★Tzadik
Prolegomena
This CD is about quality not quantity - less than thirty minutes in total, but absolutely some of the most incredible music Zorn has ever composed. Dramatic, intense, mercurial, challenging, and endlessly virtuosic, Zorn’s writing for strings is amongst the most exciting ever achieved in the classical world. Here he expands the fabulous Jack Quartet to a quintet and sextet with the addition of two of the most accomplished musicians in the New York scene: Yura Lee and Michael Nicolas. Composed in…
Nocturnes
The fourth CD in Zorn’s remarkable series of piano trio recordings exploring classical forms, Nocturnes is an absolute delight. Preceded by Suite for Piano (2022), Ballades (2024), and the Impromptus (2025), Nocturnes is Zorn’s personal take on the beautiful tradition of night music. Touching on Chopin, Scriabin, Debussy, Berg, and more, the music is a wonderland of subtlety—dreamy, drifting, and utterly compelling. Brian, Jorge, and Ches, three of Zorn’s closest and most trusted collaborators p…
Last Live 2001 - In Memoriam Derek Bailey And Tony Oxley (2CD)
Joseph Holbrooke was a legendary all-star ensemble from the mid Sixties dedicated to free improvisation. Comprising three of the most acclaimed virtuosos from the first generation of British improvisers—Bailey, Bryars, and Oxley—little has been released, but they briefly reformed in 1998 and the studio recordings from that period were made available in 2006 on Tzadik as The Moat Recordings. Last Live 2001 is exactly that—their last live concert ever! Recorded in Antwerp in January of 2001, the e…
Modesty of the Magic Thing
Composer, harpist, improviser, and educator Zeena Parkins has been a mainstay of the Downtown scene since 1984, performing with Fred Frith, John Zorn, Bjork, Ikue Mori, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, and countless others. Her newest project, years in the making, pays tribute to the fearless American visual artist Jay DeFeo. Zeena captures DeFeo’s bold experimentalism and love of beauty with a lush, exotic extended work for harp and percussion. Performing with her on a unique instrument built by leg…
Collected Works
*2025 stock* PainKiller's Collected Works presents the complete documentation of one of experimental music's most brutal and boundary-pushing collaborations. This four-CD compilation gathers all studio recordings and essential live performances from the trio of John Zorn (saxophone, vocals), Bill Laswell (bass), and Mick Harris (drums, vocals), documenting their three-year assault on the boundaries between avant-garde jazz and extreme metal. PainKiller was formed in 1991 when NYC downtown giants…
Reflectativity
Reflectativity, first released on Leo Smith's own label in the early 1970s is one of the most important extended compositions blending improvisation and composition, and one of Leo Smith's masterpieces. This exciting new version features the brilliant pianist/composer Anthony Davis (who performed on the original recording) and longtime friend and colleague Malachi Favors—the legendary monster bass player from the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Coupled with several new compositions, this CD brings toge…
Tenshi No Gijinka
Keiji Haino's ritualistic 1995 album features nine untitled pieces of voice and percussion. The Japanese avant-garde master creates meditative spaces through drones, cymbal crashes, and gargled vocals, building esoteric rituals that explore the inner sounds of existence on Tzadik.
The Shamanic Principles
Teiji Ito's The Shamanic Principles explores spiritual dimensions of sound - fourth Tzadik release documenting composer's journey into sacred music and ritual performance
The Suite Unraveling
2014 release ** "Brooklyn based Lily Maase is a guitarist and composer of powerful originality. Influenced equally by Ornette Coleman, Morbid Angel and electronic music, she has created a modern jazz-rock fusion that captures the funky edge of Blood Ulmer with minimalism, indie rock and a touch of psychedelics. Powerful riffs, spontaneous conducting techniques, searing solos and a unique lyricism from this exciting New York based trio!"
Cruelty Bacchanal
Cruelty Bacchanal, the second release from guitarist Matt Hollenberg’s group Shardik, is a ferocious statement of intent. Years in the making and issued on John Zorn’s Tzadik label, the album presents a volatile and politically charged fusion of modern classical structure, metal intensity, and free jazz unpredictability. Hollenberg’s compositions are marked by intricate rhythmic architecture and an uncompromising sonic vision, alternating between explosive virtuosity and dark, layered atmosphere…
Memories, Dreams and Reflections
Friends and colleagues for over 25 years, John Zorn and Dave Lombardo are two of the most uncompromising and powerful musical visionaries in modern music and “Memories, Dreams, and Reflections” presents these two extreme virtuosos in an exciting session of pure improvisation. Drum shaman Dave Lombardo and renegade sax alchemist Zorn are at their freewheeling best here and their connection has never been tighter. Intense, telepathic, filled with love, surprise, respect, and an insatiable curiosit…
Fantasma (Illusions From A Surrealist Mirror)
Zorn’s compositions for classical soloists with rhythm section are among the most successful and powerful meetings of classical and jazz ever conceived—completely notated virtuosic scores for classical players augmented by improvisers who illuminate the music with surprise, support, and an imaginative unpredictability. Mining this magical world since 2010, the project reached its apotheosis in the acclaimed 2021 release “Heaven and Earth Magick.” Here that same quartet divides into different gro…
Impromptus
With “Suite for Piano” in 2022, Zorn began exploring classical forms in the context of the jazz piano trio. The second CD in the series was a beautiful collection of “Ballades,” released in July 2024. This third project presents nine Impromptus—freewheeling forms that unfold like brilliantly imaginative short stories. Brian, Jorge, and Ches outdo themselves here with telepathic interplay, endless creativity, and a courageous ability to go places that have never been discovered before. With each …
Talisman (Live In Nagoya)
2025 stock Bringing together three of the most voracious and energetic musical minds in new music, Painkiller was one of the most intense live bands ever. Here they are captured at their absolute peak. Culminating their legendary 1994 tour of Japan in a masterful set featuring one of their longest and most inspired improvisations, the thirty-five minute Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia. Beautifully recorded by the unsung fourth member of the group sound engineer Oz Frith and packaged in deliriousl…
The Prophecy
2025 stock John Zorn and Bill Laswell are two of the Downtown scene’s most consistently intrepid musical explorers, and PainKiller, formed in 1991 is their longest running project together. “The Prophecy,” the first official PainKiller release in over ten years, was recorded live in Europe in 2004–5 and pulls together music from several concerts into a powerful and mind blowing suite unlike anything the group has ever released before. Featuring master drummer Yoshida Tatsuya (Ruins, Korekyojin)…
Hyderomastgroningem
2025 stock Along with the Boredoms, Naked City and very few others, this amazing drums/bass duo are masters of quick-change, stop/start tempos, time-signatures and textures. Ruins' explosive and intricately composed tunes are sung in a peculiar language of their own invention. Yoshida cites Magma, This Heat, Debussy and Webern as influences. Masuda's favorites are James Brown and Fred Frith.
Hardcore, art rock, psych, heavy metal, funk and lots more - if Ruins have heard it, they are likely to…
Mandala 2000 / Live At Kichijoji Mandala II
2025 stock A blistering live performance at one of Tokyo's longest running avant garde venues by one of Tokyo's longest running avant garde bands. A breathtaking performance of over twenty stop-on-a-dime Ruins classics, Mandala II captures the raw power and visceral energy of this dynamic band better than any studio recording ever could. Also included is twenty minutes of encores featuring the versatile and dynamic violinist Katsui Yuji. Intense, powerful and frighteningly complex sonic masterp…
Sands
2025 stock Tzadik is proud to release a new recording by Steve Lacy, MacArthur Fellow and for 40 years the undisputed master of the soprano saxophone. Recorded at his home in Paris from February to April 1998, Sands is Steve Lacy's most personal and remarkable solo document, and explores a wide variety of musical and dramatic subjects. Portraits of close friends Barney Wilen and William Burroughs; collaborations with the texts of Allen Ginsberg and Samuel Beckett; and of course his own peculiar…
Tao-Njia
2025 stock A breathtakingly beautiful document of new compositions from a founding member of Chicago's AACM and one of the world's most important contemporary creative musician/composers. Featuring his ensemble Nda-Kulture and the California E.A.R. Unit, Tao-Njia blends jazz, blues, poetry and the cultural traditions of Africa, Asia, Europe, Indonesia and America into lyrical and profoundly moving music. Wadada Leo Smith-trumpter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and improviser-has been active f…
On Alligators
2025 stock Four masterpieces by one of the world’s greatest composers of classical concert music, including three pieces that have never been released before. The fourth quartet is perhaps Wuorinen’s most complex and exciting composition, and it receives a passionate performance by the prestigious Brentano Quartet. Also included is the intense and colorful chamber piece On Alligators, conducted by the composer, and a moody piece for organ performed by one of the world’s greatest organists on on…