★Esp-Disk
World Construct
Throughout his long and prolific career, Matthew Shipp has presented several different and impressive trio formations. Among the featured members have been bassists William Parker, and Joe Morris, and drummers Guillermo E. Brown, Whit Dickey, and Susie Ibarra. In 2015, two other premier players, bassist Michael Bisio, and drummer Newman Taylor Baker stepped in as the rhythm section on The Conduct of Jazz (Thirsty Ear). Their fourth album as a unit, World Construct makes the group the most enduri…
SILVA
Bára Gísladóttir is an Icelandic composer and double bassist based in Copenhagen. She is an active performer and regularly plays her own music, mostly solo or with her long-time collaborator Skúli Sverrisson. Additionally, she is the double bassist of Elja Ensemble. Occasionally, she performs as a soloist with ensembles or orchestras, most recently in her own double bass concert, "Hringla," with the Copenhagen Philharmonic. Every sound on SILVA is of the double bass, processed to various degrees…
Sonic Fiction
*2023 stock* After a duo album and two trio albums by Shipp and Walerian, all for ESP-Disk', we get a quartet album from them that continues their strategy of working with different musicians each time out. Bisio and Dickey are long-time collaborators with Shipp, but the addition of Walerian's Zen style changes the dynamics of their interactions. Walerian and Dickey, masters of restraint, were a match waiting to be made, and their instant rapport is one of the attractions of this album.
Your Prayer
Super Tip! Reissue, originally released in 1967. Frank Wright returned to the studio in May 1967 to make his second album using a quintet of players little-known at the time but now legends to free-jazz cognoscenti. Trumpeter Jacques Coursil, who almost made an album for ESP-Disk' himself, went on to the greatest fame of the players besides Wright; alto saxophonist Arthur Jones was not recorded nearly as often as his talents deserved; Steve Tintweis's stint playing with Albert Ayler raised the y…
Frank Wright Trio
Reissue, originally released on ESP Disk' in 1966. Frank "The Reverend" Wright was one of the most powerful saxophonists to pick up on Albert Ayler's freedom and ferocious playing. Born in Mississippi and raised in Memphis, TN and then Cleveland, OH, he started in music as a bassist in blues bands but switched to tenor sax under the influence of his Cleveland friend Albert Ayler. Wright's "energy music" approach to tenor saxophone was influenced by Ayler but at the time in the '60s Wright's inte…
Esp-Disk
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* In October 2018, Steve Holtje, the mastermind of the pioneering American music label ESP, was invited by the 8th OCT-LOFT International Jazz Festival to give a lecture in Shenzhen entitled "55 Years of Pioneering and Non-Mainstream Music: The Continuing Revolution of ESP-DISK", unveiling the label for the first time to Chinese The talk was entitled "55 Years of Pioneering and Non-Mainstream Music: The Continuing Revolution of ESP-DISK", and unveiled the myste…
Local Colour
ESP-Disk' present a CD reissue of Peter Lemer Quintet's Local Colour, originally released in 1968. British pianist Peter Lemer studied with Jaki Byard, Paul Bley, and Bill Dixon. His lengthy and distinguished career has found him in a wide variety of settings. As an avant-garde jazz pianist, he recorded with Spontaneous Music Ensemble; in the jazz fusion realm, he was a member of Gilgamesh and Paraphernalia; as a progressive rock keyboardist, he played with Gong, Baker Gurvitz Army, the Mike Old…
The Call
ESP-Disk present a vinyl reissue of Henry Grimes Trio's The Call, originally released in 1966. It has occasionally been assumed that Henry Grimes got this December 28, 1965 recording date as a reward for his long service in the avant-garde of jazz. Having already honed his musical conception with a varied range of players, from Benny Goodman and Arnett Cobb to Lee Morgan, Gerry Mulligan, and Sonny Rollins to McCoy Tyner, Steve Lacy, Albert Ayler -- including Spirits Rejoice (ESPDISK 1020CD/LP)--…
Live at Café Monmartre 1966 Volume Three
Live At Café Montmartre Volume Three features more great music from the Don Cherry Quintet. Recorded in March 1966, Don Cherry joins forces with Gato Barbieri, Karl Berger, Bo Stief and Aldo Romano for two exciting, extended performances of "Complete Communion" and "Remembrance". A recording that will surely be known as classic, Volume Three is essential music for all fans of improvised music.
Live at Café Monmartre 1966
First release of this 1966 recording from the ESP-Disk vaults; featuring: Don Cherry (trumpet); Gato Barbieri (tenor saxophone); Bo Stief (bass); Karl Berger (vibraphone); Aldo Romano (drums). Live performance from the legendary Café Montmartre in Copenhagen, Denmark, recorded in 1966. Digitally remastered. Also included: the ESP DVD-audio sampler, featuring selections of almost every ESP artist. Over 12 hours of music! Digitally remastered. "Don Cherry, more than any other artist in the jazz of…
Free Music One And Two
One of the most uncompromising free jazz records ever made, this one-off improvisation by a group of Dutch players, led by percussionist Pierre Courbois, is an archetype of the style
Percussion Ensemble
Percussionist Milford Graves recorded his first and only ESP-Disk' recording on August 5th, 1966 along with fellow percussionist, the late Sonny Morgan. According to Milford Graves, the titles were given numbers according to how many beats were in each measure. Milford Graves has been one of the main drummers in the free mode scene (known for skillful inclusion of Asian and African rhythmic ingredients into his solos). He worked with the New York Art Quartet, Giuseppi Logan, Albert Ayler, Don Pu…
And Company
** 2021 Stock ** The Alabama born saxophonist/clarinetist Marzette Watts had a short lived career as a member of the sixties avant-garde, but achieved legendary status for the company he kept in his Cooper Square loft where the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders often congregated. This debut date is best known for the presence of players, who like Watts, were to become renowned for the rareness of their recorded output, including Sonny Sharrock,…
The Forest and the Zoo
"In 1966, the late Steve Lacy visited the new ESP-DISK office at 156 Fifth Avenue with a master tape of his concert in Buenos Aires with his quartet... He offered to sell the master for what I thought was an exorbitant price. I bought it. ... In 1992, the master tape was brought to engineer Ken Robertson at the Sony Studio, who observed that it had been recorded out of phase, and he corrected the phasing." - Bernard Stollman
"Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy's impressive career was filled with man…
On Tour
First-ever American CD edition of this lost classic, recorded "live" during ESP's 1966 New York State College Tour. The "piano harp" credit is Burton Greene's way of noting that he plays inside the piano, directly on the strings – the first jazz pianist to do so on record, taking a page from avant-gardist Henry Cowell's book. In his notes to the original LP, included complete in this reissue, Greene writes, "The tour found people largely unexposed to this music. They were often shaken up. Some w…
Trio
Lowell Davidson recorded this singular session on July 27th, 1965 with Gary Peacock and the ever amazing Milford Graves. Sadly, the only recording ever released by Davidson, it remains fresh and exciting 40 plus years later. On Ornette Coleman’s recommendation, ESP-Disk’ owner Bernard Stollman signed up pianist Lowell Davidson (then majoring in biochemistry at Harvard) for this album without having heard him play. Davidson came to New York and got to work with the elite rhythm section of drummer…
This Week Is in Two Weeks
** Edition of 500 ** Recorded direct to lathe cut, this pair of spontaneous creations teams two Berlin-based horn players with two New Yorkers of broad-ranging vision. Since their inception in 2003, Talibam!’s ultimate goal has been to wed disparate ideologies through proficiency, controversy, inquiry, and compassion. This is their fifth release on ESP-Disk’. Silke Eberhard, alto saxophone; Nikolaus Neuser, trumpet; Matt Mottel, piano, synthesizer, three-string guitar; Kevin Shea, drums.
No Love is Sorrow
ESP Disk presents the third solo album 'No Love Is Sorrow' by Buck Curran (of the duo Arborea). Buck Curran - vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, Ebow, piano. Adele Pappalardo - additional vocals. Dipak Kumar Chakraborty - Tabla on Blue Raga. Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering, Montreal. Album cover photo and layout - Sarp Tuncer.
Gowanus Sessions II
Gowanus Session II was seven years in the planning. Thollem McDonas, Nels Cline, and William Parker convened at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn on January 3rd, 2012 and recorded two complete albums. The first was Gowanus Session I, released by Porter Records in April of 2012. GS II was put aside to eventually complete the five-album palindromic cycle of trio albums Nels and Thollem ambitiously set out to realize. The albums in between include Radical Empathy with Michael Wimberly (Relative Pitch,…
Spiritual Unity
2023 repress. LP version. 180 gram virgin vinyl, with original artwork restored. Spiritual Unity, recorded on July 10, 1964, is the album that made Albert Ayler and ESP-Disk' famous (or, in some people's eyes/ears, infamous). Mr. Ayler had already recorded in Europe and, in February '64, in New York, but this was the first album on which neither he nor his collaborators held back. It was also ESP's first jazz recording. Spiritual Unity presented a new improvisation paradigm: looser structure, le…