★Corbett Vs. Dempsey
Eternal River
On their first stand-alone record as a duo, Ken Vandermark and Hamid Drake celebrate their 30+ year playing relationship with an electrifying live set of pieces, all featuring music composed by legendary free jazz musician Don Cherry.
The Hard Way
Sexmob breaks new sonic ground with longtime producer scotty hard on the hard way, a new and extraordinary collaboration
Keeper of the Code: Paintings 1963–2022 (Book)
Keeper of the Code: Paintings 1963–2022 is Roscoe Mitchell's first exhibit with Corbett Vs. Dempsey. The exhibit is accompanied by an in-depth 140-page full-color catalog reproducing over 100 of Mitchell’s paintings, with an interview by John Corbett.
Roscoe Mitchell is an American composer, jazz instrumentalist, and educator. The Penguin Guide to Jazz described him as "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz; All About Jazz stated in 2004 that he had been "at the forefront of modern music" …
Naja
*In process of stocking* Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson might have a separate discography for his solo records. He's investigated the possibilities of unaccompanied reed music from almost every angle. Presented with the opportunity to make a new solo record under the isolation of the pandemic, Gustafsson returned to a project he'd conceptualized but never realized: the playing-card pieces of Peter Brötzmann. Although these Fluxus-like prompts are better known through the two card sets the G…
Dedications
One of the towering creative musicians of our time, a master drummer and multiple percussionist, Hamid Drake has anchored inumerable bands. As a hard working player, constantly touring the globe, he's collaborated with most of the major figures in improvised music and contemporary jazz, from David Murray and Peter Brötzmann to Pharoah Sanders and Don Cherry. Along the way, Drake has never had an opportunity to stop and make a solo record. Indeed, he's only performed solo on a few occasions. John…
Charivari
One of the architects of No Wave with his band DNA, a pioneer of noise guitar, sublimely inventive producer, and slinkily seductive songwriter, Arto Lindsay has worn countless musical hats. Invited to make a solo record for the Black Cross Solo Sessions, Lindsay boiled it down to essential ingredients, waxing a collection of bristling new songs and works for solo guitar; on six of a baker's dozen tracks, his angelic voice offsets the bracing dissonance of his acidic electric. Recorded at studios…
To Dusk
Every day over the course of a year starting in June, 2020, in something she refers to as a "domestic ritual," Zeena Parkins recorded solo electric harp performances in her home studio. The brilliant improvisor and composer had, like most of her peers, been sidelined by the pandemic; unable to tour, she spent the end of each day at the harp, playing until sunlight waned, inventing and discovering new soundscapes, keeping her musical self together while the world seemed poised to crumble. Parkins…
Opinions
Torbjörn Zetterberg’s new record, Opinions, is not a conventional “solo” outing. It doesn’t represent the bassist, composer, and bandleader stepping away from all that to prove his mettle as a virtuoso unaccompanied improvisor. Anyone familiar with Zetterberg’s small group recordings needs no confirmation of his prowess. And anyway, strutting his stuff is not his vibe. Certainly not the vibe of this record, where the bassist plays more than bass, a solo venture on which he is occasionally joined…
Let Our Rejoicing Rise
*2022 stock* In the year that Juneteenth was finally declared a national U.S. holiday, 2021, Joe McPhee and Tomeka Reid united for a live concert in celebration. Multi-instrumentalist McPhee was deeply moved by the historical nature of the circumstances, the incredible freight of that history of oppression and liberation represented in the legislation, both the insanity of its overdueness and the joy of its institutionalization. As a preamble to the music, McPhee led off with two poems, read wit…
Eight Pieces for Two Cellos
*In process of stocking* Repertoire for cello represents a little-explored niche of the greater jazz songbook. In 2013, cellists Tomeka Reid and Fred Lonberg-Holm turned their arrangerly and composerly attention to this terrain, assembling a selection of four originals (three by Lonberg-Holm, one by Reid) and four works by other composers. The latter include “Pluck It” by pioneering jazz cellist Fred Katz, member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet and soundtrack composer for Roger Corman films; “In W…
Left / Right (Book)
Peter Brötzmann's catalog for an exhibition held at Corbett vs. Dempsey July 27 – August 17, 2013 Includes an essay by Jim Dempsey
Globe Unity
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* In 1966, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach assembled his first large ensemble to play his compositions “Globe Unity” and “Sun.” This 14-piece band, which brought together some of the leading figures in European improvised music, would eventually expand – incorporating not only Europeans but also American and Asian musicians – and assume its rightful name: Globe Unity Orchestra. In its nascent outing, beautifully recorded at Ariola Studio in Cologne, Schlippenba…
Chirps
Limited edition of 500 copies.* What could possibly happen when two ultimate masters of soprano saxophone square off for their only recording of duets? Chirps is the only place to find out. Steve Lacy – the one who planted the flag for soprano saxophone in the ground of modern jazz, who established its iconic status, who devoted himself to the axe with monkish devotion, who brought shakuhachi breath and stairstep melody into its upper-register antics. Evan Parker – arguably the one who pushed th…
Bonobo Beach: Some More Guitar Solos
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Subtitled “some more guitar solos,” Bonobo Beach was German guitarist and instrument inventor Hans Reichel’s fourth and final record of solo guitar works. After this record, Reichel would turn much of his attention to the bowed wooden-tongued instrument he created called the daxophone. Reichel recorded the six tracks at his home in Wuppertal in April, 1981, and in the process made what might be his masterpiece. These are not just some more guitar solos. Concentra…
Pink Pong
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 500 copies.* German pianist Georg Gräwe, one of the most impeccable and imaginative improvisers in contemporary free music, made his debut recording, New Movements, in 1976, under the auspices of Free Music Production, the legendary Berlin-based organization run by Jost Gebers. At FMP’s Jazz Now festival, in April of that year, Gräwe presented his working band, a classic hard-bop configuration with trumpet, saxophone and rhythm section. Indeed, some ve…
New Movements
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 500 copies.* German pianist Georg Gräwe, one of the most impeccable and imaginative improvisers in contemporary free music, made his debut recording, New Movements, in 1976, under the auspices of Free Music Production, the legendary Berlin-based organization run by Jost Gebers. At FMP’s Jazz Now festival, in April of that year, Gräwe presented his working band, a classic hard-bop configuration with trumpet, saxophone and rhythm section. Indeed, some ve…
Sweet Nothings (for Milford Graves)
*In process of stocking.* Two masters of wind instruments blowing in from the Windy City. In 2003, as part of the seventh annual Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music, Joe McPhee and Evan Parker squared off for a round of intimate dialogues. The resulting recording is just the second time they had played as a duet, the previous also being in Chicago, at a studio in 1998, where the limited their instrumentarium to tenor saxophones, resulting in the Okka Disc classic Chicago Tenor Duets…
Songs In Heat
*In process of stocking.* While Dredd Foole would stamp his legend as a foundational figure in the New Weird America free folk underground of the 1990s and 2000s, that is just the second half of the story. Forty years ago, in February 1982, Dredd entered the studio with Mission of Burma, stepping off a remarkable decade of post-punk activity that drew comparisons to The Stooges, Tim Buckley, and various outsider musicians. They would never tour and lacked ambition, so their powers were largely w…
Ultraman vs. Alien Metron
Tip! In the first years of its existence, starting in 1997, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet worked as a collective, inviting all and any of its participants to contribute compositions to the band's repertoire. Eventually, the Tentet would jettison scores and pre-planned structures altogether, opting for free improvisation, but on their early tours and initial recordings they played pieces written by the various band members. A marathon set of summer studio sessions in 2002, just off a U.S. …
McPhee Marker
Chicago-based saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark was invited to arrange a set of seventies music for a concert in 2019, and among the pieces he chose were tracks by funk legends Parliament and post-punk iconoclasts DNA. On this 12-inch 45rpm EP, Vandermark's band Marker presents a unique take on "Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples," drawn from Parliament's 1975 LP Mothership Connection, and DNA's "Egomaniac's Kiss," which first appeared on the classic 1978 Brian Eno-produced collection No …