Jazz & Improvisation / Avant-Garde Jazz

2010 release ** "This part of Martin Vognsen’s SCATAW project features a trio with Yasuhiro Yoshigaki (drummer in Altered States, Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Orchestra, ROVO) and Kumiko Takara (percussionist in Bondage Fruit, P.O.N., Warehouse). Spontaneously created on miscellaneous percussion, semi-acoustic dobro and sparse electronics the music takes improvisation through a fresh mix of crisp sounds, meticulous rhythms and enigmatic melodies. Together the 10 distinctive tracks compose a highly…

1998 release ** NOHC is a French quartet featuring Daunik Lazro (alto and baritone saxophones), Denis Colin (bass clarinet), Michael Nick (violin) and Didier Petit (cello and voice).

By 1966, the first wave of free jazz had established the foundation upon which this radically generated music could be understood and personalized, shared as a communal activity and still invested with significant singular characteristics. Noah Howard and his bandmates represented a second generation, as creative attitudes were expanding.

2025 stock ** "It’s been almost 10 years since Louis Minus XVI reigned over the free jazz of the Flandres. Fortunately for us, his reign is not ready to stop with this new album “De Anima “. This Art Ensemble of Lille is hyperactive. In addition to three albums and a split with the Berber artist Lahcen Akil, we find members of the quartet in equally ambitious projects, such as Unik Ubik, M.Thibault, Hook, L’Atelier d’Education Musicale du Centre Social Raymond Poulidor, but also in the company o…

For this very special release in The Book of Angels series, Zorn has brought together five of the most acclaimed musicians in modern jazz to perform nine of his most distinctive and lyrical compositions. Truly a jazz supergroup, these five master musicians explore Zorn's beautiful and exotic tunes with profound melodic and harmonic knowledge and a depth of feeling that is a joy to hear. One of the most breathtaking CDs in the entire Masada series--a touch of the sublime from the beautiful new Ma…

** Second edition, 200 copies on black vinyl ** Konstrukt is the free jazz revelation of the last ten years.This incredible quartet of saxophonist Korhan Futaci, guitarist Umut Caglar, drummer Korhan Arguden and percussionist Ozun Usta is blowing a real stream of fresh air, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago did in the 70s. This live multi-channel recording by Giulio Moratti captures their whole performance at Tarcento Jazz Festival (July 18th 2014) giving a perfect taste of their Cosmic–Turkish f…

Novoa/Kamaguchi/Cleaver Trio Delivers Electrifying Second Volume, A Bold, Experimental Fusion of Density and Dialogue

Emerging Drummer Samir Boehringer Sazzerac Unites Musicians from NY and Switzerland in First Album with 577 Records

Composer and saxophonist Brian Brown produced some of the most refined Australian jazz recordings during the 1970s. A versatile musician whose distinct impressionist music melded modern jazz with the outer limits of free experimentation. Considered to be his greatest work was the 1975 concept album Carlton Streets, an ambitious recording that romanticised the sights, sounds and the nostalgia of this once-bohemian Melbourne neighbourhood. Differing from his eco-jazz composition Wildflowers heard …

bastille musique presents its twenty-eighth release »DLW: Extended Beats« featuring world premiere recordings by Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard, Klangforum Wien, Sonar Quartett, Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Martin Adámek (clarinets) and Johannes Brecht (electronics). Together with the guests, Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard extend their beats in terms of co-composition and form as well as instrumentation. In addition to the recordings produced at the Paul-Robeson-Studio, the set also contains a 48-page bi…

*2024 stock* bastille musique presents its twenty-first release »Stefanovich, Dell, Lillinger, Westergaard: SDLW« featuring world premiere recordings by Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Christopher Dell (vibraphone), Christian Lillinger (drums, percussion) and Jonas Westergaard (double bass). Produced at the Teldex Studio Berlin, the album documents the collaboration between Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard and Tamara Stefanovich for the first time. In addition to the recordings, the set also contains a 48…

2009 release ** ""Istet Serenade" is foray into the area of music space that represents the core of Roland's sound philosophy, Isophonics. The theory of composed improvisation of stillness in the fluidity of constant change. The thingness of actualized sound in the nothingness of acoustic evaporation and recreation from the source of the indwelling presence. This occurs at a speed which defies conscious comprehension but which reveals abundant spiritual revelatory aspects. It requires a state of…

1988 release ** Your Neighborhood Saxophone Quartet is a saxophone quartet based in the Boston area, from 1980 to the present, specializing in improvised music and original compositions by its members. The group recorded one LP on its own label and five CDs for the Coppens label (Amsterdam), and made nine trips to Europe to perform at clubs, concerts, and festivals, one midwestern US tour, and many appearances around New England and in New York City.

1992 release ** The first in a three volume compilation (each available separately) of 114 improvisers from around the world, covering a wide variety of approaches to improvisation. Includes Henry Kaiser, Splatter Trio, and Randy McKean.

2025 stock ** "The innovative, boundary-smashing work of Nicole Mitchell, whom Chicago Reader music critic Peter Margasak has hailed as the “greatest living flutist in jazz”, has contributed new life to Afrofuturism in the 21st Century. A voracious reader of science fiction since her youth (Afrofuturist author Octavia E. Butler in particular has exerted a heavy influence on her music), the musician, composer and educator has released a string of albums that fold themes centered around technology…

2003 release ** "A lesser-known set from the Art Ensemble Of Chicago – a CD originally packaged with an Italian magazine, now presented here on its own! The performance is from 1997 – and the group features Lester Bowie on trumpet, Roscoe Mitchell on reeds, Malachi Favors on bass and percussion, and Don Moye on assorted percussion – all in a style that shows all the relaxed, confident modes of the group in their mature years. The ensemble's almost more compelling here than on some of their bette…

1993 release ** "Before getting to the music of this Anthony Braxton recording, the listener is confronted with a highly calculated methodology. The album bears the stark title Four Compositions (Quartet) 1983, and each song (itself merely a cataloged number) is accompanied by its own highly cryptic diagram. This sets up a struggle, whereby musical/emotional ends must be achieved through Braxton's analytical compositional means. For this 1983 session, Braxton selected materials from his collecti…

2025 stock ** Recorded in Milan (Italy) and originally released in 1975, Sea of Faces stands as one of Archie Shepp's strongest recordings of the Seventies. A highly varied program, covering Shepp's entire spectrum and performed by an all-star line-up featuring Archie Shepp - tenor & soprano sax, piano, vocals, Charles Greenlee - trombone, tambourine, vocals, Dave Burrell - piano, Cameron Brown - bass, Beaver Harris - drums, tambourine, vocals, Rafi Taha - vocals, Bunny Foy - vocals, maracas, pe…

At the tail end of 1996, saxophonist Mars Williams and drummer Hamid Drake took the tall corner stage at Chicago's Empty Bottle for two sets of duets. The rock club had just started a weekly Jazz & Improvised Music Series, curated by Ken Vandemark and John Corbett, which would run for nearly a decade. This rare pairing brought together two pivotal figures in the city's creative music scene, both of whom had extensive experience in diverse areas of music, from the free jazz focus of this intimate…

There was a school of philosophy in ancient China whose core theory stems from a debate entitled “A White Horse Is Not a Horse.” In a book by Gongsun Long (公孫龍 320-250BC, about 200 years after Confucius) in the Warring States Period, two persons argue if a white horse is a horse: the protagonist argues it is not, because ‘white’ is the color of a (particular) horse while a ‘horse’ is a shape and a generic term. It’s a linguistic/logical paradox, or sophistry. Ridiculed by his contemporary philos…

Doug Hammond is a veteran American composer, drummer, percussionist, bandleader, singer-songwriter, essayist, and educator who is not nearly as well known in the U.S. as his music warrants. That may be largely because he’s been based in Linz, Austria since 1989 as a professor at Bruckner University, making only periodic visits back to his native Detroit. Reut Regev is a boundary-crossing composer-trombonist born in Israel, living and active in New York City and its metroplex since 1998, noted fo…

2025 stock ** "The beauty of this music lies precisely in the capability of transmitting echoes of the pianistic music research happened in the last 50 years, filtered by Nicola Guazzaloca's personal and unmistakeable gaze.Prepared piano, improvisation, but also lyricism and the delicacy of the touch are the ingredients of his musical landscape. The ability of reinventing and being at ease with the "piano solo", aim and test for every pianist appears to us as one of the most precious elements of…

1993 release ** “Lisa Sokolov displays incredible vocal range, versatility and creativity on her wild interpretations. This album is like a ticket to an avant-garde vocal extravaganza. It will make you sit up and listen until curtain-fall.”

1990 release **

1992 release  ** "Robert Marcel Lepage, clarinettist, pays tribute to scientists, to today’s musicians and to this Renaissance man, little-known as a musician, Leonardo Da Vinci. Inspired by the personal history of this ingenious artist/inventor, Lepage has composed a remarkably eloquent music: a hydro-mechanic alliance of accurate writing, improvised music and sound machine. Musicians Michel F Côté, Jean Derome, Bernard Gagnon, Mario Légaré and René Lussier back him on this record. Adieu Leonar…

2025 stock "The jazz single is a weird bird. The history of the forma lies in commercial functions such as juke boxes and radio promotion tools, the attempts to deliver those few minute emotional bursts between our air waves of attention. So unfitting was the format back in its hay days of the 1960’s that many jazz workouts were deemed to be split in half to those dreaded pt. 1’s and 2’s, fading out the fun just when cooking got cooking and swingin singing. Ultraääni have fortunately spared us f…

*2025 stock* "“We are the place in which we dwell.” In a universe such as improvised music where, particularly in an ensemble, chance plays some kind of role, Agustí Fernández and Barry Guy did not by chance name this opus Some Other Place, paradoxical as it may seem at first sight. Much rather, it is a deliberate plight to give to this composition a title that brings up the notion of otherness, which is markedly present in both their careers. Many areas were scoured, at times under the command …

In 1961 Sun Ra took off from Chicago – where he had established the Arkestra, his dedicated ensemble and the vehicle for his mission to better the planet – and with a scaled-down version of the band he landed in NewYork. Their first recording session was in Newark in October of that year. The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra, recorded for the Savoy label, is a beautiful document of the material they'd honed during a long residency at the Wonder Inn at the end of the Chicago period. Among tracks left …

Sexmob breaks new sonic ground with longtime producer scotty hard on the hard way, a new and extraordinary collaboration

Chicago vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz leads and composes for this magnificent quintet, driven by Hamid Drake’s powerhouse drumming and Joshua Abrams’ deep-in-pocket bass, with Jon Doyle and Josh Berman’s horns bringing the shine.Eight tight, swinging tunes featured in the film Roy’s World, based on the short stories by Barry Gifford.

Reissue, originally released in 1985. Gentle, incisive solo music for violin and electronics by one of the unsung giants of free improvisation. Philipp Wachsmann emerged in the fertile mid '70s underground free music scene in London, playing with everyone from Simon Mayo to Barry Guy to Derek Bailey to Evan Parker, starting a band called Chamberpot, making albums for the collective artist-run label he managed: Bead Records. These LPs, 26 of them in total, were made in tiny batches and are now ra…

*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 500 copies.* German pianist Georg Gräwe, one of the most impeccable and imaginative improvisers in contemporary free music, made his debut recording, New Movements, in 1976, under the auspices of Free Music Production, the legendary Berlin-based organization run by Jost Gebers. At FMP’s Jazz Now festival, in April of that year, Gräwe presented his working band, a classic hard-bop configuration with trumpet, saxophone and rhythm section. Indeed, some ve…

*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 500 copies.* German pianist Georg Gräwe, one of the most impeccable and imaginative improvisers in contemporary free music, made his debut recording, New Movements, in 1976, under the auspices of Free Music Production, the legendary Berlin-based organization run by Jost Gebers. At FMP’s Jazz Now festival, in April of that year, Gräwe presented his working band, a classic hard-bop configuration with trumpet, saxophone and rhythm section. Indeed, some ve…

Tuned metal percussion figures prominently in the sound universe of Roscoe Mitchell. Many of Mitchell's early compositions for the Art Ensemble of Chicago feature xylophone and tuned bells, and his immersive set-up known as The Cage arranges an array of percussed instruments in a circle around him, including all sorts of metallophones and gongs. On Roscoe Village, Chicago-based improvisor Jason Adasiewicz has transcribed and arranged a selection of Mitchell-penned pieces, performing them all on …

Danish pianist Tom Prehn was one of the first Europeans to deeply explore free music. With his quartet featuring Fritz Krogh on tenor saxophone, Poul Ehlers on bass, and Finn Slumstrup on drums, Prehn recorded Axiom in October, 1963, for Sonet, though it went unreleased until 2015 because the band felt that their music had moved beyond it already. To hear the music they were talking about, one could only turn to two privately-made reel-to-reel tapes, Centrifuga and Sohlverv, recorded in August, …

In 1966, pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach assembled his first large ensemble to play his compositions “Globe Unity” and “Sun.” This 14-piece band, which brought together some of the leading figures in European improvised music, would eventually expand – incorporating not only Europeans but also American and Asian musicians – and assume its rightful name: Globe Unity Orchestra. In its nascent outing, beautifully recorded at Ariola Studio in Cologne, Schlippenbach’s band was already sensational…

A grand reunion of sorts in Berlin on the first day of November, 1996. Under the auspices of Free Music Production, Cecil Taylor, the great pianist and one of the premier musical minds of the 20th century, joined forces with his early comrade, drummer Sunny Murray, for a set of improvised duets. Murray was part of Taylor's important groups starting in 1959, including the trio with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, with which Taylor toured Europe in 1962 and 1963, recording the seminal Nefertiti, the…

Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Dudu Pukwana, Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg's Yi Yole, originally released in 1979. Recorded at the ICP Jubileum, a festival in Uithoorn, Holland, in 1978, Yi Yole brings together the core of the Instant Composers Pool -- pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink -- with legendary South African alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana. Longtime member of the Blue Notes, Pukwana was a beloved figure in European free music after he left South Africa in the m…

On their first stand-alone record as a duo, Ken Vandermark and Hamid Drake celebrate their 30+ year playing relationship with an electrifying live set of pieces, all featuring music composed by legendary free jazz musician Don Cherry.

Originally recorded and released in 1977, the Instant Composers Pool's Tetterettet is the first classic of the band's larger incarnations. Assembled out of elements recorded live in Uithoorn, Utrecht, and the band's home base of Amsterdam, with Misha Mengelberg using a cut-and-paste collage method akin to Teo Macero's work with Miles Davis, the record features an all-star lineup that added three leading lights of free music: bassist Alan Silva and saxophonists John Tchicai and Peter Brötzmann. I…