★Creative Sources

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 …

"Vasco Trilla continues to be prolific through these turbulent times, including a recent release with Swedish improvisors on Creative Sources, Up North, after electroacoustic trio Behenii II  following as well trumpet trio Choreography Of Fractures (reviewed in October...) on Sluchaj. The latter was a continuation of various Polish collaborations for Trilla, including now In the no time — released on Canadian label Tour de bras, recorded November 2023 — with Pawel Doskocz (electric guitar) & Zof…

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…

"Fragments of the Unseen suggests a completely different kind of free improvisation. It is the second album of the chamber, acoustic, free improvising quartet of violist Ernesto Rodrigues, cellist Guilherme Rodrigues, their frequent collaborator, Korean, Berlin-based tenor sax player Jung-Jae Kim, and German guitarist Andreas Willers, following the live recording of Points of Dichotomy (Creative Sources, 2025). But the studio recording of Fragments of the Unseen was captured seven months before …

Creative Sources Recordings proudly presents The Dew That Flies, an evocative new work from German multi-instrumentalist Udo Schindler and Catalan pianist Jordina Milla. This album captures the essence of improvisation, offering listeners a journey through sound that is intimate, fearless, and subtly poetic. The title conjures images of fleeting beauty and transformation—like dew glimmering in the air, the music shifts between density and silence, inviting exploration of resonance and texture. S…

"This CD is a documentation of a concert which was recorded on July 21st, as one of three concerts. The reproduction of the concert is one-to-one, without cuts. On July 19th I played a duo concert in my studio with Max Arsava, on July 20th I played an identical trio concert at the Freie Musikzentrum in Munich.mMy collaboration with Gunnar Geisse goes back almost a decade. In recent years, he has discovered and developed a partly unexplored cosmos with his extended electronic techniques and sound…

*100 copies limited edition* Freshly on Creative Sources is this debut duo collaboration by French 11 string guitarist Christian Vasseur and Belgium's Dirk Serries on his archtop guitar. Performed and recorded at the stunning Oude Klooster chapel in Brecht (Belgium). Both musicians met each other for the first at the Alternative Guitar Festival, organised by Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg in 2023 at Haekem Theatre (Brussels, Belgium) and immediately felt a kindred spirit for the abstract and immense…

"... it's not about cleaning the music from the non-music or trying to destroy all disturbing noises, but to perceive the music as such, which exists in the midst of the noise of life. The more open the ear is to everything audible, the more strongly the music radiates its speciality. Because a musical instrument has a material body, its sound cannot be frictionless and clean. ..." - From Portrait of a Spinning Top / Portrait eines Kreisels by Yoku Tawada (Berlin) Udo Schindler plays a bflat-cla…

"Quoting Danish painter & sculptor Asgar Jorn - "To get anywhere, one must choose one's mistakes. I chose experimental acts." - the quartet of Udo Schindler on alto sax, bass & double bass clarinets & cornet, Eric Zwang Eriksson on drums, Ardhi Engl on self-invented instruments and Nikolaus Neuser on trumpet, are heard live at Munich's FMZ for 3 masterfully risk-taking sound poems." - SquidCo.com

"I believe that the destructive element in art is neglected too much." - Piet Mondrian

The first release of 2024 is in! After their well-received debut duo album Puncture Cycle (released five years ago on A New Wave Of Jazz - this album you find here), British key improviser Benedict Taylor (viola) and Dirk Serries (archtop guitar) are back with a new duo album.  An album they recorded at the fantastic Oude Klooster chapel in Brecht (Belgium) on August 11th, 2023.  Full-on interaction, fast-paced dialogue while still listening and corresponding in depth with the sublime acoustics …

"The quartet of Udo Schindler on reeds, Ernesto Rodrigues on viola, Guilherme Rodrigues on cello and Nuno Torres on saxophone are heard in Munich, first in a wildly interactive live performance at Schindler's Salon successor: BASIS_Soundscape at MUCCA; then live in the studio for 7 improvisations with track titles borrowed from and under the influence of the poetry of Allen Ginsberg." - SquidCo.com