Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

*2026 stock* Recorded April 2013 at DOM CC (Moscow). Mixed and mastered by Maxim Khaykin. Cover and design of material version of album by Dmitry Lapshin. Anton Ponomarev - baritone-sax Konstantin Sukhan - trumpet Dmitry Lapshin - double bass

*2026 stock* Dødsdromen means "death well" in Danish, a stunt show in which drivers of motorcycles and miniature cars ride in a circle along a vertical wall, performing dangerous stunts due to friction and centrifugal force strength. P.O. Jørgens - drummer, composer from Denmark known by his own legendary label "Ninth World Music" and band Mokuto trio (where he plays with Lotte Anker on saxophone and Peter Friis Nielsen on bass), collaborations with Mats Gustafsson (Torden Kvartetten) and Peter …

On Indian Summer, Eddie Johnson lets his late‑era Chicago tenor glow with undimmed warmth, spinning swing‑era lyricism and speech‑like nuance over a veteran quartet that treats time as something to lean into, not chase.

On Vonski Speaks, Von Freeman stretches out with his New Apartment Lounge Quartet at Jazzfest Berlin 2002, turning four long pieces into a swaggering, late‑career testimony to Chicago grit, club intimacy and unforced authority.

On Serenade & Blues, Von Freeman eases his Chicago tenor into an after‑hours glow, trading the swagger of Have No Fear for late‑night ballads and slow blues that stretch time without ever losing their bite.

On Motherland, The Visitors - brothers Earl and Carl Grubbs on alto and tenor saxophone - channel late Coltrane’s searching fire into a spiritual soul‑jazz ritual, all tenderness and incantation wrapped in a warm, analogue glow.

*250 copies limited edition* Aspen is very proud to introduce ‘Non Sonett’ by the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble.
This ensemble is a pioneering Norwegian chamber group whose work on ECM and Hubro has redefined the boundaries between jazz, contemporary composition and folk music. 
Across seven albums, the ensemble has developed a highly distinctive language built on restraint, timbral nuance and collective interplay, placing it among the most influential European ensembles of the 21st century. Brin…

"Death is a lack with weight. At the moment that you realize that someone you love is irrecoverably gone, a small tear in your life opens up. As days go by, the sliver of grief grows, becoming a rift, a gap, a gulley, a canyon. At the point that you feel lost in the immensity of space where that person used to be, the expansion stops; the hole—the vast and airy part of your life that used to be occupied by that person—becomes solid. Maybe it decreases in size, but more likely, your memories grow…

On Of Time, Underground Spiritual Game - baritone saxophonist Eden Bareket, bassist Ran Livneh and drummer Eran Fink - trace an imaginary route from city grime to rural trance, fusing Ethiopian jazz, Afrobeat pulse and cosmic free improvisation into a single, slow‑burning ritual.

On Have No Fear, Von Freeman turns a 1975 marathon session into a fiercely personal manifesto, his elastic Chicago tenor pouring blues, bravado and vulnerability into performances that sound both off‑the‑cuff and obsessively shaped.

On 6 Duos (Wesleyan) 2006, Anthony Braxton and John McDonough turn a teacher–student bond into a finely wired brass–reeds colloquy, shuttling between Braxton systems, McDonough themes, open improvisation and Sousa with disarming clarity and wit.

On Silver Cornet, Bobby Bradford and Frode Gjerstad turn a one‑night Baltimore stop into a fiercely conversational blowout, their quartet with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Frank Rosaly mapping free jazz as living, mobile history.

On this meeting with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Bobby Bradford steps into John Stevens’ London laboratory and, alongside Trevor Watts, Julie Tippetts, Bob Norden and Ron Herman, turns free improvisation into a fiercely alert, shape‑shifting chamber music.

On Jazz Flamenco, Pedro Iturralde forges a taut, singing dialogue between Andalusian cante and modal jazz, letting saxophone and flamenco guitar trade roles as soloist and accompanist in a music that sounds both inevitable and newly invented.

On Numbers 1 & 2, Lester Bowie joins Malachi Favors, Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell in a pre‑Art Ensemble crucible where AACM discipline, raw timbral play and open‑form swing coalesce into a blueprint for the Chicago future.

In 1961 John Coltrane joined the newly founded Impulse! label. The great saxophonist was coming off several impactful albums (Giant Steps) and a very notable — even commercial — success: that My Favorite Things which had made his soprano sax one of the “new sounds” that marked a turning year for jazz, the fateful 1959. Some people — despite obvious clues to the contrary — speculated a turn, if not toward commerciality, at least toward more palatable music: a Coltrane in some ways comparable to P…

After 6 albums re-imagining the work of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, أحمد [Ahmed] turn to the material of Malik’s bandmate Thelonious Monk in the group's ongoing search for future music.

A cooperation between the two protagonists had been announced for some time. The first musical collaboration as a duo on October 18th, 2025 in Munich was unfortunately cancelled due to unfortunate circumstances. Our alternative was for Sergio to send me 5 vibraphone solo pieces, to which I would communicate with a selection of my wind instruments. Some identical ‘basistapes’ are interpreted by me with different wind instruments. Since a real encounter has not yet taken place, a virtual connectio…

The performance and recording are one continuous set. Track markers have been added for convenience:. 
Liner notes:

 "This project began as Centrifugal Trio, with Bishop, Borghini, and Griener, recorded in the studio zentri-fuge in Berlin in September 2019 and released on the Astral Spirits label.

 For my visit to Berlin in 2022, I wanted to expand the group, and invited the wonderful Mia Dyberg on alto, who I had played with earlier at Sowieso in Berlin, and whose recording Ticket!  (Clean Fe…

What an opportuunity ! On the suggestion of Maciej Karlowski, percussionist Ramón López invited me to play in Lublin Jazz Festival. From a list of great musicians who might join us to form a trio the name of Trevor Watts was one that immediately excited me for quite a few reasons: Firstly, he along with John Stevens , Paul Rutherford , Evan Parker and Derek Bailey allowed me as a novice to enter into the rarified world of The Spontaneous Music Ensemble. I was a total greenhorn in free improvisat…

"A small gift for a great Cecil Taylor history. On 23 April 2016, Jay Sanders organised and recorded a concert whose significance at the time was impossible to estimate. The great Cecil Taylor was accompanied by the wonderful musicians Okkyung Lee, Tony Oxley, Harri Sjostrom and Jackson Krall. After the concert, Cecil announced that it was time to return to the legendary formula he had used several times in his career, which served as an emblem of what was particularly important in his work.   U…

Masayo Koketsu and Nava Dunkelman met for the first time in this studio session. Koketsu’s inventive use of extended techniques and breath-infused wails filled the space with an experimental intensity. Dunkelman responded with a finely woven tapestry of percussive textures, her delicate rhythms binding their sounds together. Her sensitivity to nuance allowed Koketsu’s raw cries to blend effortlessly, as if the two had long shared a musical language. Their exchange was both electric and restraine…

Julius Hemphill was a visionary saxophonist and composer whose music fused avant-garde exploration with deep blues and gospel roots. Marty Ehrlich, one of Hemphill’s close collaborators and protégés, is a multi-reedist and composer known for his lyrical improvisation and commitment to extending Hemphill’s legacy through performance, composition, and curation. This archival release of the duo from Julius Hemphill and Marty Ehrlich offers a rare, deep-listening window into their long-standing crea…

Specially priced bundle drawn from the catalog of Nimbus West, the American label widely regarded as the greatest single depository of West Coast avant-garde jazz. With the label's future uncertain and no represses planned, this is a final opportunity to explore one of the most vital and visionary corners of recorded jazz before it disappears from circulation for good. The bundle also includes The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 8, a touching tribute to Adele Sebastian and one of the most beautiful entri…

On The Heart Is A Lotus, The Michael Garrick Sextet with Norma Winstone trace a quietly radical path through British jazz: modal, spiritual and poetically inclined, with Winstone’s voice drifting inside the ensemble like vapor rather than standing in front of it.

First ever vinyl reissue of "Postones", an astounding body of recordings by Vito Ricci with Rashied Ali and Byard Lancaster, originally issued as a tiny cassette on Ricci's own Creation imprint in 1984. Moving between free jazz fire and percussion-driven theatre scores, this document of downtown New York in the early 1980s pulls the rug from beneath the expected historical narratives. One of the most revelatory releases of 2026.

Quite literally one of the most original and influential guitarists on the planet, Derek Bailey has completely revolutionized the language of guitar music in the twentieth century. His work has been championed by almost every cutting edge guitarist: Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot, Buckethead, Jerry Garcia, but his influence reaches far far beyond the insular world of guitar freaks, to classical composers such as Brian Ferneyhough and Karlheinz Stockhausen, creative musicians Anthony Braxt…

2026 stock Condor, Autumn Wind is a live album released in 1998 by American jazz trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith in collaboration with his wife, poet Harumi Makino Smith. Recorded in Durham, it showcases Smith's avant-garde improvisation style through mostly solo trumpet performances enriched by mbira, percussion, wood flute, siren, and vocals.​ The album blends Smith's episodic trumpet solos—boldly shaped phrases that evolve piece by piece—with Harumi Makino Smith's evocative poetry recited in Engli…

Recorded in Paris in 1965, Don Cherry’s Togetherness is a five‑part live suite where pocket‑trumpet chants, Gato Barbieri’s searing tenor, vibes and a dancing rhythm section turn early free jazz into something fiercely open yet strangely joyful.

With With a Heartbeat, Pharoah Sanders and Bill Laswell ride the amplified pulse of the human heart into a slow, glowing trance, fusing tabla cycles, electronic drones and cornet smears into four long arcs of cosmic late‑period Sanders.

With Notebook, Lukas Ligeti turns a band, a method and a score into the same thing: four pieces where intricate design and on‑the‑spot decision‑making fuse into chamber music that thinks aloud in real time.

On The Call, Bellbird turn their namesake’s piercing cry into a manifesto: an explosive yet intimate quartet music where twin saxes, rhythm‑led structures and “ugly” beauty carry climate grief and solidarity into a single, ringing shout.

On Concert A Prades Le Lez, Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra turns Tusques’ radical internationalism into exuberant sound: a border‑smashing live suite where New Orleans, Brittany and North Africa collide in dance‑charged, militant joy.

On Concert A Prades Le Lez, Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra turns Tusques’ radical internationalism into exuberant sound: a border‑smashing live suite where New Orleans, Brittany and North Africa collide in dance‑charged, militant joy.

On Concert A Prades Le Lez, Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra turns Tusques’ radical internationalism into exuberant sound: a border‑smashing live suite where New Orleans, Brittany and North Africa collide in dance‑charged, militant joy.

This 2LP bundle includes the two latest Formalibera albums: John Tchicai "Wigmore Hall 1968", and John Tchicai, Peter Kowald "John Tchicai Quintet, John Tchicai Peter Kowald Duo".John Tchicai "Wigmore Hall 1968" (LP)* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai (1936-2012) was one of the most visionary free jazz saxophonists of the 20th century - a rare artist whose voice stood apart even among giants. Born in Copenhagen…

In As Serious As Your Life, photographer and historian Val Wilmer chronicles the free jazz revolution as a Black cultural vanguard, situating Ayler, Coltrane, Coleman, Sun Ra and others within the struggles, hopes and solidarities of 1960s–70s America.

*Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai was extraordinarily prolific during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and this second archival release from Formalibera captures two essential, previously undocumented chapters of his story. Side one takes us to Danish Radio House, Copenhagen, October 1969, where Tchicai leads a remarkable hybrid quintet fresh from a European tour: Danish collaborators Hugh Steinmetz and Pierre …

*Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai (1936-2012) was one of the most visionary free jazz saxophonists of the 20th century - a rare artist whose voice stood apart even among giants. Born in Copenhagen to a Danish mother and a Congolese father, his path to New York came through a chance encounter at a socialist youth festival in Helsinki, where Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp heard him play and urged him to make the mo…

Modern and grounded in the 1960s hard-bop sensibility, the American pianist and composer Albert Dailey (1939 – 1984) had perfect control over his instrument. Since an early age he played with cutting-edge musicians of the likes of Art Blakey, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, Charles Mingus, and Lee Konitz, only to name a few. But despite that, he was an underrated artist during his lifetime, receiving the deserved recognition only after his death. Renaissance 2 November 1977 is his second album, played…