Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

More early-1970s free music from the MND circle, taped mostly at Hamburg's Fabrik: Sven-Åke Johansson, Norbert Eisbrenner and cellist Peter Dyck with guests, on a double LP that follows Freedom Suite.

First vinyl edition of Last Exit's 1989 live recordings from Stockholm and Munich, with Brötzmann, Sharrock, Laswell and Shannon Jackson.

Reissue of Zo, the first duo album by Matthew Shipp and William Parker, recorded in 1993, with an epic Summertime, on ESP-Disk'.

Vocalist and violinist Alice Zawadzki makes her ECM leader debut with Za Górami ("beyond the mountains"), a luminous and deeply personal song-cycle that gathers melodies from across the folk traditions of Central and Eastern Europe, the Sephardic and Yiddish diaspora, Ladino balladry and her own original writing. Sung in a remarkable range of languages, the album feels less like a recital than a series of half-remembered lullabies and incantations, carried on Zawadzki's pure, weightless voice an…

A fascinating solo album from the Swiss pianist, composer and conceptualist best known as leader of the bands Ronin and Mobile, Entendre offers deeper insight into Nik Bärtch’s musical thinking. As the album title implies Entendre is about hearing as a creative process, referencing the patient unfolding of Bärtch’s modular polymetric pieces, with alertness to the dynamics of touch, finding freedom in aesthetic restriction, serving the flow of each piece’s development while also taking the music …

French clarinet master Louis Sclavis and pianist Benjamin Moussay in a spare, searching duo. Composition meets free improvisation in delicate, chamber-like dialogues. European improvised music at its most refined.

A striking album of new music from pianist/composer Carla Bley, whose trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow is now in its 25th year. Individual associations among the players go back much further: bassist Swallow first recorded music by Carla in 1961. So when Bley says “Life Goes On”, a lot of life is alluded to. The album, realized in the Auditorio Stelio Molo Studio in Lugano in May 2019, with Manfred Eicher producing, takes the form of three suites. The title piece begins as a stoical blu…

Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and pianist Harmen Fraanje in a duo of whispers: fragile melodies, ghostly vocals, electronic shadows and open silence. Ambient, melancholy and deeply atmospheric.

The debut album of Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry was one of 2019’s most talked-about releases. The trio’s musical concept – the Boston Globe spoke of “utterances of hushed assurance, lyricism and suspense” –  is taken to the next level on its second album, Garden of Expression, a recording distinguished by its intense focus.  Lovano, a saxophonist whose reach extends across the history of modern jazz and beyond, plays with exceptional sensitivity in Trio Tapestry.  And the music he writes for this …

Andando el Tiempo features new music of wide emotional compass by Carla Bley, and underlines her originality and resourcefulness as a jazz composer.  “Saints Alive!” sets up animated conversations between the three musical participants with striking statements from Steve Swallow’s bass guitar and Andy Sheppard’s soprano sax.  The stately “Naked Bridges/Diving Brides” draws inspiration from Mendelssohn and the poetry of Paul Haines.  And the powerful three part title composition – which addresses…

Keith Jarrett's most tender solo album, taped at home during recovery from illness as a gift to his wife. Standards and folk songs played with disarming simplicity. Hushed, fragile and deeply moving.

A cornerstone of the early Nordic ECM sound: Jan Garbarek's keening saxophone over shifting, atmospheric backdrops, with John Taylor, Bill Connors and Jack DeJohnette. Glacial, majestic, carved from northern light.

Flutist Nicole Mitchell and percussionist Joe Westerlund, a former mentee of Milford Graves, improvise in a rural studio near Chapel Hill: looped flutes, mbiras, metallophones and live electronics, with no overdubs.

First duo album by trombonist Kalia Vandever and DARKSIDE guitarist Dave Harrington, recorded in three rainy days in Los Angeles: brass and guitar between drum machines, samples and quieter, intimate pieces.

Enrico Rava's Pupa o crisalide, with tracks recorded by three different line-ups, sums up the first phase of the Triestine trumpeter's solo career, reissued officially for the first time.

Live quartet of Keiji Haino, Otomo Yoshihide, Chris Pitsiokos and Tatsuya Nakamura, recorded at Goodman in Tokyo on September 1, 2024.

CP Unit in real time: Chris Pitsiokos, Sam Lisabeth, Henry Fraser and Jason Nazary between harmolodic funk, noise rock and musique concrète, recorded in Brooklyn in 2018.

Second CP Unit album on Clean Feed: Chris Pitsiokos with Sam Lisabeth and two rhythm sections, between Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, noise and Stockhausen.

The first CP Unit album: Chris Pitsiokos with Brandon Seabrook, Tim Dahl and Weasel Walter, jazz forms filled with noise and rock, recorded in Brooklyn in 2016.

Second solo alto saxophone album for Relative Pitch, eight pieces named after rocks, recorded in January 2022.

Solo alto saxophone: six pieces dedicated to Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and John Zorn.

Double CD by the Berlin CP Unit (Chris Pitsiokos, Marta Warelis, Dan Peter Sundland, Luca Marini): studio takes from October 2025 and a concert from April 2026.

Slow, static forms for alto saxophone, accordion, synthesizer, bass and drums: the Chris Pitsiokos Ensemble between late-1960s Miles Davis and Morton Feldman.

CP Unit's first live album, recorded at the Moers Festival and at Unlimited in Wels in 2018: Chris Pitsiokos with Sam Lisabeth, Henry Fraser and Jason Nazary.

2025 stock If you went looking for a poster-child for Chicago's multidirectional, cross- pollinating, interstylistic music scene, you couldn't find a better one than Jeff Parker. Parker: jazz guitarist with pro credentials, widely travelled and prized by top soul-jazzers and hard-boppers. Parker: inveterate rocker who revitalized Tortoise with his ferocious improvising and tasty licks. Parker: experimentalist willing to try new dub, hip- hop, electronic, collage, free, chamber - anything worthwh…

Akira Ishikawa & Count Buffalos' 1976 direct-to-disc jazz-funk session for Toshiba, rebuilt from the best moments of the original takes.

Akira Ishikawa's 1972 Latin set with Count Buffalo Latin Beats, arranged by Naoya Matsuoka: Cuban, Mexican, Brazilian and Puerto Rican standards pushed through fuzz guitar, Hammond organ and heavy drums.

Karma is Pharoah Sanders' third recording as a leader, and is among a number of spiritually themed albums the Impulse! Record label released in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Although it is followed by the brief "Colors", the album's main piece is the 32-minute-long "The Creator Has a Master Plan", co-composed by Sanders with vocalist Leon Thomas. Some see this piece as a kind of sequel to Sanders' mentor John Coltrane's legendary 1964 recording A Love Supreme (whose opening it echoes in a muscular…

Trost Records is delighted to announce the second album from the otherworldly improvising quartet of Tony Buck, Franz Hautzinger, Ignaz Schick, and Philip Zoubek, an ensemble now known as Pulsar. The new recording was made at a live performance at the Loft in Cologne in December of 2024, and it captures a radically different sound than the group’s debut, Silt, recorded at the same venue four years earlier. Its members rank as some of the most celebrated and distinct free improvisers in Europe, e…

The legendary Don Cherry with his great 1966 quintet featuring Gato Barbieri (tenor sax) Karl Berger (piano) Bo Stief (bass) Aldo Romano (drums) which can also be heard on three fine releases on ESP-Disk, and with the New York Total Music Company in 1968. His quintet was on very fine form at this time, it captures a crucial stage of Cherry’s journey from free jazz to yet wilder territories. The recording was made for radio broadcast and is nice and clear: this is the first time it has been is…

2024 Repress. Masahiko Togashi was a pivotal figure in the development of the Japanese free jazz scene in late 60s. Percussionist and composer, he lost the use of the legs in an accident which nevertheless didn’t not prevent him from continuing an astonishing career that includes long and established collaborations with figures of the likes of Steve Lacy, Charlie Haden, Mal Waldron and Paul Bley. This session, recorded in Paris at the Ramèse Studio Du Village in 1979, sees an explosive collabor…

Recorded over two December days in Copenhagen and shelved for nearly three years, Bjerge, Strand gathers Jakob Bro with Charles Lloyd, Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy, and arrives on Loveland Music on CD, alongside a limited double vinyl edition, with artwork by the painter Tal R. Bro invited Lloyd to The Village Recording in Vanløse in December 2023, bringing along the rhythm section he had formed in 2019 with Grenadier and Rossy, the two players who spent two decades refining the piano trio al…

Loveland Music presents 8, a studio recording featuring an all-star ensemble of Jakob Bro, Brian Blade, Craig Taborn, Chris Cheek, Jesper Zeuthen, Anders Christensen, Larry Grenadier & Marcus Gilmore, playing compositions by Paul Motian and Jakob Bro. The album was recorded in a single session at New York's Power Station with engineer James Farber, following a week-long residency at the Village Vanguard.  "Danish guitarist and composer Jakob Bro is celebrated for his pure reflective expression a…

Loveland Music proudly announces the release of Live at The Village Vanguard, a remarkable new recording that brings together seven of the most distinctive voices in modern jazz. Recorded in the legendary New York room that has defined generations of improvised music, this album captures the raw immediacy and atmospheric depth of a once‑in‑a‑lifetime gathering. Subtle, deeply melodic, and unhurried, Live at The Village Vanguard reveals Bro’s unique gift for creating spacious musical landscapes w…

Loveland Music is proud to announce the release of The Montclair Session, a rare meeting of four titans of contemporary jazz: trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, guitarist Jakob Bro, pianist Marilyn Crispell, and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Recorded in Montclair, New Jersey, this album captures the essence of improvisation at its most searching, delicate, and alive.   Each of the four musicians brings a lifetime of artistry to the music. Wadada Leo Smith, a pioneer of creative music and recipient of numerou…

A powerful intergenerational trio emerges on Murasaki, featuring Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet, Marcus Gilmore on drums, and Jakob Bro on guitar. Recorded at Power Station (formerly Avatar Studios) in New York, this exploratory session unfolded spontaneously—no retakes, no discussions, just a shared musical language rooted in intuition and trust. “It felt as though this music already existed before we started playing,” Bro reflects. Murasaki captures the creative summit of three visionary artists,…

Souffle Continu Records present the first time vinyl reissue of Perception's Mestari, originally released in 1973. To finally become oneself: that was the lesson, in the 1960-1970s, that European musicians attracted to improvisation had learned from American free-jazz. Following this idea, the musicians of Perception, whilst individually accompanying Mal Waldron, Slide Hampton, Johnny Griffin, or Hank Mobley when they played in Paris, decided early on to break free from what was going on across …

Diriaou (“Thursday” in Breton) captures the singular collaboration between Kristen Noguès-pioneering Celtic harpist and explorer of Breton tradition-and legendary British saxophonist John Surman, renowned for his atmospheric jazz on ECM. Recorded live in 1998 at the Dre Ar Wenojenn festival, this album presents the duo weaving together original compositions and traditional melodies into a tapestry of free folk, modal improvisation, and ambient soundscapes. Noguès, deeply rooted in Breton music y…

Tip! To abandon animals for music – and avant-garde jazz at that –, could seeming shocking to some people. However, it is exactly what Manuel Villarroel did, as he was a vet for three years before leaving his native Chili for Europe and a career in music. And though the animals may have suffered, the world of music can be grateful. Born in 1944, Manuel Villarroel lent an ear to the best pianists from North America: Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner then Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylo…

If the jazz of François Tusques is “free”, his spirit is even more so: having recorded Free Jazz with other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais), the pianist had covered a lot of ground, with Barney Wilen (Le Nouveau Jazz) or even solo (Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2), so as not to repeat himself… In 1971 he founded the Inter Communal Free Dance Music Orchestra which, as the notes the this album stated, “is an interpretation of a…