Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

*2022 stock* Futura Records presents Dizzy Reece quintet's From in to out. Dizzy Reece (trompette), John Gilmore (saxophone ténor), Siegfried Kessler (piano), Patrice Caratini (contrebasse) & Art Taylor (batterie)  Recorded on 23th octobre 1970 at la Salle des fêtes de Créteil (France)

Bass solo by Barre Phillips recorded out of a 3 hour session in St James Norlands church, London 30 nov 1968.

*2022 stock* Pianist Mal Waldron first ever live album has been released in 1970 on tiny French Futura label. It contains four longish (each - over ten minute long)compositions, recorded in May 1970 at American Cultural Center in Paris. Mal plays in his most comfortable format - trio,two other members are local musicians who will never record with Waldron again. Twenty-four years old bassist Patrice Caratini will play on Kenny Clarke's French-released album " Kenny "To Day"" in 1980 and will col…

*2022 stock* Tip! Michel Portal, a brilliant clarinetist, saxophonist and performer from the world of contemporary classical music, became one of the most important actors of the new European improvised music in the early 1960s.While pursuing a parallel career in classical music, he multiplied his encounters with the most active creators of the new European jazz, as well as with various foreign musicians visiting France. This album, recorded on the Futura label in 1970, was made possible thanks …

Temporary Super Offer! "Attempts to dismiss Sun Ra as an “outsider” artist, an eccentric who made strange claims, are always own goals. Of course he was an outsider. That was precisely his point. And not just an outsider. He came from so far away we could not imagine it. But he also came from right inside American culture and was deeply shaped by it. There is perhaps no more representative an American artist of the modern period. If the Saturn V rocket was the symbol one kind of hegemony, govern…

This is the third issue of the new We Jazz Magazine, 128 pages, 174 x 250 mm in size and printed on 140g Edixion paper with laminated 300g Invercote covers. Stories include Joe Henderson by Daniel Spicer, International Anthem by Tina Edwards, Tokyo Jazz Joints by Philip Arneill, Ben Lamar Gay by Stewart Smith, Smooth Jazz by Francis Gooding, ESP-Disk by Matti Nives, Scottish Folk & Jazz by Gareth Allen, The Lisbon Scene by Rui Miguel Abreu, plus many more. This is a magazine put together by a qu…

Includes three albums:   MJJ423CP - Eternal Now (LP, Pink)   MJJ424CB - Brown Rice (LP, Brown)   MJJ425CY - Hear And Now (LP, Yellow)

A breathtaking self-conscious free-jazz masterwork, 'Rise Vision Comin'' summarizes more than 30 years of musical and theoretical/political expression from renowned activist/scholar/free-jazz pioneer Haki R. Standing on the verge of spiritual jazz aesthetic, his music remains timeless & unforgettable after it's longstanding creation. The first album by the group Rise Vision Comin was released in 1976, and features among others Wallace Roney on trumpet, Clarence Seay on bass and Agyei Akoto on sa…

Rare CD by this trio comprised of Masayuki Takayanagi (guitar and effects), Peter Kowald (double bass) and Keiki Midorokawa (cello), recorded on April 29, 1983 in Tokyo.

2026 Re-issue. A cornerstone of postwar Japanese free improvisation, captured before three thousand listeners at the ninth Moers New Jazz Festival on 26 May 1980 and issued later that year as TBM-5023. By this point Masayuki "Jojo" Takayanagi had spent more than a decade refining his theory of mass projection - a model of collective improvisation in which the ensemble operates not as a sequence of soloists but as a single density field, modulating texture rather than line - and the New Direction…

Evan Parker's ElectroAcoustic Ensemble with Sainkho Namtchylak, recorded at Victoriaville on 19 May 1996 and released in 2021: saxophones, bass, violin and percussion processed live by Walter Prati and Marco Vecchi.

The title to be taken literally, these two solo concerts recorded in Canada by French-based US bassist Barre Phillips, the first recorded at Vancouver Western Front in 1989, the 2nd from the 35th International Festival Music Festival of Victoriaville in 2019, both exemplary concerts showing his masterful skills and ability to captivate then and now.

Rova Saxophone Quartet's studio album of compositions from 2013 to 2017, recorded in Oakland: Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams, Larry Ochs and Jon Raskin moving between written structures and group improvisation.

On the 30th anniversary of the Victo Festival Anthony Braxton took to the stage for a magnificent solo performance on the alto sax, performing 8 spontaneous compositions and an 8+ minute version of "Body and Soul", seamlessly crossing lyrical and complex approaches to the horn using his unique intervallic, trimbral and diagrammatic language, a stunning and embraceable accomplishment.

Two masters who rarely play together--guitarist Fred Frith and saxophonist Evan Parker--performing together as a duo at the 30th Musique Actuelle Festival in Victoriaville, Canada for an amazing exchange of ideas and intensely subtle dialog.

**Numbered edition of 200** Silent Water presents Peachinguinha by Peachfuzz, who are João Almeida: trumpet, Norberto Lobo: electric guitar, João Lopes Pereira: drums. recorded by João Almeida at Fonte Santa, Alandroal, march 2021

"A real cause for celebration. A performance distinguished by gleeful energy and audacious dada wit. It possesses a vigor of discovery and invention that makes it sound timeless." - Cadence "A great and enjoyable session from three of the most creative and unique musicians in European avant-garde music." - All Music Guide"Wonderful, intoxicating stuff. Together theses three troubadours tiptoe exaggeratedly through pastiches of bop, cabaret, baroque, and lounge, and work through dozens of mood ch…

Black Editions presents “Historic Music Past Tense Future”, the first ever album to feature the meeting of Peter Brötzmann, Milford Graves and William Parker. Three of the towering figures in the history of Free Jazz forge an incredibly vital free music born from lifetimes of uncompromising, ceaseless artistry. “Historic Music Past Tense Future” is the inaugural release by Black Editions Archive and the first in a series of records that will present previously unreleased works featuring Milford …

Hear and Now's cover depicts a smiling Cherry posing like Buddha, and holding a trumpet with a bent mouthpiece -- an indication of some meditative sounds, but it's really a mishmash of styles with a leaning toward African rhythms. An underlying social message runs through the album of Cherry compositions (except one) produced by Narada Michael Walden. Cherry plays very little trumpet on "Universal Mother"; the African-based excursion is carried by Neil Jason's bass, Sammy Figueroa's congas, and …

Something of a sequel to Eternal Rhythm, his classic meeting of free jazz and world music from five years prior, Eternal Now found Don Cherry entering the studio for the tiny Sonet label, once again with members of the European avant-garde scene (this time from Sweden). This time around, though, the focus swings decidedly to the world-folk end of things: The only standard Western instrument is the piano, featured on only two of the five pieces (one of which is a non-traditional, African-styled r…

"This is a live recording of "Shuko Mizuno's World Evening" on the fourth day of "5 Days In Jazz 1976", which made the genius Shuko Mizuno known to the world. The massive, fast-paced jazz-rock piece "Concentration" and "Jazz Orchestra '75 Part II" are breathtaking performances. Katsumi Watanabe's superb solo is also noteworthy!" - Koki Hanawa

"Hideto Kanai's first album is fairly hit-or-miss free jazz, but here he's in full-blown Black Saint and the Sinner Lady mode. There are twenty three musicians on this album (twenty three!), and while the undercurrent of free jazz is still running through, it's much closer to experimental big band or avant-garde jazz. And it's extremely compelling. Two side-long pieces, both of which go in and out of being quite elaborate and being complete chaos. There's some unusual and dissonant guitar and sy…

*200 copies edition* The debut release from the trio of Chris Abrahams (piano), Clayton Thomas (bass & preparations), & Miles Thomas (drums & percussion), Words Fail is an intergenerational meeting of the minds. Despite the quintessential trio format, the sound world subverts the instrumentation across four expansive improvisations. Beginning with a lone piano note, repeating like droplets of water on a glassy lake, the interwoven textures of Clayton Thomas’ prepared double-bass & Miles Thomas’ …

**50th Anniversary Edition** Quoting Dustygroove, this is an incredibly inventive album from pianist Steve Kuhn – one that takes his earlier modern style, and fuses it with a warmer sort mode for the 70s! The approach is quite unique – in that Kuhn's core trio style is augmented both by additional percussion from Airto, plus occasional string quartet backing – for a sound that's fresh and different on each new tune! Some tracks feature Fender Rhodes, but most are acoustic – and Steve even sings …

"For the years Columbus was lucky enough to call him ours, drummer Ryan Jewell was our leading proponent of Emily Dickinson’s maxim “tell the truth but tell it slant.” He placed an idiosyncratic, indelible, and always swinging stamp on any context he assailed, from the insidiously catchy quirk of Terribly Empty Pockets to the righteous brainy scuzz-punk of Pink Reason to spacy evocative noise with collaborators like Mike Shiflet and C. Spencer Yeh to shepherding Psychedelic Horsehit through thei…

Detroit saxophonist Skeeter Shelton and Chicago percussionist Hamid Drake didn’t know each other before Skeeter was subbed into a duo gig at Trinosophes (Detroit) after Hamid’s partner fell ill. Shortly before the performance, it was discovered that Skeeter’s father, Ajaramu Shelton, was Hamid’s drum teacher and mentor at Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. There was an instant bond. The set that night was fire. This should be no surprise, as keeter, through his fath…

Matthew Shipp takes an introspective turn on his latest solo piano album, continuing to discover new territory for his singular cosmic pianism. Codebreaker encrypts rich harmonies, cloud-like clusters, and the unlikely confluence of Bill Evans and Bud Powell. Within the voluminous catalogue that pianist Matthew Shipp has created over the last three and a half decades, his solo piano work has charted a unique and compelling pathway for the evolution of the instrument’s vocabulary. On his latest a…

In the late 1980s / early ’90s, pianist Matthew Shipp and drummer Whit Dickey were young musicians taking part in the cultural ferment happening on New York City’s Lower East Side, a place where free jazz, avant-rock and all manner of creative arts and political causes were colliding and combining to further the area’s legacy of progressive action. William Parker – although just 2 years older than Dickey – had been part of that progressive action since the mid-70s, and was already a world travel…

Super Tip! * English version. 400+ pages, large-format book, very heavy * This book is dedicated to the history of the music label Free Music Production (FMP), which from 1968 to 2010 achieved incomparable things as a Berlin platform for the production, presentation and documentation of music. Based on many conversations from over thirty years with key protagonists such as Peter Brötzmann or Jost Gebers, Markus Müller tells the success story of a musicians‘ initiative that emerged in the context…

No music swung as erratically between extremes as his: folk song, march or acoustic apocalypse – anything was possible in the cosmos of Albert Ayler’s soundscapes. With his furious instrumental glossolalia and his pathos-laden ballads, the musician from Cleveland, Ohio quickly became the most radical of the Sixties free jazz expressionists. In his hands the saxophone became a different instrument and even John Coltrane’s late work was unmistakably shaped by the influence of his younger colleague…

After a long hiatus due to obvious reasons, Goncalo Almeida & Dirk Serries played an exclusive duo performance at Jazzblazzt in The Netherlands. Open air at the lovely Ozo Land location. Recorded live on June 5, 2021.

“”The Other Lies is a collection of six improvised duets performed by Tom Jackson on clarinet Colin Webster on alto and baritone saxophones. Tom Jackson is very accomplished in the fields of contemporary classical music and free improvisation. He also holds a Ph.D from Canterbury Christ Church University. Colin Webster is a musician whose works I’ve reviewed here before. When one of his releases comes up on my Bandcamp feed I always take notice. He’s a prolific and under appreciated figure in th…

“‘Melancholia’ is, perhaps, a somewhat misleading title for the duet of John Edward (double bass) and label boss Dirk Serries (acoustic guitar). One might expect some sad music, a soft thud on the bass, a few strums on the acoustic guitar, but it is clear that these men deal with a different kind of melancholia right from the start. In the two pieces (forty-four minutes), I think there is a mutual agreement between the two to work along dynamic lines. They cut out the middle ground, it seems. Th…

“From May this year, One In The Eye is a double CD bringing together Alan Wilkinson and Dirk Serries for selection jagged, moody, to-playful improv. The set features one disc taking in eight tracks, and a second disc features two longer work-out. The first disc opens with the nearing six minutes of “Upshot”- here we find Serries jagging ‘n’ jerking strums weaved with Wilkinson energetic and at points quite seared sax work- this works as a nicely urgent and shifting opener for the release, throwi…

“Pieces Of Apparatus severs up five examples of extremely sparse and often spaced-out improv for guitar- with all the tracks unfolding in both a jaggedly wondering, dartingly inventive, and largely rewarding manner. Here on the New Wave Of Jazz label is CD release, presented in the labels house style packaging of a white and grey box gatefold, that features a worthy write-up about both Gérard work in general and the pieces offered up here. Pierre Gérard is based in  Liège, Belgium- and has been …

Ballads From The Wrecked Ship is a decidedly varied and rather wonderful improv release,  which sits somewhere between sonic creativity and atmospheric moodiness. The seven-track album slides in at a concise and focused forty minutes, and I must say it certainly stand as one of more distinctive/ original improv release I have heard in some time. The album appears on the always worthy/ interesting New Wave Of Jazz- coming in the labels house style mini grey gatefold packaging, which as always fea…

**Limited edition of 100 copies** “I am not sure if with the double bass there are various types, like with the guitar, but none is mentioned on the cover or the fact if this is a mono recording. The latter probably not. It was recorded in the spacious surrounding of the old church in Oud-Charlois, which is a part of Rotterdam and home to a few great concerts, some of these involving the church organ housed there. Goncalo Almeida stuck to his bass. We know him for his one-off collaboration with …

Skeleton Crew was founded in the early 1980s by Fred Frith and Tom Cora. The original idea was to create a new group out of the ashes of Massacre. Hey started experimenting with what they could achieve by themselves, recorded the fantastic debut album Learn to Talk and finally decided to take the new project out on the road. After several years of searching for recordings, mixing and mastering, and held up by the global pandemic, we are proud to finally offer you this double CD of live recording…

James Newton’s 1977 self-released solo-debut, ‘Flute Music’ is an unheralded gem of the 70’s jazz underground. An album that showcases a diverse range of styles and fervent cross-pollination, while retaining a clear sense of direction and cohesion. An artist funnelling their wild expression into multiple facets of “The New Music”, crafting an auspicious and artistic debut. Newton would later go on to record with revered jazz labels like India Navigation and ECM, and collaborate with fellow creat…

"Devoting more than forty years to the painstaking development of an individual style doesn’t mean that British tenor saxophonist Evan Parker eschews new challenges and collaborations. Live is notable, however, because Parker manages, without altering his distinctive reed patterns, to seamlessly match his contributions to those of the Paris-based trio Marteau Rouge. And Parker does so without upsetting the perceptive strategies that members of the trio have developed during their years together.…