Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

A solo piano journey through spontaneity, intimacy and the unexpected. On Undress & Fly, pianist and improviser Josep-Maria Balanyà invites the listener into a world where sound takes shape in the moment. Across nine solo pieces, he moves fluidly between agile, energetic playing and passages of striking delicacy, letting intuition guide the music toward unexpected destinations. Balanyà treats the piano as both instrument and terrain for discovery. In “Relaxed Discussion” and “Jump And Fly Away,”…

A visceral encounter of electric guitar, saxophones, bass clarinet and drums—where free improvisation cuts close to the nerve. On Ecorchure, Jérémy Baysse, Jean-Luc Petit and Fabrice Favriou create music that is raw, restless and alive to the moment. The trio’s second album brings electric guitar, sopranino and tenor saxophones, contrabass clarinet and drums into an uncompromising dialogue—one that moves from uneasy quiet to bursts of abrasive intensity. Across seven pieces, the musicians build …

This recording documents a first encounter. For his 60th birthday, Stefan invited two musicians he had previously met only online. We stepped into the same room, the same air, the same sound. By the end of the night, the trio had already begun. Thanks to Barbara and Norbert at BLOCK7, Bernd and all the birthday guests who supported this concert.

"Suspensão (Suspension in Portuguese ) is one of the many free improvised ensembles that prolific violist Ernesto Rodrigues leads. A Question Asked by the Empty Horizon is the thirteenth album of this ensemble that has been operating since 2016 with a rotating line-up of local musicians coming from different backgrounds, with different instrumentation.  The current version of Suspensão features a nonet with violinist Inês Ferreira, double bass player Hernâni Faustino, trumpeter João Silva, melod…

"With a total of three members, Imprints of Experiences captures the largest unit of the releases reviewed here, and its sound is correspondingly (and comparatively) full. Schindler deploys a range of instruments, some heard before (clarinets, cornet, saxophone) and one (b-flat tubax) unique to this recording. Harald Kimmig meanwhile contributes an energetic violin and Eric Zwang Eriksson, an array of prattling percussion. Playing live over two nights in Munich in 2024, the trio offers quite a …

"Recorded live in Lisbon, violist Ernesto Rodrigues joins vocalist Maria Radich and violinist Maria do Mar in a free improv trio where close-range string interplay and crackle box electronics create high-register tension, while voice moves within the texture through whispers and cries, shaping an intimate, spatially focused performance balancing density, restraint, and evolving interaction." - Squidco

"Framed as a shifting, dreamlike improvisation, this electroacoustic quartet led by violist Ernesto Rodrigues, with cellist Guilherme Rodrigues, Carlos Santos on electronics, and percussionist Monsieur Trinité, unfolds a fluid free improv session that dissolves into evolving textures, balancing tension, restraint, and collective interplay within an immersive sonic landscape." - Squidco

Violinist Carlos Zíngaro, violist Ernesto Rodrigues and cellist Guilherme Rodrigues come together on 'Pataphysique, a new album of free improvisation that places close listening and adventurous sound-making at its heart. Across six pieces—“I” through “VI”—the trio explores the expressive range of its string instruments, shaping an open-ended musical conversation in real time. Rather than follow a fixed path, the music unfolds through shifts in texture, gesture and intensity, inviting listeners i…

"A Berlin-recorded trio of violin, viola, and cello with voice, where Gerhard Uebele, Ernesto Rodrigues, and Guilherme Rodrigues shape twelve concise movements of hushed, textural free improv, blending extended string techniques and subtle vocalizations into a fragile, reductionist sound world of intimate interplay, suspended time, and finely detailed sonic nuance." - Squidco

Released by Creative Sources Recordings, Livingry captures a vivid live encounter between Lawrence Casserley, Dominic Lash, Massimo Magee and Phillip Marks. Recorded at London’s Hundred Years Gallery on 4 October 2025, the album brings together Casserley’s Signal Processing Instrument, Lash’s double bass and electric guitar, Magee’s alto saxophone and clarinet, and Marks’s percussion in a set of six freely improvised pieces.  Across just over an hour, the quartet shapes music that feels alive to…

This bundle brings together New Light and Incantations, the two sets that Sunny Murray, Arthur Doyle and Rasul Siddik played at Thelonious in Bordeaux on October 21st, 1999, never released before and now issued by NoBusiness Records. Murray is on drums, Doyle on tenor saxophone, flute and voice, Siddik on trumpet.New Light opens with a long trio improvisation and goes on with Doyle's African Express, Don Cherry's Complete Communion and a closing piece whose title is unknown. Incantations has thr…

This bundle brings together New Light and Incantations, the two sets that Sunny Murray, Arthur Doyle and Rasul Siddik played at Thelonious in Bordeaux on October 21st, 1999, never released before and now issued by NoBusiness Records. Murray is on drums, Doyle on tenor saxophone, flute and voice, Siddik on trumpet.New Light opens with a long trio improvisation and goes on with Doyle's African Express, Don Cherry's Complete Communion and a closing piece whose title is unknown. Incantations has thr…

Sun Ra's 1970 Saturn album, cut with a skeletal Arkestra of three sidemen and Ra on Rock-Si-Chord and Minimoog in a near-pop mood. Cosmic Myth's expanded 2LP adds six bonus tracks, including a 1971 TV concert and a 1973 live quartet.

*250 copies limited edition* Look What I Found in the Forest is a sequence of ten musical dialogues built around voice, piano, improvisation and collaboration. Moving between ambient, experimental jazz and darker, more intimate territories, each dialogue opens a different space while remaining part of the same journey.

Before Jimmy Smith became one of jazz’s most influential organists, there was A New Sound… A New Star (Volume 1)—the 1956 Blue Note debut that announced a bold new presence on the scene. Recorded at Van Gelder Studio with guitarist Thornel Schwartz and drummer Bay Perry, the album puts Smith’s Hammond organ front and center: nimble, muscular and full of blues-inflected swing. He reshapes familiar standards such as “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Oh, Lady Be Good!” and “But Not for Me,” while “You G…

Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, on May 19, 1957, Paul Chambers Quintet captures bassist Paul Chambers leading an exceptional ensemble at the height of the hard-bop era. Released by Blue Note in 1958, the album brings together trumpeter Donald Byrd, tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan, pianist Tommy Flanagan, and drummer Elvin Jones.  Chambers is more than the foundation beneath the group: his resonant bass lines and confident solos give the session its unmistakable …

Matthew Shipp on piano and William Parker on bass in only their fourth duo album, the fruit of a four-decade friendship that began in the David S. Ware Quartet. Recorded in Brooklyn in June 2025, CD on Tao Forms.

Marc Ribot's first all-instrumental album since Live at the Village Vanguard: a quartet with Chad Taylor and the saxophones of James Brandon Lewis, Brian Settles and Briggan Krauss, between free jazz and No Wave. On Pi Recordings.

William Parker as composer and lyricist: songs sung by Andrea Wolper with an inter-generational band, a title suite with tap dancer Melissa Almaguer, pieces for Chantal Akerman and Joseph Jarman. CD limited to 500 copies on Centering.

Debut of Trio Imagination, the group that grew out of Trio 3: David Virelles on piano with the legendary rhythm section of Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille, recorded at the Van Gelder Studio. On Pi Recordings.

James Brandon Lewis's third Red Lily album turns to Antonín Dvořák: original pieces that vary, echo or answer the Czech composer, with Kirk Knuffke, Melanie Dyer, Tomeka Reid, Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor. On Tao Forms.

More early-1970s free music from the MND circle, taped mostly at Hamburg's Fabrik: Sven-Åke Johansson, Norbert Eisbrenner and cellist Peter Dyck with guests, on a double LP that follows Freedom Suite.

Enzo Scoppa has been playing tenor saxophone on the Roman scene since the late 1950s, and since 1958 he has shared the front line with trumpeter Cicci Santucci: next to the Basso-Valdambrini sextet, the Santucci-Scoppa quintet is the longest-running partnership in Italian jazz. New & Old Friends is his latest album, recorded at Clive Simpson's Extrabeat studios in Rome in March and April 2018, and the first CD ever issued by Sonor Music Editions. The six pieces move between bebop, big band writi…

First vinyl edition of Last Exit's 1989 live recordings from Stockholm and Munich, with Brötzmann, Sharrock, Laswell and Shannon Jackson.

Reissue of Zo, the first duo album by Matthew Shipp and William Parker, recorded in 1993, with an epic Summertime, on ESP-Disk'.

Flutist Nicole Mitchell and percussionist Joe Westerlund, a former mentee of Milford Graves, improvise in a rural studio near Chapel Hill: looped flutes, mbiras, metallophones and live electronics, with no overdubs.

First duo album by trombonist Kalia Vandever and DARKSIDE guitarist Dave Harrington, recorded in three rainy days in Los Angeles: brass and guitar between drum machines, samples and quieter, intimate pieces.

CP Unit in real time: Chris Pitsiokos, Sam Lisabeth, Henry Fraser and Jason Nazary between harmolodic funk, noise rock and musique concrète, recorded in Brooklyn in 2018.

Second CP Unit album on Clean Feed: Chris Pitsiokos with Sam Lisabeth and two rhythm sections, between Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, noise and Stockhausen.

The first CP Unit album: Chris Pitsiokos with Brandon Seabrook, Tim Dahl and Weasel Walter, jazz forms filled with noise and rock, recorded in Brooklyn in 2016.

Second solo alto saxophone album for Relative Pitch, eight pieces named after rocks, recorded in January 2022.

Solo alto saxophone: six pieces dedicated to Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and John Zorn.

Double CD by the Berlin CP Unit (Chris Pitsiokos, Marta Warelis, Dan Peter Sundland, Luca Marini): studio takes from October 2025 and a concert from April 2026.

Slow, static forms for alto saxophone, accordion, synthesizer, bass and drums: the Chris Pitsiokos Ensemble between late-1960s Miles Davis and Morton Feldman.

CP Unit's first live album, recorded at the Moers Festival and at Unlimited in Wels in 2018: Chris Pitsiokos with Sam Lisabeth, Henry Fraser and Jason Nazary.

Live quartet of Keiji Haino, Otomo Yoshihide, Chris Pitsiokos and Tatsuya Nakamura, recorded at Goodman in Tokyo on September 1, 2024.

Akira Ishikawa & Count Buffalos' 1976 direct-to-disc jazz-funk session for Toshiba, rebuilt from the best moments of the original takes.

Akira Ishikawa's 1972 Latin set with Count Buffalo Latin Beats, arranged by Naoya Matsuoka: Cuban, Mexican, Brazilian and Puerto Rican standards pushed through fuzz guitar, Hammond organ and heavy drums.

Trost Records is delighted to announce the second album from the otherworldly improvising quartet of Tony Buck, Franz Hautzinger, Ignaz Schick, and Philip Zoubek, an ensemble now known as Pulsar. The new recording was made at a live performance at the Loft in Cologne in December of 2024, and it captures a radically different sound than the group’s debut, Silt, recorded at the same venue four years earlier. Its members rank as some of the most celebrated and distinct free improvisers in Europe, e…

2CD version. A new edition of Joshua Abrams’ 2015 2xLP magnum opus Magnetoception is at last here. Out-of-print on vinyl for a decade+, Magnetoception is the 3rd album, & 1st double album, in the saga of Natural Information Society. In a Berwyn, Illinois attic, February 2013, Abrams, guitarists Emmett Kelly & Jeff Parker, & grand master drummer Hamid Drake gathered around vintage Neumanns & a woodstove to record the nucleus of Magnetoception live to 2-track. Beamed-in over the next year at Abram…