★Dark Tree
Standards Combustion
Trio with Daunik Lazro on tenor sax, Benjamin Duboc on bass and Mathieu Bec on drums. The album is entitled Standards Combustion, 9 tracks, mostly jazz standards, 2 Ayler compositions, 2 by Coltrane, 1 by Lacy and 1 by Shorter…
Recorded at Les Instants Chavirés, Montreuil, France on November 17 and 18, 2022.
To Live And Breathe...
*In process of stocking* An international trio (USA/FR/IT) recorded live in Italy during their 2017 European tour.
Legacies For Our Grandchildren - Live In Hollywood, 1995
Previously unpublished live recording, under exclusive license from the Horace Tapscott Family. The first opportunity to listen to Horace’s working quintet from the '90s! Includes a 16-page booklet with liner notes by the original producers of those recordings: Don Snowden and David Keller, photos by Warren Berman and some rare documents.
Volumes II - Fiction Musicale Et Chorégraphique - Création Pour Grand Orchestre Et Corps Actants
*In process of stocking* 'Volumes II—Fiction Musicale et Chorégraphique is an ambitious, large-scale composition by the French double bassist/composer Benjamin Duboc for orchestra, voice, and physical movement. The composition unfolds in a long sequence of highly disparate parts, beginning with ambient noises and a spoken prelude before moving into more overtly musical passages. The orchestra commences with a sustained, droning chord marked by a slowly developing, internally unstable drift of pi…
Stomiidae
A collective trio of vanguard improvisers and frequent New York collaborators, Daniel Levin on cello, Chris Pitsiokos on alto saxophone, and Brandon Seabrook on electric guitar, a working band captured here in the studio at Firehouse 12 for a powerful set of idiosyncratic and exhilarating improvisations with tracks and the title named for a family of deep sea fish.
Le Funambule
With mystery and drama the duo of clarinetist Sylvain Kassap and double bassist Benjamin Duboc start their performance with whisperings, Kassap's expanded range and vocabulary on the clarinet evocative against Duboc's strong bowing and plucking, as they both take their listeners across a tightrope of carefully balanced, masterfully evolving free conversation.
Live at Bing Theatre - Los Angeles, 1985
CD Version. The only time that Bradford, Carter, Newton and Horace Tapscott have all played on stage together, along with Robert Miranda! Roberto Miranda's Home Music Ensemble Live at Bing Theatre: Los Angeles, 1985, personnel: Roberto Miranda (bass, congas), Bobby Bradford (cornet, tpt), John Carter (cl), James Newton (fl), Horace Tapscott (p), Thom D. Mason (a and t sax, b cl.), Louis R. Miranda Sr. (voc, perc), Louis R. Miranda, Jr. (drs), David Bottenbley (guitar, elec bass, perc, voc), Elia…
The Hatch
** 200 copies **“The Hatch” was recorded by the duo comprising of Julien Desprez (electric guitar) and Mette Rasmussen (alto saxophone). Two different cultures, individual styles and absolutely different streams all joined together – that’s how it would be possible to describe the music of this duo. Here meets three jazz streams – European, American and Scandinavian avant-garde jazz and the main elements. The modern and innovative playing techniques, the newest tendencies of experimental jazz, f…
Why Don't You Listen? - Live at LACMA, 1998
CD Version. This previously unreleased concert recording by the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra of pianist-composer-bandleader Horace Tapscott and a chorus under the direction of vocalist Dwight Trible is a wonderful example of how Tapscott channeled the political and cultural aspirations of a community into music of deep beauty and lasting value.
The album opens with a big band version of “aiee! The Phantom,” a Tapscott original propelled by a vamp that spurs Michael Sessions into a melodic tenor…
Ancestral Echoes - The Covina Sessions 1976
Dark Tree Records is very pleased to announce you the release, under exclusive license from the Horace Tapscott family, of this previously unpublished studio recording. In January 1976, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra recorded at Audiotronics Recording Studio in Covina, east of Los Angeles. Musicians assumed these tapes were lost, but they survived in Horace’s archive and a copy of some tracks in that of Nimbus West. Four pieces appear on this CD: Ancestral Echoes, the Eternal Egypt Suite, Sket…
The Music Finds a Way
In the post World War II era, dozens of young African Americans in South Central Los Angeles found their way to careers in music. In a community facing challenging social conditions and with little to no outside support, they would become artists, supported by the best that their community and culture had to offer, from neighborhood and family to schools and churches, private teachers, formal and informal spaces and institutions, and more than a few unsung heroes.
“The neighborhood was tough, b…
No U-Turn - Live in Pasadena, 1975
This previously unissued recording of cornetist Bobby Bradford and woodwinds player John Carter at Caltech’s Baxter Lecture Hall, with two bassists - Stanley Carter and Roberto Miranda - and drummer William Jeffrey, is the earliest known documentation of the Bradford/Carter duo in performance. It’s historic for a couple of reasons: It captures Carter on soprano, an instrument he would soon set aside in favor of the clarinet (which he plays here as well), and it includes a rare live recording of …
Pourtant Les Cimes Des Arbres
**2020 stock** I am not sure whether the French or English translation do credit to Japanese haiku master Bashō's original verse, yet the music on this fantastic album by the French trio Daunik Lazro on baritone saxophone, Benjamin Duboc on bass and Didier Lasserre on snare drums and cymbals manage to evocate the short poem's wonderful power. All three musicians understand the power of restraint, the value of less-is-more to create depth and tension and beauty, and they also manage to play in…