Jazz & Improvisation / Avant-Garde Jazz

“Hurtling Between” is an apt description of the way Barry Altschul plays drums: effortlessly moving between swing and free playing. It’s also a fitting analogy for the current historical moment, in which there’s often a feeling of catapulting between awareness and denial. During the pandemic, Joe Fonda asked me if I would join him in a trio session at Barry’s house. We began to play semi-regularly, developing a rapport. Barry’s living room is filled with the accumulated trappings of a jazz life.…

Saxophone, double bass and drums trio of Michael Foster, John Moran and Joey Sullivan, in two long parts recorded in Philadelphia on May 8th 2025.

Jackie McLean's One Step Beyond, a quintet session with Grachan Moncur III, Bobby Hutcherson, Eddie Khan and Tony Williams, recorded on April 30, 1963 at Van Gelder Studio and first released by Blue Note in 1964.

Andrew Hill's Judgment!, a quartet session recorded on January 8, 1964 at Van Gelder Studio with Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Elvin Jones, produced by Alfred Lion and first released by Blue Note in 1964.

Andrew Hill's Compulsion!!!!!, recorded on October 8, 1965 at Van Gelder Studio with Freddie Hubbard, John Gilmore, Cecil McBee, Richard Davis, Joe Chambers, Renaud Simmons and Nadi Qamar, first released by Blue Note in 1967.

Larry Young's last Blue Note session, five originals recorded at Van Gelder Studio on 7 February 1969 with Lee Morgan, Herbert Morgan and Eddie Gladden, first released in 1980 (LT-1038). Tone Poet reissue, 2026.

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.

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.

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.

Trost Records proudly announces the latest release in its ongoing cooperation with Berlin’s legendary FMP label, with the long overdue reissue of two classic live albums by the singular alto saxophonist Noah Howard, a key figure in New York’s free jazz revolution during the 1960s. Berlin Concert was recorded live in the titular city in January of 1975 with a quartet featuring pianist Takashi Kako, bassist Kent Carter, drummer Oliver Johnson, and percussionist Lamont Hampton, while Schizophrenic …

Reissue, originally released on ESP Disk' in 1966. Frank "The Reverend" Wright was one of the most powerful saxophonists to pick up on Albert Ayler's freedom and ferocious playing. Born in Mississippi and raised in Memphis, TN and then Cleveland, OH, he started in music as a bassist in blues bands but switched to tenor sax under the influence of his Cleveland friend Albert Ayler. Wright's "energy music" approach to tenor saxophone was influenced by Ayler but at the time in the '60s Wright's inte…

Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the release of BAG's first album since 1973, "For Peace and Liberty", recorded in Paris in Dec. 1972 when the musicians had recently arrived from St Louis. BAG only released one album during their existence. This long-lost performance, recorded at Maison de l'ORTF in optimal conditions just a few months previously, was thought lost until recently unearthed from the vaults of INA (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel). Here the group unleashes an incandescent 3…

A seamless blend of the avant jazz of David Murray (sax) and Steve McCall (drums) with the powerful prose and cadence of Amiri Baraka! This first ever reissue of poet and social/political activist Amiri Baraka’s electric live 1982 beat poetry reading is newly remastered and includes a zine-style poetry insert and liner notes by David Murray!  “The poetry I want to write is oral by tradition, mass aimed as its fundamental functional motive. Black poetry, in its mainstream, is oracular, sermonic, …

After releasing two astonishing albums of original material with his remarkable debut Fuchsia Swing Song (1964) and the follow-up Contours (1965), multi-instrumentalist Sam Rivers went another direction on his third Blue Note album A New Conception (1966) by presenting a set of standards that were given riveting interpretations with a quartet featuring Hal Galper on piano, Herbert Lewis on bass, and Steve Ellington on drums. Despite the well-worn repertoire—including the chestnuts “When I Fall I…

"Whether Camila Nebbia is freely improvising or playing originals that toggle between poetic rumination and fiery blowing, she is all in. With "A reflection distorts over water" she’s formed one of the most febrile, elastic ensembles in a very prolific career, uniting with two of the strongest improvisers in the US: veteran pianist Marilyn Crispell and rising percussionist Lesley Mok. The new trio set up at Nevessa Studio without any prior rehearsal. They played Mok’s composition “Longing” while…

This fourth record by the long-standing improvising ensemble Rempis/Abrams/Ra, and the third featuring now-regular band member Jim Baker, was recorded in a watershed moment for these musicians during a pandemic that had gutted lives across the planet. After 15 months of being closed to the public, the band's home base Elastic Arts had re-opened for live events. And Rempis decided to relaunch his weekly Thursday-night concert series, a hub of the Chicago scene since 2002, with a performance by th…

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.

Enrico Rava's Pupa o crisalide, with tracks recorded by three different line-ups, sums up the first phase of the Triestine trumpeter's solo career, reissued officially for the first time.

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.

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.

2025 stock If you went looking for a poster-child for Chicago's multidirectional, cross- pollinating, interstylistic music scene, you couldn't find a better one than Jeff Parker. Parker: jazz guitarist with pro credentials, widely travelled and prized by top soul-jazzers and hard-boppers. Parker: inveterate rocker who revitalized Tortoise with his ferocious improvising and tasty licks. Parker: experimentalist willing to try new dub, hip- hop, electronic, collage, free, chamber - anything worthwh…

Karma is Pharoah Sanders' third recording as a leader, and is among a number of spiritually themed albums the Impulse! Record label released in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Although it is followed by the brief "Colors", the album's main piece is the 32-minute-long "The Creator Has a Master Plan", co-composed by Sanders with vocalist Leon Thomas. Some see this piece as a kind of sequel to Sanders' mentor John Coltrane's legendary 1964 recording A Love Supreme (whose opening it echoes in a muscular…

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…

Recorded over two December days in Copenhagen and shelved for nearly three years, Bjerge, Strand gathers Jakob Bro with Charles Lloyd, Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy, and arrives on Loveland Music on CD, alongside a limited double vinyl edition, with artwork by the painter Tal R. Bro invited Lloyd to The Village Recording in Vanløse in December 2023, bringing along the rhythm section he had formed in 2019 with Grenadier and Rossy, the two players who spent two decades refining the piano trio al…

Loveland Music presents 8, a studio recording featuring an all-star ensemble of Jakob Bro, Brian Blade, Craig Taborn, Chris Cheek, Jesper Zeuthen, Anders Christensen, Larry Grenadier & Marcus Gilmore, playing compositions by Paul Motian and Jakob Bro. The album was recorded in a single session at New York's Power Station with engineer James Farber, following a week-long residency at the Village Vanguard.  "Danish guitarist and composer Jakob Bro is celebrated for his pure reflective expression a…

Loveland Music proudly announces the release of Live at The Village Vanguard, a remarkable new recording that brings together seven of the most distinctive voices in modern jazz. Recorded in the legendary New York room that has defined generations of improvised music, this album captures the raw immediacy and atmospheric depth of a once‑in‑a‑lifetime gathering. Subtle, deeply melodic, and unhurried, Live at The Village Vanguard reveals Bro’s unique gift for creating spacious musical landscapes w…

Loveland Music is proud to announce the release of The Montclair Session, a rare meeting of four titans of contemporary jazz: trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, guitarist Jakob Bro, pianist Marilyn Crispell, and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Recorded in Montclair, New Jersey, this album captures the essence of improvisation at its most searching, delicate, and alive.   Each of the four musicians brings a lifetime of artistry to the music. Wadada Leo Smith, a pioneer of creative music and recipient of numerou…

A powerful intergenerational trio emerges on Murasaki, featuring Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet, Marcus Gilmore on drums, and Jakob Bro on guitar. Recorded at Power Station (formerly Avatar Studios) in New York, this exploratory session unfolded spontaneously—no retakes, no discussions, just a shared musical language rooted in intuition and trust. “It felt as though this music already existed before we started playing,” Bro reflects. Murasaki captures the creative summit of three visionary artists,…

Tip! To abandon animals for music – and avant-garde jazz at that –, could seeming shocking to some people. However, it is exactly what Manuel Villarroel did, as he was a vet for three years before leaving his native Chili for Europe and a career in music. And though the animals may have suffered, the world of music can be grateful. Born in 1944, Manuel Villarroel lent an ear to the best pianists from North America: Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner then Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylo…

Reissue of François Tusques's Dazibao n°2, originally released in 1971. This was of course not the first time that François Tusques was a "headline act". In 1965, he recorded, with other like-minded Frenchmen (François Jeanneau, Michel Portal, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin, and Charles Saudrais), the first album of free jazz in France, named... Free Jazz. In 1967, Tusques again served up Le Nouveau Jazz, in the company of Barney Wilen (and Beb Guérin, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, and Aldo Romano). Thr…

To avoid the “Quésaco?” on the sleeve of Piano Dazibao, François Tusques explains everything: A wall mural on which the Red Guard expressed their opinions during the Chinese proletarian cultural revolution. So much for the “Dazibao”, very good; but the piano in all that? The piano, François Tusques was self-taught and his work was influenced by Jelly Roll Morton and Earl Hines before discovering Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and then… free jazz. In Paris in 1965, Tusques mixed with Michel Portal, …

Tip! Before coming to Europe, in 1970, pianist Manuel Villarroel was a vet in his native Chili. A few years later, as leader of the Machi Oul Big Band, he returned to the animal kingdom. A very specific kind of animal, for sure, the Quetzalcoatl, also known as the Feathered Serpent. What is behind this title (also the name of one of the three original compositions on this album released on the Palm label in 1976), is first and foremost a sort of homecoming… After discovering the jazz of Herbie H…

** First ever LP reissue. Carefully remastered from the master tapes. 4-page booklet with rare and unpublished photos ** Heavyweight 180 gr.In October 1974, the first number of “L'Indépendant du Jazz”, a small self-produced magazine DIY -before punk supposedly invented the concept- was launched by Jef Gilson, Gérard Terronès, Jean-Jacques Pussiauand a few other specialists of a different kind of jazz in France, it looked at the already long career of Jef Gilson and in detail at the album with sa…