Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

A solo piano journey through spontaneity, intimacy and the unexpected. On Undress & Fly, pianist and improviser Josep-Maria Balanyà invites the listener into a world where sound takes shape in the moment. Across nine solo pieces, he moves fluidly between agile, energetic playing and passages of striking delicacy, letting intuition guide the music toward unexpected destinations. Balanyà treats the piano as both instrument and terrain for discovery. In “Relaxed Discussion” and “Jump And Fly Away,”…

A visceral encounter of electric guitar, saxophones, bass clarinet and drums—where free improvisation cuts close to the nerve. On Ecorchure, Jérémy Baysse, Jean-Luc Petit and Fabrice Favriou create music that is raw, restless and alive to the moment. The trio’s second album brings electric guitar, sopranino and tenor saxophones, contrabass clarinet and drums into an uncompromising dialogue—one that moves from uneasy quiet to bursts of abrasive intensity. Across seven pieces, the musicians build …

This recording documents a first encounter. For his 60th birthday, Stefan invited two musicians he had previously met only online. We stepped into the same room, the same air, the same sound. By the end of the night, the trio had already begun. Thanks to Barbara and Norbert at BLOCK7, Bernd and all the birthday guests who supported this concert.

"Suspensão (Suspension in Portuguese ) is one of the many free improvised ensembles that prolific violist Ernesto Rodrigues leads. A Question Asked by the Empty Horizon is the thirteenth album of this ensemble that has been operating since 2016 with a rotating line-up of local musicians coming from different backgrounds, with different instrumentation.  The current version of Suspensão features a nonet with violinist Inês Ferreira, double bass player Hernâni Faustino, trumpeter João Silva, melod…

"With a total of three members, Imprints of Experiences captures the largest unit of the releases reviewed here, and its sound is correspondingly (and comparatively) full. Schindler deploys a range of instruments, some heard before (clarinets, cornet, saxophone) and one (b-flat tubax) unique to this recording. Harald Kimmig meanwhile contributes an energetic violin and Eric Zwang Eriksson, an array of prattling percussion. Playing live over two nights in Munich in 2024, the trio offers quite a …

"Recorded live in Lisbon, violist Ernesto Rodrigues joins vocalist Maria Radich and violinist Maria do Mar in a free improv trio where close-range string interplay and crackle box electronics create high-register tension, while voice moves within the texture through whispers and cries, shaping an intimate, spatially focused performance balancing density, restraint, and evolving interaction." - Squidco

"Framed as a shifting, dreamlike improvisation, this electroacoustic quartet led by violist Ernesto Rodrigues, with cellist Guilherme Rodrigues, Carlos Santos on electronics, and percussionist Monsieur Trinité, unfolds a fluid free improv session that dissolves into evolving textures, balancing tension, restraint, and collective interplay within an immersive sonic landscape." - Squidco

Violinist Carlos Zíngaro, violist Ernesto Rodrigues and cellist Guilherme Rodrigues come together on 'Pataphysique, a new album of free improvisation that places close listening and adventurous sound-making at its heart. Across six pieces—“I” through “VI”—the trio explores the expressive range of its string instruments, shaping an open-ended musical conversation in real time. Rather than follow a fixed path, the music unfolds through shifts in texture, gesture and intensity, inviting listeners i…

"A Berlin-recorded trio of violin, viola, and cello with voice, where Gerhard Uebele, Ernesto Rodrigues, and Guilherme Rodrigues shape twelve concise movements of hushed, textural free improv, blending extended string techniques and subtle vocalizations into a fragile, reductionist sound world of intimate interplay, suspended time, and finely detailed sonic nuance." - Squidco

Released by Creative Sources Recordings, Livingry captures a vivid live encounter between Lawrence Casserley, Dominic Lash, Massimo Magee and Phillip Marks. Recorded at London’s Hundred Years Gallery on 4 October 2025, the album brings together Casserley’s Signal Processing Instrument, Lash’s double bass and electric guitar, Magee’s alto saxophone and clarinet, and Marks’s percussion in a set of six freely improvised pieces.  Across just over an hour, the quartet shapes music that feels alive to…

This bundle brings together New Light and Incantations, the two sets that Sunny Murray, Arthur Doyle and Rasul Siddik played at Thelonious in Bordeaux on October 21st, 1999, never released before and now issued by NoBusiness Records. Murray is on drums, Doyle on tenor saxophone, flute and voice, Siddik on trumpet.New Light opens with a long trio improvisation and goes on with Doyle's African Express, Don Cherry's Complete Communion and a closing piece whose title is unknown. Incantations has thr…

This bundle brings together New Light and Incantations, the two sets that Sunny Murray, Arthur Doyle and Rasul Siddik played at Thelonious in Bordeaux on October 21st, 1999, never released before and now issued by NoBusiness Records. Murray is on drums, Doyle on tenor saxophone, flute and voice, Siddik on trumpet.New Light opens with a long trio improvisation and goes on with Doyle's African Express, Don Cherry's Complete Communion and a closing piece whose title is unknown. Incantations has thr…

Debut of Trio Imagination, the group that grew out of Trio 3: David Virelles on piano with the legendary rhythm section of Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille, recorded at the Van Gelder Studio. On Pi Recordings.

More early-1970s free music from the MND circle, taped mostly at Hamburg's Fabrik: Sven-Åke Johansson, Norbert Eisbrenner and cellist Peter Dyck with guests, on a double LP that follows Freedom Suite.

Flutist Nicole Mitchell and percussionist Joe Westerlund, a former mentee of Milford Graves, improvise in a rural studio near Chapel Hill: looped flutes, mbiras, metallophones and live electronics, with no overdubs.

CP Unit in real time: Chris Pitsiokos, Sam Lisabeth, Henry Fraser and Jason Nazary between harmolodic funk, noise rock and musique concrète, recorded in Brooklyn in 2018.

Second CP Unit album on Clean Feed: Chris Pitsiokos with Sam Lisabeth and two rhythm sections, between Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, noise and Stockhausen.

The first CP Unit album: Chris Pitsiokos with Brandon Seabrook, Tim Dahl and Weasel Walter, jazz forms filled with noise and rock, recorded in Brooklyn in 2016.

Double CD by the Berlin CP Unit (Chris Pitsiokos, Marta Warelis, Dan Peter Sundland, Luca Marini): studio takes from October 2025 and a concert from April 2026.

Slow, static forms for alto saxophone, accordion, synthesizer, bass and drums: the Chris Pitsiokos Ensemble between late-1960s Miles Davis and Morton Feldman.

CP Unit's first live album, recorded at the Moers Festival and at Unlimited in Wels in 2018: Chris Pitsiokos with Sam Lisabeth, Henry Fraser and Jason Nazary.

Live quartet of Keiji Haino, Otomo Yoshihide, Chris Pitsiokos and Tatsuya Nakamura, recorded at Goodman in Tokyo on September 1, 2024.

Debut of the open improvisation collective founded by Philipp Hager, with Andrew Bernstein of Horse Lords: four pieces of free jazz, polyrhythmic drums, droning bass and synths, cut in one day.

Ikue Mori and Craig Taborn, the duo Highsmith, return after ten years and open up into three trios with Bill Frisell, Tomeka Reid and John Zorn, plus a few quintet pieces.

Raoul Björkenheim on guitar and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums, old partners from Scorch Trio, in nine pieces of free music recorded in Helsinki: wild and raw, at times delicate and introspective.

Cellist Tristan Honsinger and guitarist Olaf Rupp in their first recorded duo, Berlin, March 2010: one hour-long improvisation, Can You Imagine a Conversation Between a Table and a Chair?, in eight parts.

Peter Kowald solo on double bass and voice, live at Podewil in Berlin in November 2000 and edited by Kowald himself in June 2002: a concert version of his solo album Was da ist, in seven parts.

Manuela+, the quartet of Rüdiger Carl, Jin Hi Kim on komungo, Hans Reichel on guitar and daxophone and Carlos Zingaro on violin, live at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin in 1999: an hour-long improvisation in seven parts.

Peter Brötzmann's Die Like a Dog Quartet with Toshinori Kondo, William Parker and Hamid Drake, live at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin in November 1994: two long pieces, Close Up (Man) and Close Up (Woman).

Fred Van Hove alone at the piano: Prosper, recorded live at Flöz in Berlin in 1981, and Die Letzte, recorded at Studio Casablanca in 1986, the two SAJ solo LPs on one CD.

Radu Malfatti on trombone and Stephan Wittwer on guitar in Innsbruck, February 1977: the duo LP Und? plus Untitled?, a fourteen-minute piece from the same tapes released here for the first time.

Peter Brötzmann solo on clarinets and alto, tenor and bass saxophones, recorded at the FMP studio in May 1976: the twelve pieces of the LP Brötzmann/Solo, from 27 seconds to ten minutes.

Irène Schweizer, Rüdiger Carl and Louis Moholo: the LP Messer, live in Moers and in the FMP studio in 1975, followed by Tuned Boots, the twenty-minute trio piece recorded in Graz in 1977.

Steve Lacy in Berlin: the 1975 solo soprano recordings of the Stabs LP, plus the 1977 quintet with Steve Potts, Irène Aebi, Kent Carter and Oliver Johnson playing Esteem and Follies at the Workshop Freie Musik.

The Globe Unity Orchestra at ten years old, recorded in Baden-Baden in November 1975 with Braxton, Rava, Wheeler, Brötzmann, Parker, Mangelsdorff and Lovens: five pieces from inside the orchestra, nearly all unreleased until this CD.

Celebrated Italian saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano collaborated with Martin Phillips on his recent biography of Keith Tippett which was published by Jazz In Britain. During that process he also sent us the recordings that make up this new release. Recorded live in Geneva, Switzerland in February 1991, this 2 CD set is taken from two performances of extraordinary dexterity and beauty that feature Tippett on piano plus his usual array of objects and toys alongside Ottaviano’s virtuoso soprano saxoph…

Chapter Seven, Bengt Berger’s Swedish supergroup of three saxophones, two basses and two drummers, on its 1988 Jazz in Sweden album: West African and Indian accents, with tunes by Ornette Coleman and Offenbach.

Two new archival LPs from Formalibera, Alga Marghen's free jazz imprint, both drawn from the same circle of Copenhagen musicians around 1970, gathered here as a pair. On one LP, More Peace: Tordenskjolds Soldater (Jesper Nehammer on tenor saxophone, Ole Matthiessen on piano, Henrik Hove on bass, Jon Finsen on drums) live at Jazzhus Montmartre in late April 1970, shortly before they recorded Peace for Spectator Records. The four Matthiessen compositions of that album stretch out here at far great…

Live at Copenhagen's Café Montmartre in April 1970, Tordenskjolds Soldater (Jesper Nehammer, Ole Matthiessen, Henrik Hove, Jon Finsen) stretch out the four Matthiessen pieces from their Spectator album Peace, restored from the original tapes.

Number 4 in Fat Cat's "Split Series" with a 1998 live piece for the seminal free-improvisation group backed with a harsh studio piece by the Japanese king of noise. Edition with plain white cover.