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Ballads & Blues
Patryk Zakrocki - one of the most important improvisers, composers, and sound artists in Poland, and last time also guitarist as well as bassist Maciej Garbowski and drummer Krzysztof Gradziuk, known as the pillars of the best piano trio RGG on the Polish scene, are musicians representing completely different musical worlds. Their first studio meeting is an intimate oneiric improvisation framed by the conventions of ballad and blues. An astonishing encounter bringing music that is not made every…
Wildlife
Legendary saxophonist and one of the most important musicians on the British improvised scene. Member of great bands led by Keith Tippet and Barry Guy including the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Paul Dunmall on one hand. On the other hand double bass virtuoso, known in the past as a musical companion of legendary trombonist Paul Rutherford and a crucial on the European free improv scene band Mujician, Paul Rogers. On drums Mark Sanders, for sure a key person in the British and European free m…
Scratching Fork II
On a perfectly smooth surface of silence, three hurled stones create their patterns of waves. The lines intersect, unite, cancel out, or reinforce each other. Sometimes, they form together a harmonious pattern. At other times, they express the beauty of chaos and entropy. But they always remain in relation to each other - no movement goes unanswered. No energy escapes into nothingness. These three stones are Scratching Fork. Three musicians with different characters, histories, and registers. Ma…
A Vol D'Oiseau
"There are many illusive or ephemeral descriptions that are often part of how words seek to elucidate the listening experience. In the music we have on this recording from Florestan and the trio he has formed to venture his musical initiatives, words such as space, transparency, suspension, stasis, momentum, tension, multiplicity, flow, cohesion, dimension, release are some of the ingredients that come to mind to articulate the musical experience this recording offers. To me, Florestan’s musical…
Earth's Frequencies
Time to start the new year. Legendary trumpeter and jazz great, runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize, winner, Guggenheim Fellowship winner, NEA Jazz Masters recipient, Wadada Leo Smith and one of the greatest authorities on improvised music, educator, our friend, guitarist, and double bassist Joe Morris together! The album is a recording of a concert the two artists gave earlier this past year, on 12 February, during the famous ImprovisatioNOW concert series at Real Art Ways in Hartford, where audie…
Capt's Look
2024 stock. This performance is a second coming together of a rather unusual but wonderful pair; Dame Evelyn Glennie, a household name in percussion, and Szilárd Mezei, a prolific free improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. In 2018, these two artists came together in the Core-tet Project, one of Dame Evelyn’s significant forays into free improvisation. Since then, she also worked with TRIO HLK, but this live performance with Mezei and his quartet is a much different kind of performing…
Remedy II
"Voted “Best of 2021” by the critics of “The New York City Jazz Record,” the reaction to Remedy’s debut on the FSR label was not only a welcome boost to our morale but also confirmed the musical strategies we have been developing as a band: three equal partners, sharing an artistic vision where structure, collective interplay and individual free expression are evenly matched. While the ingredients will and have to change with each new piece, an instantly identifiable ensemble sound holds it all …
What Else Is There
In late winter of 2021, four improvisers convened in a Chicago studio. This rare event united UK pianist Alexander Hawkins, midwestern bassist Tatsu Aoki, stalwart drummer Michael Zerang, and me, sleepless Oakland guitarist Karl Evangelista (who had arrived in O'Hare mere hours before downbeat). During breaks, the conversation turned to music and family, two threads that seemed to dominate the waking lives of the musicians involved. Pondering this notion, Aoki asked, "What else is there?". "What…
All This This Here
The title of this new work for the Blue Shroud Band comes from Samuel Beckett’s “what is the word“, his last poem and an elegiac meditation on language. Additionally to “what is the word”, I have also used one of Beckett’s late poems “Brief Dream” which refers to the theme of transiting life and the acceptance of ending - “go end there / one fine day” and Barra Ó Seaghdha’s (Irish writer and poet) evocative poem “Waiting”. Two 18th century Edo Haiku complete the texts featured in this piece that…
For The People Of The Open Heart
Three masters in their respective instrumental fields. Wybithy trombonist Steve Swell, one of Germany's most active percussionists Klaus Kugel and Mark Tokar, a Ukrainian double bassist who swapped his double bass for a rifle for the duration of the war with Russia. They are not a working band, but when they stand on stage together you get the feeling that they have been playing together forever and understand each other in half a word and create music of great power and momentum. All the music …
Kairos
Do you remember the first musical meeting between Japanese-born, Irish-based pianist Izumi Kimura and legendary drum master Gerry Hemingway? It was the album Illuminated Silence recorded with Barry Guy. Today it's the two of them, Kimura and Hemingway, in the second installment of their artistic collaboration. In front of you is the album Kairos, containing five signature compositions by the two artists, one track each of their own, and the traditional song Over The Tide. And for poetry lovers, …
Openness
Let's move to Montreal in 2006, when Francois Carrier's ensemble performed on the La Chapelle festival stage with an unusual and astonishing line-up.
The leader recalls that time: "In late 2005, I was putting together my annual series of concerts with both local and international artists and musicians. Two of these nights were dedicated to special guests. At the time, I had just heard of Tomasz Stanko from his beautiful album, Matka Joanna. Instantly, I knew I had to do something with him. I lis…
Kind Of Shadow
Four magnificent improvisers from different countries. Among them, legendary and iconic double bass master Barry Guy, one of the greatest jazz / improvised music drummers Ramon Lopez, Japanese living in Ireland classically trained piano master Izumi Kimura and polish trumpet and cornet wizard from Poland Artur Majewski. All of them, after Ad Libitum Festival 2021, after the initiative of FSRecords’ executive producer, Maciej Karlowski, went to the studio and recorded some improvised music that n…
Molten Gold
Four absolute masters in their respective instrumental fields! Ivo Perelman on tenor saxophone, the great trombonist and jazz legend Ray Anderson, the well-known Joe Morris this time with double bass in his hands, and the long-time companion of Henry Threadgill's musical journeys, drummer Reggie Nicholson! The quartet's latest studio recording was made in mid-November last year at Brooklyn's excellent ParkWest Studio recording studio by the invaluable Jim Clouse.
Look In To My Eyes, I’m Watching You
Outstanding violinist and improviser from Serbia Szilard Mezei in his latest studio recording! Alongside him on double bass are Zoltan Zoltán Csányi and percussion painter from Catalonia Vasco Trilla.
Kind Of Light
Four magnificent improvisers from different countries. Among them, legendary and iconic double bass master Barry Guy, one of the greatest jazz / improvised music drummers Ramon Lopez, Japanese living in Ireland classically trained piano master Izumi Kimura and polish trumpet and cornet wizard from Poland Artur Majewski. All of them, after Ad Libitum Festival 2021, after the initiative of FSRecords' executive producer, Maciej Karlowski, went to the studio and recorded some improvised music that n…
Unwalled
You know everyone, Canadian saxophone giant Francois Carrier his long-distance musical friend also from Canada, Michel Lambert, probably the best free improvised sideman John Edwards and the legend of the European free music world Alexander von Schlippenbach. New quartet, in the studio recording made at the beginning of this year!
Bla Bla Bla Duo
Double bass legend Joelle Leandre and young Catalonian drummer virtuoso Nuria Andorra together. Two generations of the improvised music world, two different approaches to improvisation, and one incredible world of music!
Other Galaxies
"The great pianist Agusti Fernandez and I have had a strong musical connection and friendship for many years. We first worked together on a recording project led by the drummer Ramon Lopez in Valencia, Spain. After that we corresponded and eventually began our performances together during a residency of mine at The Stone in New York—the first of what is now, many other performances here and in Spain. We share many interests in music" - Joe Morris
Kataklisma
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient greek epic poems attributed to Homer. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of western literature, while the Iliad is the oldest. The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy.
Like Odysseus, the four musicians that gave life to this project traveled into several different situations with a narrative approach; improvisation is a musical p…