each by Fujiwara, Halvorson and Delbecq.

Two duo albums by pianist Matt Mitchell: Oblong with Kate Gentile on drums and Aplomb with Ches Smith on drums, percussion, vibraphone and timpani, recorded in Brooklyn in summer 2022 and mixed by David Torn.

George is John Hollenbeck's quartet with Anna Webber, Aurora Nealand and Chiquita Magic: voices, saxophones, flute, keyboards and drums, recorded in Montreal in January 2022. 180g black vinyl, limited to 400 copies.

Debut album by Abenaki bassist, singer and composer Mali Obomsawin, built on songs and stories of her family, with Savannah Harris, Miriam Elhajli, Allison Burik, Noah Campbell and Taylor Ho Bynum. First pressing on black vinyl.

Nick Dunston's trio with Kalia Vandever on trombone and DoYeon Kim on gayageum: open structures between song and soundscape for bass, trombone and Korean zither, with liner notes by Wendy Eisenberg.

A composition by saxophonist Travis Laplante for a nine-piece ensemble, dedicated to the muse of Miles Davis and recorded live at the Yellow Barn Music Festival in Putney, Vermont, in July 2021.

Debut of the trio Secret People: Nathaniel Morgan on alto saxophone, Dustin Carlson on guitar and Bass VI, Kate Gentile on drums and vibraphone, recorded in August 2019.

Wendy Eisenberg performs her own long-form text score, memorised and played from memory: one disc of solo guitar and one of solo banjo, recorded at Firehouse 12 in New Haven in March 2019.

Debut album by alto saxophonist David Leon with Sonya Belaya on piano, Florian Herzog on bass and Stephen Boegehold on drums, recorded in Brooklyn in February 2020, with liner notes by Kris Davis.

The final recording by bassist Mario Pavone, made in March 2021 two months before his death, with his Dialect Trio of Matt Mitchell and Tyshawn Sorey and Dave Ballou on trumpet and arrangements.

Cellist Christopher Hoffman's quartet with Bryan Carrott on vibraphone, Rashaan Carter on bass and Craig Weinrib on drums, plus David Virelles on one track. Translucent red vinyl, limited to 200 copies.

Father and son duo: Michael Formanek on double bass and Peter Formanek on tenor saxophone and clarinet, recorded in December 2019 after their first tour together, with pieces by each of them and by both.

Solo record by drummer and percussionist Scott Clark, also on harmonica, recorded live in Richmond, Virginia, in May 2019 and named after Rilke's poem Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower.

The complete first concert of the two-trumpet quartet of Herb Robertson and Dave Ballou with Drew Gress and Tom Rainey, recorded at The Stone NYC in June 2007: the first set reissued, the second issued for the first time.

First vinyl edition of Nick Dunston's 2019 debut Atlantic Extraction, on translucent yellow vinyl limited to 200 copies: a quintet of double bass, flutes, violin and viola, guitar and drums.

Michaël Attias' first solo album, recorded in one session with no overdubs: alto saxophone played with the left hand and piano with the right, the saxophone setting the piano strings into sympathetic resonance.

Guitarist Dustin Carlson's septet with Nathaniel Morgan, Eric Trudel, Danny Gouker, Matt Mitchell on Prophet 6, Adam Hopkins and Kate Gentile, recorded in 2017 and mixed and mastered by David Torn.

Fifth anniversary LP of Adam Hopkins' 2018 debut Crickets, the first Out Of Your Head release, on 180g black vinyl with redesigned TJ Huff artwork and the extra track Grounded, recorded remotely by the sextet in winter 2020-2021.

Obscure 1979 album of excellent fusion, jazz-funk and easy listening on Pathos, previously released in 1975 as Evolution Now by Ector Davis. Never re-issued on either LP or CD.

Rare 1981 album on New Trolls' Magma label with very diverse music (easy listening, cosmic, ragtime, etc.) mainly played on electric and electronic keybords with lots of great synthetic sounds, composed by I Signori Della Galassia's Luigi Mosello and Giuseppe Aleo with Luigi Barisone. Never re-issued on either LP or CD. With original innersleeve.

Definitive 2LP compilation on Teichiku by the pioneering Japanese jazz and ryūkōka singer. With obi.

Original Japanese edition on MPS of the 1978 album with lush multi-tracked vocal arrangements of classic songs. With insert and obi.