Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

An original member of the legendary Black Artists Group (St. Louis' counterpart to the AACM), and founder of the World Sax Quartet, Julius Hemphill was one of the most important composer/performers in creative music. His work is marked by a sharp, ed…

Originally released in 1962 on Candid Records, The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy finds a young Steve Lacy stepping forward with quiet confidence and a sound unlike anyone else at the time. Stripped of excess and focused on tone, space, and intent, thes…

The year 2026 marks the hundredth birthday of John Coltrane, whose groundbreaking artistry as a saxophonist, composer, and bandleader made him one of the most influential musical figures of the 20th century. To honor his immeasurable impact, Craft Re…

Future Present Past is the second Impulse! Records album  by the free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements. The album was largely recorded at the historic Van Gelder Studio and showcases how the quintet fuses atmospheric jazz, world music tradi…

Flirty Ghost is an evocative LP by Rachel Kitchlew, a jazz and contemporary harpist known for pushing the boundaries of her instrument. A blend of jazz, ambient, and experimental sounds, the album was crafted in a spontaneous, deeply personal atmosph…

Gerry Hemingway Live At Bau 4 features a profound collaboration among Gerry Hemingway, Izumi Kimura, Frank Gratkowski, and Christian Weber, creating a vibrant interplay of rhythms and melodies. Recorded live at Bau 4 in Altbüron, Switzerland, where H…

On Nafs At Peace, Jaubi turn a Lahore jam into a spiritual suite: North Indian raga, hip‑hop pulse and modal jazz woven into a journey from turmoil to stillness, as if Coltrane’s quest had been reimagined on tabla, sarangi and MPC‑haunted drums.

On Grzybnia, Błoto return from a three‑year silence with their most concept‑driven set yet: a darkly glowing, mycelium‑inspired tangle of jazz, house and techno pulses, where four players improvise like a single underground network branching in all d…

On Grzyby, Błoto complete their mycelium cycle with a compact blast of medicinal‑and‑toxic club jazz: five mushroom‑named cuts of broken beats, sub‑heavy low end and live improvisation that argue for dialogue and interdependence in a world addicted t…

On Dybbuk Tse!, Yoni Mayraz turns Jewish possession lore into a groove‑driven exorcism: live‑wire jazz, 90s NYC hip‑hop grit and Middle Eastern modes colliding in a story where a wandering spirit is forced out beat by beat.

On Scenery, Ryo Fukui turns a late‑start passion into a quietly astonishing debut: airy, confident trio swing and luminous ballads that distil a distinctly Hokkaido sense of space, light and seasonal melancholy into six perfectly breathing performanc…

On Mellow Dream, Ryo Fukui deepens the lyrical sparkle of Scenery into something more sculpted and powerful: bittersweet themes, surging originals and a clearer, three‑dimensional swing that many hear as the true apex of his studio work.

On Ryo Fukui Trio At The Slowboat 2004, Ryo Fukui turns the ninth anniversary of his Sapporo club into a late‑career summit: Phineas‑ and Flanagan‑inspired fire, Shorter‑charged intensity and Slowboat’s living‑room warmth fused into powerful, precise…

On Live At Vidro ’77, Ryo Fukui Trio explode the cool perfection of Scenery and Mellow Dream into raw stage heat: a newly unearthed club tape where “Mellow Dream” stretches past 16 minutes and standards ignite into hard‑swinging, edge‑of‑the‑seat cat…

On A Letter From Slowboat, Ryo Fukui makes a late‑career return to the studio that feels like a love note to his Sapporo club: standards and originals rendered with stronger touch, deeper emotion and an almost glowing lyricism shaped by a lifetime at…

On My Favorite Tune, Ryo Fukui steps out alone at the piano for the only time on record, revisiting “Scenery” and “Mellow Dream” while unveiling northern‑lit originals that fuse bebop depth with a distinctly Hokkaido sense of stillness and space.

On In New York, Ryo Fukui steps into a Manhattan studio with Barry Harris’s rhythm team and delivers a straight‑ahead bebop session: standards and a newly ignited “Mellow Dream” played with weighty touch, elastic swing and an unmistakable sense of in…

On Moon Stone, Mikio Masuda channels the plush 70s crossover of Bob James and Ramsey Lewis into a distinctly Japanese fusion: electric keys, supple grooves and subtly psychedelic guitars gliding between jazz, rock and mellow funk.

On Masao Yagi Plays Thelonious Monk (1960), Masao Yagi leads a sharp Tokyo quintet through an all‑Monk program, translating Thelonious’s craggy angles into a supple, swinging Japanese modern‑jazz dialect without smoothing away the music’s built‑in mi…

In July 1984, the otherworldly entourage of over fifty musicians of Urban Sax swarmed across the coastal town of Pori, Finland, to perform a historic concert at the Pori Jazz Festival. The masked musicians, veiled in space suits and fencing masks, ar…

"We’re listening to Blue Train, which to me is one of the most beautiful pieces on one of the most beautiful records that Coltrane recorded in the fifties. It’s his first real mature statement and he wrote all but one of the tunes on this album which…

2026 stock Doug Carn made four records for the Black Jazz label, more than any other artist, and each one topped the previous release's lofty standard. Adam's Apple was his last (1974) album for the label, representing the final note in his staggerin…

In 1964, vocalist Karin Krog released Norway's first jazz solo LP, and By Myself has helped shape her career as a singer. In 2026, 62 years after the first release, she releases the LP Tomorrow's Yesterday, and it cannot be ruled out that this may be…

On Anthem for Peace, Alan Braufman leads a razor‑sharp quartet through compact, hook‑rich tunes that braid spiritual jazz, buoyant post‑bop and modal, Eastern‑tinged themes into a forward‑moving set that feels both steeped in history and fully presen…

A groundbreaking session of European jazz – one of the first true moments of genius from singer Karin Krog! Tracks are long and experimental without getting too far out – and Karin's icy voice flows out magically over compelling tunes that still rema…

Karin Krog's own label Meantime Records has given us many rare and legendary recordings, now it presents this much welcomed reissue on vinyl of 'We Could Be Flying', from the original master. First issued on Polydor in 1974, Karin performs alongside …

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 V…

Cool Jojo was recorded from 3 to 5 December 1979 at Epicurus Studio in Tokyo under the direction of guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi. The album features the band ‘Second Concept,’ combining electric guitar, saxophone, keyboards, bass, and drums. The pro…

Go On with the George Otsuka 5 was recorded in 1972 in Japan for the Three Blind Mice label. The album features a quintet led by drummer George Otsuka, a major figure in Japanese jazz in the 1960s and 1970s. The repertoire includes original compositi…

Moon Ray was recorded on 21 and 22 April 1977 in Japan for the Three Blind Mice label. The album features the quartet led by alto saxophonist Yoshio Otomo, accompanied by Tsuyoshi Yamamoto (piano), Tamiko Kawabata (double bass) and Arihide Kurata (dr…

Recorded in Tokyo in June 1978 after his stay in the United States, Midnight Sun captures the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio in a format typical of the Three Blind Mice aesthetic: full, dynamic sound and natural breathing of the playing. Between standards (‘…

Yuvi Havkin aka Rejoicer returns with an exceptional collaborative album, California Space Craft. On this aptly titled record, he joins forces with seasoned LA bass polymath Sam Wilkes — known for his inspired studio work with Sam Gendel and his dyna…

A delirious cult concept album disguised as pop, first released in 1971, where psychedelic grooves, funk and global rhythms meet phonetic pseudo-Japanese chants, judo-master ritual cries and a children's choir. Sampled by Erykah Badu, Madlib and Dope…

London - and Berlin - based quartet Let Spin return with I Am Alien, their fifth album and first release with UK label Discus, marking a new chapter in the band’s evolution. Building on the momentum of 2022’s Thick As Thieves, the record is a continu…

Few groups working today have built their catalog with this kind of sustained intention. Founded in Ottawa in 2013, Atlantis Jazz Ensemble have spent a decade assembling one of the most coherent bodies of work in contemporary spiritual jazz - three a…

Johnny’s Disk record is an independent jazz label run by the owner of jazz cafe Kaiunbashi no Johnny located in Rikuzentakata city in Iwate prefecture, Japan. The legendary label released a string of albums of high quality but down-to-earth music, sp…

Centipede’s Septober Energy (1971), released on RCA and produced by jazz pianist Keith Tippett, is a sprawling double-album manifesto of British avant-garde jazz-rock that brings together an enormous ensemble of more than fifty musicians, including m…

We Jazz Magazine, Issue 18 / Spring 2026 "Space Time" for Shabaka. 128 pages, 170 x 240 mm in size and printed on 140g Edixion paper with laminated 300g Invercote covers. All articles presented in English. Shabaka by Tina Edwards, Booker Stardrum by …

This is my fourth solo piano release on this wonderful label. The studio’s Yamaha piano is an older darling, bless her, with an easy mechanism and unusual bright tone - lovely to play! It was also my first time recording at Sansom Studios in the West…

What do jazz improvisation, Polish Radio, dingy rap from Memphis, cassette tapes, trap, drill elements and hip-hop loops have in common? These are the ingredients that the Błoto quartet used in their lab to cook an explosive mixture for their third L…