Jazz & Improvisation / Avant-Garde Jazz

About Monk is Giancarlo Schiaffini's album named after Thelonious Monk, recorded in April 1992 at Regson Studio in Milan. All compositions are Schiaffini's own. The band includes Gianluigi Trovesi on alto sax and clarinets, Eugenio Colombo on flute and soprano sax, Pasquale Innarella on French horn, Piero Leveratto on bass, Tiziano Tononi on drums and Fulvio Maras on percussion and electronics. Released by Pentaflowers.

2CD version. A new edition of Joshua Abrams’ 2015 2xLP magnum opus Magnetoception is at last here. Out-of-print on vinyl for a decade+, Magnetoception is the 3rd album, & 1st double album, in the saga of Natural Information Society. In a Berwyn, Illinois attic, February 2013, Abrams, guitarists Emmett Kelly & Jeff Parker, & grand master drummer Hamid Drake gathered around vintage Neumanns & a woodstove to record the nucleus of Magnetoception live to 2-track. Beamed-in over the next year at Abram…

Second album by Fredrik Ljungkvist’s Yun Kan 5, recorded in May 2006: seven of his compositions for saxophone, clarinet, piano, tuba, bass and drums, by the Atomic reedman and Swedish jazz musician of the year 2005.

Debut of Fredrik Ljungkvist’s Yun Kan 5, recorded for his 2004 Jazz in Sweden award: ten tunes balanced between composition and freedom, with Klas Nevrin, Mattias Welin, Jon Fält and Per-Åke Holmlander.

Very obscure self-released album of free improvisation by an Italian group featuring Angelo Avogadri.

Sole edition of 1978 album on Sweet Dragon by Danish free jazz quintet. Never re-issued on either LP or CD. With original innersleeve.

1979 live album on ICP/AdLib by the core members of the Pool (Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg) with many Italian musicians including Giancarlo Schiaffini, Enrico Rava, Eugenio Colombo and Gianluigi Trovesi. With original innersleeve.

2003 CD-only avant-garde jazz album on CIM Records by the Danish trumpet player's quartet featuring Luther Thomas, Ole Rømer and Nils Davidsen.

Rare original and sole edition with silk-screened cover of the 1971 free jazz album on Group-Music Productions by the Dutch quartet with Burton Greene guesting.

Fred Anderson's 1979 session with Larry Hayrod, Hamid Drake and Adam Rudolph, first issued by Nessa in 1984; the CD adds Drake's previously unreleased Tabla Peace.

Rob Brown on alto saxophone and flute with Roy Campbell, Chris Lightcap and Jackson Krall, playing Brown's own compositions. No More Records, 2000.

The Roy Campbell Pyramid Trio with William Parker and Zen Matsuura, recorded in New York on February 12, 1998, liner notes by Campbell and Steve Dalachinsky. No More Records, 1998.

The Frank Lowe Quintet with Bertha Hope, Jack Walrath, Steve Neil and Ralph Peterson, recorded in concert for WMUA on February 26, 1998. No More Records, 2001.

Following the critical acclaim of her 2022 breakout solo debut, Sweet Tooth, and her rock project Deerlady, which was named a Stereogum Band To Watch, the eight-track album was born out of years of listening to repatriated recordings that came back to Obomsawin’s community in 2023. Coincidentally, the ethnological language recordings that were recovered by Odanak from Dartmouth College came just after the release of her debut album. Obomsawin blends these with her own field recordings. Through t…

Eric Dolphy live in 1962-63, in Gunther Schuller's Twentieth-Century Innovations series at Carnegie Hall and in Syracuse: his own quartet with Richard Davis and J.C. Moses, three Schuller third-stream pieces with strings and Jim Hall, and a Donna Lee jam with Phil Woods, Benny Golson and Don Ellis.

Illegal Crowns, the quartet of Taylor Ho Bynum, Mary Halvorson, Benoît Delbecq and Tomas Fujiwara, recorded at Firehouse 12 in June 2022, with three compositions each by Fujiwara, Halvorson and Delbecq.

Two duo albums by pianist Matt Mitchell: Oblong with Kate Gentile on drums and Aplomb with Ches Smith on drums, percussion, vibraphone and timpani, recorded in Brooklyn in summer 2022 and mixed by David Torn.

Debut album by Abenaki bassist, singer and composer Mali Obomsawin, built on songs and stories of her family, with Savannah Harris, Miriam Elhajli, Allison Burik, Noah Campbell and Taylor Ho Bynum. First pressing on black vinyl.

Nick Dunston's trio with Kalia Vandever on trombone and DoYeon Kim on gayageum: open structures between song and soundscape for bass, trombone and Korean zither, with liner notes by Wendy Eisenberg.

A composition by saxophonist Travis Laplante for a nine-piece ensemble, dedicated to the muse of Miles Davis and recorded live at the Yellow Barn Music Festival in Putney, Vermont, in July 2021.

Debut of the trio Secret People: Nathaniel Morgan on alto saxophone, Dustin Carlson on guitar and Bass VI, Kate Gentile on drums and vibraphone, recorded in August 2019.

Debut album by alto saxophonist David Leon with Sonya Belaya on piano, Florian Herzog on bass and Stephen Boegehold on drums, recorded in Brooklyn in February 2020, with liner notes by Kris Davis.

The final recording by bassist Mario Pavone, made in March 2021 two months before his death, with his Dialect Trio of Matt Mitchell and Tyshawn Sorey and Dave Ballou on trumpet and arrangements.

Cellist Christopher Hoffman's quartet with Bryan Carrott on vibraphone, Rashaan Carter on bass and Craig Weinrib on drums, plus David Virelles on one track. Translucent red vinyl, limited to 200 copies.

Father and son duo: Michael Formanek on double bass and Peter Formanek on tenor saxophone and clarinet, recorded in December 2019 after their first tour together, with pieces by each of them and by both.

The complete first concert of the two-trumpet quartet of Herb Robertson and Dave Ballou with Drew Gress and Tom Rainey, recorded at The Stone NYC in June 2007: the first set reissued, the second issued for the first time.

First vinyl edition of Nick Dunston's 2019 debut Atlantic Extraction, on translucent yellow vinyl limited to 200 copies: a quintet of double bass, flutes, violin and viola, guitar and drums.

Michaël Attias' first solo album, recorded in one session with no overdubs: alto saxophone played with the left hand and piano with the right, the saxophone setting the piano strings into sympathetic resonance.

Guitarist Dustin Carlson's septet with Nathaniel Morgan, Eric Trudel, Danny Gouker, Matt Mitchell on Prophet 6, Adam Hopkins and Kate Gentile, recorded in 2017 and mixed and mastered by David Torn.

Fifth anniversary LP of Adam Hopkins' 2018 debut Crickets, the first Out Of Your Head release, on 180g black vinyl with redesigned TJ Huff artwork and the extra track Grounded, recorded remotely by the sextet in winter 2020-2021.

Original and sole edition of the 1986 Canada-only album on RPR Records. Never re-issued on either vinyl or CD.

Very rare original US edition on Impulse!/ABC of the 1970 album featuring Pharoah Sanders, Joe Henderson and Ron Carter.

Original Japanese edition on A&M of the 1984 2LP tribute to Thelonious Monk produced by Hal Wilner. With insert and obi.

The inspiration for Album l and Album II began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance, the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film Drive My Car was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spar who …

Rare 1970's re-press on Nessa of the 1970 album with the soundtrack to the Moshé Mizrahi film.

For their thirteenth installment, Felt look once again to their city of Copenhagen, specifically to more alumni of the Rytmisk Musik Konservatorium (Rhythmic Music Conservatory). Following soon after Ginte Preisaite’s debut for the label, this long player from Vincent Yuen Ruiz is a grand departure from Preisaite’s experimental electroacoustic pop compositions, instead offering an elegant and pensive suite of late-night, wide-eyed ambient jazz works centred on piano, double bass and percussion; …

1983 re-issue on Discovery Records of the influential 1958 jazz-avant-poetry album by experimental poet Patchen, who had previuosly collaborated with John Cage, reading his poetry backed by a chamber-jazz composition by Ferguson.

Roscoe Mitchell and Michele Rabbia are made for each other, because they've always made everything audible in their respective music and improvisations. The materials their instruments are made of; the bodies, gestures and movements that breathe life into them; the ideas and visions that guide them or lead them astray; the systems of play and thought they freely use; their imaginations. You can hear everything on the percussion of one, the slightest contact, the slightest clash, the slightest im…

Solo (Steinway) piano. Los Angeles, September 1982. Just read the titles: "A Dress for Renee" - infectious melody, keeps coming back like a persistent thought. "Shades of Soweto" - South Africa seen from South Central. "The Hero's Last Dance" - whoever that hero was. "First Call of the Humming Bird" - nature breaking through concrete. And then "Forgiving" - as a closing statement, as a breath. Horace Tapscott was a fierce critic of racial bigotry, and his music never hid it. But here there's als…

Solo piano. Recorded March 1983, Los Angeles. Five pieces, forty-one minutes. Where Sun Ra meets Erik Satie. This is the third volume in what would become Tapscott's monumental series of solo recordings - over thirty hours captured between 1982 and 1985, documenting his own compositions alongside works by unknown Black composers in the Los Angeles area. Producer Tom Albach considered these the most important music Horace Tapscott ever made. The titles read like chapters from a life: "The Tuus," …