Jazz & Improvisation / Free Jazz

First visit to the audio equivalent of a graphic novel.

Big Tip! As poets from Shakespeare to Heine have recognised, “the forest” is not just about grandeur and most expansive of gestures; it is also about intimacy and there is a remarkable intimacy to Christopher Kunz’s and Florian Fischer’s music. The forest is both inhuman, wild, and, because it houses us and to a degree depends on us, profoundly humane. You’ll find these qualities here as well. Focus, breathe and listen. (Brian Morton)

"No music making can be entirely non-idiomatic. Removing the metaphor, the claim is that it is characterless, without personality. But despite his best intentions, perhaps, one can hear a range of influences in Bailey’s own work – even if jazz isn't one of them. And the present album shows that "non-idiomatic" is the wrong description for much free improvisation. The common description "abstract" is also misleading. All music is abstract in form, humane in utterance."  – Andy Hamilton

"A long life can contain a certain amount of waste. Live long enough and posterity doesn’t notice the  occasional unproductive gap. A short life adds value to every moment and every creative act. This new  issue of Albert Ayler’s brief association with Don Cherry includes further material from their time in  Copenhagen, a period when the saxophonist daily reinvented the themes that were coursing through  his mind, breath and fingers. These are not a collector’s fetishes. These are fresh document…

Joe Henderson Our Thing To In ’N Out Revisited notes: The Blue Note label in the early and mid 1960s was a haven for musicians engaged in the process of expanding the jazz vocabulary with unconventional harmonic strategies and new compositional infrastructures that elicited equally exploratory improvisational responses. And it was an ongoing process, benefiting from the sporadic, albeit calculated, interaction of different perspectives and methods of creative inspiration. Established or working g…

"Marion Brown was already defying categorisation in 1966 when he recorded Three For Shepp, whose six tracks open Three For Shepp To Gespächsfetzen Revisited. Brown’s opening “New Blues” and Archie Shepp’s closing “Delicado,” though compelling,are relatively orthodox expressions of mid 1960s NewThing. The four tracks they bookend, however, are distinctive even today. Brown’s exquisite “Fortunato,” though it sounds like nothing Pharoah Sanders ever wrote, inhabits similarly pretty terrain as Sand…

“He was nomadic. The strongest and most lasting thing you can say about Alan is that he was an original, as original as you can get. He didn’t want any academic guidelines to equip him to reinvent the wheel. If he saw something like that, he’d go the other way.” – Wayne Shorter

Temporary Super Offer! "Eric Dolphy’s legacy is well represented by these performances from The Five Spot and the sessions supervised by Alan Douglas. They confirm him to be an artist who  straddled the divide then so deep in jazz, drawing sustenance from the music’s past  as he cleared a path to its future. Dolphy’s was a sensibility that could celebrate  Fats Waller and honor Jomo Kenyatta, its inclusiveness rare in the polarized early 1960s. Fortunately, his example has not simply endured, bu…

Temporary Super Offer! "One Step Beyond is rightly seen as a pivot point in Jackie McLean’s evolution, but its adventurousness was not without precedent. As A.B. Spellman noted in Four Lives in the Bebop Business, “Quadrangle” – the opening track for 1959’s Jackie’s Bag; it was first recorded as “Inding” for Lights Out!, a 1956 Prestige date – “involved an elaborate group construction that [McLean] was afraid was too far-out,” so he used “I Got Rhythm” changes to mainstream it, which he later re…

Temporary Super Offer! "Mingus the visionary composer. Mingus the virtuoso bassist. Mingus the volcanic bandleader. As the 1960s began, with the new decade bringing a radically expansive new view of the possibilities of jazz expression, Charles Mingus, by virtue of his brilliantly nonconformist creative imagination, willingness to take risks along experimental paths, and (because of, or in spite of) an oft-times confrontational rebellious nature, had established himself among those in the forefr…

While his recordings with Archie Shepp and 7-Tette established Bill Dixon as a distinctive jazz modernist, ahead of the curve, creating a niche within a crowded field of emerging artists, it is Intents and Purposes (Orchestra) that established his singularity. Together, they constitute the first chapter of a recorded legacy that continues to grow in status and influence.  – Bill Shoemaker

Temporary Super Offer! "If we just could have hung on for another year,” Rudd said of both NYAQ and the Jazz Composers Guild, “things could have turned out much differently. Things were about to flip, in a good way. A lot of government programs were starting up that we could have gotten  grants from. There was a change in perception about the music that was happening. People were starting to consider it as art. The music was moving out of the bars and coffee houses  and into museums and concert …

Temporary Super Offer! "The title Ornette at 12 is something of a misnomer. Although Ornette is Denardo’s middle name, why wasn’t the album called Denardo at 12, his age at the time of the concert? Is there a hidden meaning related to Ornette’s own childhood? According to John Litweiler’s book A Harmolodic Life, he was either 13 or 14 when he received his first horn. If the year 1956 is meant to represent a significant event in Ornette’s musical life, it does mark his meeting with Don Cherry and B…

Temporary Super Offer! "Rare performances and concerts. The Sound of the Munich Filmprodction and the concert of Helsinki are first releases. The Rotterdam concert was available in the Holy Ghost bootleg box." – Werner X. Uehlinger. "Albert Ayler’s late 1966 tour of northern Europe was, happily, well documented in one way or another, though not always with the best sound quality, something this reissue series is attempting to address (and doing very well). The recording at hand includes 3 tracks…

Temporary Super Offer! Allow me to expand on a much restated quote from Albert Ayler: "Coltrane was The Father, Pharoah was The Son, and I was...The Holy Ghost.” If we remain with the Christian iconography, that makes Archie Shepp, Simon Peter, or the Apostle Peter whom Jesus called the rock upon which he built his church. Christened by his tenure in the early 1960s with Cecil Taylor, Shepp was baptized into what we now call a modernist approach. In meeting Coltrane, a man always searching for a…

"Christian Weber said in an interview for “Jazz’N’More": No matter how I move along the timeline, my attention is focused on what is to come. At the same time, I always keep in mind what happened before, without analyzing. This way, I avoid the improvisation becoming arbitrary. Both arbitrary openness and narrow restriction, neither suits me." And therein lies the whole secret of this record and ultimately the definition of great art: it is the ability of a musician to have control over space an…

"This, it seems to me, is the great strength of Sophie Lüssi’s music here on Atlantic Puffin. It is clearly skilled and doesn't deal in casual approximations. It is built on solid technique, a brilliant appropriation of classical violin methods in the interests of improvisation. But her music, which draws on folk as well as canonical forms, is one that emanates from and addresses the whole person. It's generous music, kindly and open, and in its gentle humour it engages a part of the spirit that…

"It is not easy to find a description of what constitutes “the art of the duo” in jazz or improvised music. Suffice to say that any credible description would have to encompass the duo of Gallio and Turner, their approaches to playing together and the contents of You Can Blackmail Me Later." - John Eyles

"It is a message, and you will hear it sounding firmly through the various pieces that make up The Human Factor, that tells us much about how we might live together: sharing, giving way, simple giving, lifting up, helping ... above all, listening ..."  - Brian Morton

"I've been listening to Christoph Gallio and the various incarnations of Day & Taxi for over three decades – almost since its inception. On this album, however, the Swiss saxophonist makes a debut with a different trio, featuring British improvisers Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders. The result is pungent, powerful music on the cusp of free jazz and free improv – a dichotomy that helps define Gallio's work, though he also composes. Listening to this wonderful album invites re-consideration of the rh…

Temporary Super Offer! 'Jost may have had Fire Music and Mama Too Tight in mind when he suggested that by 1965 Archie Shepp spoke “basically two musical languages whose grammar and syntax had hardly anything in common.” This reflected the commentaries’s insistence that a chasm existed between free jazz and mainstream jazz practices, and, implicitly, between the New Wave in Jazz and the New Breed led by James Brown. What was revolutionary about Shepp’s music is that it rejected the underlying bin…

Balloons On Grass is a collaborative album by Tony Orzano, Bryan Rohmer, and Jeremy Wexler that thrives on the unpredictable energy of improvisation. Recorded in a single, free-form session, the album is a vivid journey through the intersecting worlds of post-rock, noise, and free jazz. Each track unfolds organically, with the musicians responding to each other in real-time, creating a dynamic tapestry of sound that is both spontaneous and deeply intentional. The album opens with shimmering guit…

Draguns & Cozzolino Reunite as Flying Sutra to Win Over a New Generation of Fans with Fresh Hit Album Featuring Blossoming Saxist Ayumi Ishito

When Jacobo Vega-Albela left New Mexico for upstate New York to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a performer and composer, he knew it would change him forever. Ready to expand his potential, he soon found himself on a path that some only fantasize about. He has since transformed his extraordinary journey and its captivating highs and lows into his first album with 577 Records.   “Un-Belonging is a record underpinned by tremendous joy, optimism, and love for the world counterbalanced by a pers…

Bukas: How Karl Evangelista is Exploring the Future of Free Music with his Quintet and Special Guest, Andrew Cyrille

"Baro 101" unites Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love, and Masele Asmamaw for an electrifying fusion of Scandinavian free jazz and Ethiopian traditions. The album’s two expansive tracks showcase intense improvisation, with Asmamaw’s krar injecting unique rhythms and melodies, creating a bold, genre-defying musical journey.

"Brand New For China!" by Cactus Truck is a fiercely intense debut, blending free jazz with punk energy and noise. The Amsterdam-based trio delivers raw, high-velocity improvisations across tracks that range from explosive outbursts to muscular, dynamic interplay, marking the album as a standout in avant-garde jazz.

2025 stock Probably due to the fact that Eric Dolphy died untimely in 1964, making every one of his recorded contributions more widely sought after, pianist Mal Waldron’s album, The Quest, was reissued soon after its release under the reedman’s name. Tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin is also featured on The Quest. Ervin and Dolphy had both been members of the Charles Mingus group and the two reedmen recorded various LPs together with Mingus between 1960 and 1963.

2010 release ** "This is certainly not William Parker's first solo album, he already released "Lifting The Sanctions", "Testimony" and "Painter's Autumn", but this is the first one on which he doesn't play pizzicato, using his bow for the first and lengthy track, called "Cathedral Wisdom Light", on which he demonstrates the unbelievable riches that are hidden in his instrument : from the cry of whales to those of birds, over the pulsing or a heart, or just bone-chilling shrieks. He goes deep her…

1998 release (light storage wear) ** "It has always been baffling why the work of certain contemporary composers like Anthony Braxton, whose work spans the jazz and classical genres, has not been more widely performed by musicians outside of their own immediate sphere as "standards" of modern repertoire. After all, pieces by modern composers of the generation prior to his, like Ornette Coleman or Charles Mingus, are routinely covered by performers in and outside of jazz. One would think that Bra…

2004 release ** "Recorded in 2003 at the Clear Lake recording studio in Venice, California. This set places Sam Rivers in the company of drummer Harris Eisenstadt and percussionist Adam Rudolph for a series of seven medium-length freewheeling improvisations. Rivers plays tenor, soprano and flute on these exercises and the effect is electrifying. While completely in the moment, utterly outside, and spontaneously realized, there is a certain warmth and accessibility on this outing that is unexpect…

1991 release ** The third in a three volume compilation (each available separately) of 114 improvisers from around the world, covering a wide variety of approaches to improvisation. "A turbid dive into new music, this release packs everything from free-form jazz-like scraw to variations in composition, structure and situation to solo exploration." Featuring Pluto, Amy Denio, Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, Marty Walker, Crawling With Tarts, IDLH, Ed Herrmann, Andrew Voigt, Tom Nunn, Tamio Shirais…

2009 release ** "Creative music making is a matter of energy, heart, and trust, and when all three are present the music flies. A meeting of three old Chicago friends and collaborators, flutist Nicole Mitchell, drummer Hamid Drake, and bassist Harrison Bankhead, the Indigo Trio soars with the kind of spiritual energy that has inspired Great Black Music from its inception... Building a bridge between composition and improvisation, Bankhead, Drake, and Mitchell have created an inspiring album. Wit…

Ornette Coleman’s "Ornette On Tenor" marks a pivotal moment in jazz, featuring his switch to tenor sax and the addition of Jimmy Garrison on bass. The album’s earthy, darker soundscape, collective improvisation, and absence of fixed themes highlight Coleman’s ongoing musical revolution.

1991 release ** "Recorded at the Listen to Lacy festival in Vienna, 1990, this large ensemble recording is really the Steve Lacy Sextet plus ten. One of the dectet members is Franz Koglmann. Although some of Lacy's other large group experiments met with mixed results, it is not so here. Itinerary, with its seven selections, is an orchestral work on par with at of Gil Evans' (to whom this record is dedicated) Out of the Cool sessions for Impulse, and of course the Gil Evans and Ten recordings tha…

1990 release **

2000 release (no OBI) ** "It may be unfair to compare this recording to the seminal album recorded on ESP almost 35 years earlier, but such comparisons are hard to resist. In truth, the group -- now with Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) assuming an expanded role and bassist Reggie Workman substituting for the late Lewis Worell -- sounds as fresh and, yes, revolutionary as it did back in the heyday of 1960s radicalism. To be sure, each member has changed, but the sounds here are surprisingly r…

1998 release ** "This recording is an important part of bassist William Parker's early discography and comprises four ensemble pieces. The sound quality is slightly subpar, but the raw, 1960s feel of this album should appeal to those who appreciate the unassuming brilliance of this giant of the string bass. Each of the four tracks features different groups, with Parker composing all the pieces and appearing on all four. The two larger ensembles presage some of the large bands Parker was to lead …

2003 release ** "An important release is not necessarily a great release, and while the rare Environmental Control Office recording of legendary Swedish saxophonist and clarinetist Bengt Frippe Nordström is a significant contribution to the discography of Swedish jazz, his lengthy improvisations remind the listener of Albert Ayler on an off day, which when you think about it is a complement of sorts. Nordström squeezes a primitive sound from his horns, his tenor sounding precisely how drummer Pe…

2007 release ** "Susie Ibarra is a percussionist, but she doesn’t hit you over the head with the fact. Rather, her powerfully delicate, insistent sounds seem to emanate from the landscape of drums and tuned gongs by themselves. Drum Sketches, Ibarra’s first solo CD following several Tzadik ensemble releases, is inspired by various images and sounds of her native Philippines. Among her glowing array of percussion are tuned bronze Kulintang gongs and a Surunay xylophone that blend with field recor…