★Alternative Fox
Joyce
The Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist Joyce Silveira Moreno was born and raised in the middle of Copacabana, a short beach stroll from the epicentre of the bossa nova universe. Her father was a Dane that had settled in Brazil, but she was raised by her mother and stepfather in a typical Portuguese-Brazilian household. Since her older brother was friendly with leading lights of the bossa nova movement such as Roberto Menescal and Eumir Deodato, she was steeped in the form at an early age …
Black Christ of the Andes
Pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams played with nearly every major jazz performer during her long, illustrious and varied career, in addition to recording many solo works. Born Mary Winn in Atlanta in 1910 and raised in a 'shotgun shack', where local musicians gathered to jam, she played by ear from a tender age and learned the boogie-woogie style upon moving to Pittsburgh with her older sister Mamie. While still in high school, Williams toured with the Theatre Owners’ Booking Association, br…
Live at Sendai Jazz Festival, Den-ryoku Hall, 20.10.1986
The gifted American pianist Keith Jarrett is one of the jazz world’s greatest musicians. Born in suburban Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1948 with a mixed European cultural heritage, Jarrett was a child prodigy that played piano at the age of two, appeared on television, aged five, and gave his first classical recital, aged seven. After studying at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, he moved to New York in 1964 to perform at the Village Vanguard and then joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. D…
Live at Koncertsal, Copenhagen, 17.10.1963
The short-lived quintet known as The New York Contemporary Five had a lasting impact on the free jazz movement. It was formed in 1962 with trumpeter Don Cherry, who had been working with free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman; tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, Danish alto saxophonist John Tchicai (whose father was Congolese), a former member of the quintet assembled by the poet and filmmaker Jorgen Leth, who moved to New York shortly before the Contemporary Five’s formation; acoustic bassist Don Moore,…
Il Paradiso Dell'uomo
Alternative Fox present a reissue of Piero Umiliani's Il Paradiso Dell'uomo, originally released in 1963. Italian film composer Piero Umiliani enjoyed a long and illustrious career, creating nearly 200 film soundtracks, along with 40 music library LPs, and some 35 television themes. Born in Florence in 1926, he was first recognized internationally for his work on the soundtrack of 1958 crime caper I Soliti Ignoti (AKA Big Deal on Madonna Street, Persons Unknown or Le Pigeon), which featured note…
There's No Heaven Like Hell
One of the strangest and most enigmatic groups in the history of rock n' roll, Les Rallizes Denudes, also known as Hadaka no Rallizes or Hadaka no Rarizu, were a Japanese experimental rock band that is often cited as a pioneering force of the noise rock movement. The story of the band is as strange and difficult as the music they made and although much of the tale is shrouded in mystery, everything apparently begins around Kyoto's radical anti-establishment communes of the late 1960s, where andr…
Live at Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan-les-Pins 1968
Pharoah Sanders, live at the Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan-les-Pins on July 21, 1968. Experimental jazz titan Pharoah Sanders made a lasting impact with his unorthodox approach to tenor saxophone. Born Farrell Sanders in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1940, he was given the nickname Pharoah by grandmother, in reference to the potential regal lineage of his African heritage. Playing clarinet at church services during his youth, he began playing tenor sax at high school. In 1959 he moved to Oakland, Cal…