★Rogueart
An Air Of Unreality
"An "air of unreality" characterizes the best free improvisation. This performance-captured during last year's Vision Festival in Manhattan's Judson Church-definitely ranks among the best on record this year. Part of this unreality has to do with fin…
Soul Travelers
"So, listen closely, and savor the sounds: treat them with delicate abandon, indulge in their intricately measured poignancy; but don't forget to relax (a little) and enjoy: You are in the hands of a master soul traveler."(Steven Loewy, excerpt from …
13 miniatures for Albert Ayler
Would it be that when everything finishes that everything starts? Rather than a postlude or a coda, the five minutes a cappella by Joe McPhee on the tenor saxophone placed here in thirteenth position, sound like a song of love and hope coloured utopi…
Three compositions
Despite the compositions’ respective demands, Nicole Mitchell and Black Earth Ensemble fully and vividly represented Roscoe Mitchell’s varied means of creating chemistry between written and improvised materials. At every turn in the program, they pla…
Passages
Lawrence Butch Morris developed the concept of “conduction” to account for a mode of Instant Composition based on the creative freedom of the players stimulated by the gestures of a central conductor. AP/DP, with this cd, invent the practice of music…
Roots Run Deep
Nicolas Humbert and his co-author Marc Parisotto decided to make a further montage of the readings and songs for the album "Roots Run Deep". There are short stories and poems set to music, beautifully interwoven with the music Yusef Lateef had pla…
Spontaneous Suite For Two Pianos
A 4-CD box set of 9 "Spontaneous Sweets", elaborate, magnificent and melodic piano improvisations, recorded by Connie Crothers & David Arner performing in the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, NY. "It was magical from the beginning. T…
Velvet Songs (To Baba Fred Anderson)
"This 2 cd set recorded live at the Velvet Lounge a year before the legendary Fred Anderson passed away, is a fitting tribute by 3 Chicagoans to one of their own, the master tenor player, teacher, Velvet Lounge owner, advocate and AACM member, who…
Numbers
A beautiful set of compositions from saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, presenting works recorded in the 2000s with performers including Thomas Buckner, Stephen Rush, Nils Bultman, William Winant, &c - "In the 45 years since he recorded Sound, Roscoe Mitch…
Unknown skies
...Every trio without a piano, or without a drums, or as in this case without a double bass, gains in incline what it loses in “balance”. It only takes a little sometimes. Everyone plays at ease across. Everyone can split themselves. There are no mor…
Conversations
William Parker has long taken an active role in the presentation of his own art (self-produced records/CDs, concerts, festivals, publications) and that of others. That initiative continues with this major work, an anthology of musician-to-musician i…
Reggaeology
Following the stream of time and the dances of Kâli, the successive incarnations of Bindu, more a crew, sailing, outward bound, an elective community of musicians, than a defined group of people, divulge the logbook of navigation by Hamid Drake. A lo…
Swimming In A Galaxy Of Goodwill And Sorrow
with Steve Swell: trombone Jemeel Moondoc: alto saxophoneWilliam Parker: double bass Hamid Drake: drum set - This is an album to be cherished, because it reaches back and incorporates styles from swing to post-modern free jazz; and because the play…
Contact
CONTACT is made of a DVD filmed during the October 20th 2004 concert at IRCAM (Paris, France) and of a CD recorded in Berkeley (California, USA) on October 13th and 14th 2002. "David Wessel, despite whatever label on can attach to his music, is very…
Transatlantic Visions
TRANSATLANTIC VISIONS is the live recording of the Vision Festival XIII concert (New-York, June 2008), which has been awarded "Best Performance of the Year" by the monthly magazine All About Jazz NY.
Red Morocco
Someday someone will write a history of modern music that will free us of the false dichotomies such as high vs. low, improviser vs. composer, classical vs. everything else… …The written materials Joe passed out to the musicians for Red Morocco was m…
Live At Last
Notwithstanding a fruitful career, the great, late bass player Malachi Favors was quite a discreet musician even though no one has forgotten his role as the central mainstay of the Art Ensemble of Chicago until his death in January 2004. Apart from t…
Right Hemisphere
Sharp-edged work from Right Hemisphere -- nothing too cerebral, and instead some great improvisations from a quartet that includes Matthew Shipp on piano, Rob Brown on alto sax, Joe Morris on bass, and Whit Dickey on drums! Shipp's brooding piano rea…