Bill Dixon
With Archie Shepp, 7-Tette & Orchestra - Revisited
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
Envoi
*2022 stock* 'American trumpeter Bill Dixon began composing his moody, darkly abstract music in the mid-60s, fusing free jazz with modernist chamber music elements touching on Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Envoi is the last of these works, recorded at the FIMAV festival in Victoriaville just three weeks prior to Dixon’s death in June 2010. Dixon’s failing health required that his unaccompanied trumpet solo with echoing multiplex be played on tape during the concert, but nothing feels unfulfilled or…
Cecil Taylor / Bill Dixon / Tony Oxley
'As evidenced by this release of the set, the music played that night was intimate, even delicate. It still seems that Dixon didn't quite sit down at the table with his mates, and his electronic effects don't do him any favors, but credit seems due to him for keeping the set at an unusual slow burn. There aren't the displays of pyrotechnics evidenced in Taylor and Oxley's duo performances. Instead, piano and drums dance lightly around the trumpet's background wash, creating a music both sparse a…
In Italy - Volume One
Soul Note Vinyl present a reissue of Bill Dixon's In Italy - Volume One, originally released in 1980. Bill Dixon one of the great visionary composers and improvisers in modern creative jazz, In Italy - Volume One was recorded in Milan in 1980 and released on Soul Note. A wide-open tapestry and a rare example of open interaction between pulse, melody, and pure sound as result of the work of a maverick quintet featuring Dixon, Arthur Brooks (trumpet), Stephen Haynes (trumpet), Stephen Horenstein (…
Free Jazz Communism
Rab-Rab Press announces the publication of Free Jazz Communism, a new book actualising Archie Shepp–Bill Dixon Quartet at the 8th World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki 1962. Including archive material and documents, commissioned theoretical and historical texts, and interviews, the book edited by Sezgin Boynik and Taneli Viitahuhta contextualizes politics of free jazz music in light of global decolonisation movements, anti-war activism, structures of racial capitalism, and forms of av…
Opium For Franz
**500 copies** "This gem of a recording has been a collector's dream prize for decades. Recorded and released in the mid-1970s on flugelhorn / trumpeter Franz Koglmann's Pipe Recordings, each copy of Opium For Franz was issued with an original hand painted cover. Back in the day, we wouldn't speak of a limited issue release, even though this one probably came out in an edition of 200. Certainly it was a labor of love, with no such thing as our modern digital capture of sound and pro tools. We're…
Duets 1992
Trumpeter Bill Dixon and pianist Cecil Taylor, friends going back to their Truman-era school days, associated copiously in nearly every artistic fashion -- except making music together. Duets is their only meeting in studio apart from both artists appearing on Taylor's 1966 landmark Blue Note LP, Conquistador. In 1992 they made the briefest summer festival tour to Italy and France, budgeting in two additional days for this recording session. That musical output was prepared for a release that wa…
Odyssey
**A labor of love, this marvelous self-produced six-disc set collects trumpeter Bill Dixon's previously unreleased solo recordings since the 1970s.** 2001 release. Odyssey is the definitive compendium of solo trumpet music by Bill Dixon, as compiled by the artist. Dixon (1925-2010) was known primarily for his small and large ensemble masterpieces of the decades between Intents and Purposes (1967) and Tapestries (2009). While he appeared infrequently in solo performances, he was continually evolv…
Live at Bennington College, 1969
**ltd/numbered 1/30, one-sided picture disk** extract ! historical doc/ensemble with Arthur Doyle at the fiercest !
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“Music to me [is] the universal language, the universal way of communicating.” For Arthur Doyle, saxophonist, flautist and vocalist, music was the life force, and Doyle’s dedication to the music had him playing fast and free jazz for most of his life. “That was my first love,” he once said to Patrick Marley, in an interview from Muckraker: “playing free and spontaneous.” Born on …
Intents and Purposes
At Last! Intents And Purposes, revered as Bill Dixon's singular masterpiece, has been lovingly remastered and reissued on LP by the ever lucent Superior Viaduct. Visionary, dark and mysterious, the late trumpet innovator's magnum opus is not only Dixon's defining statement as a composer, but also one of the most luminous moments in the history of avant-garde jazz."Combining orchestral timbres with free jazz intensity, Dixon leads a ten-piece ensemble including such heavyweights as Byard Lancaste…
The Archie Shepp-Bill Dixon Quartet
Jeanne Dielman present a reissue of The Archie Shepp & Bill Dixon Quartet, originally released in 1962. The debut as a leader for both Archie Shepp and Bill Dixon, two formidable members of the free jazz and avant-garde elite. Rounding out the quartet are bassists Reggie Workman and Don Moore, and drummers Paul Cohen and Howard McRae, each on various tracks. While the album undoubtedly swings, this piano-less quartet definitely prefigures the trailblazing free jazz work the two leaders would …
s/t
In this incredible big band-style ensemble you'll find the likes of Rob Mazurek and Jeff Parker supporting trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon. Spread across three long-form orchestral narratives, featuring various horns and woodwinds, guitar, piano, vibraphone, timpanis and voice. Far from being the muddled affair it could have become, the musicians each somehow find their own space to cut loose a little within the composition, with an accommodating, airy production to match. Of the three pieces,…
The Complete Remastered Recordings on Black Saint
A monographic box-set collection aimed at recounting the most beautiful chapters that revolutionised the history of jazz. This new series was launched in March 2010 with the simultaneous release of four box-sets, including albums by some of the artists who participated in the success of the outstanding labels. A philological work, beginning with the original recordings on multi-track master tapes, patiently integrally remastered paying strict attention to the sound quality. Bill Dixon organized …
Weight / Counterweight
"Recorded in April of 2008, Weight/Counterweight, the new release by Bill Dixon marks his return to small group playing, his first trio since the Dixon/Taylor/Oxley Victoriaville recording. The group, assembled by Hall at Dixon's suggestion, marks a new direction in Dixon's instrumentation with no untreated trumpet whatsoever and a barrage on pitched and unpitched concert percussion creating landmark skeletal architecture which Dixon pushes out from into unmediated solos of gravity and we…
Tapestries for Small Orchestra
Tapestries for Small Orchestra, eminent trumpeter/composer Bill Dixon's new multi-disc set, includes two audio CDs of specially commissioned original music plus a documentary film featuring exclusive interviews and session footage (DVD available only with physical release). Made possible in part by a grant from the LEF Foundation's Contemporary Work Fund and the support of the Festival of New Trumpet Music, this project thoroughly documents the three-day recording session at Firehouse 12's stat…