Jazz /
Six Hands Open As One
In 2019, a year before the onset of the pandemic and three years before the full-scale war in Ukraine broke out, we released Illuminated Silence. This was the first album of a new trio consisting of the young Japanese-born, Irish-based pianist and composer Izumi Kimura and the greats of the improvised music world Barry Guy and Gerry Hemingway. The album was very much liked by listeners and I heard from many of them the question whether there is a chance that this formation will survive, because …
The President
Kamil Piotrowicz - one of the brightest and most acclaimed for his creativity pianists on the artistic map of Poland, an artist associated with the new Scandinavian (Danish) improvised music scene accompanied by equally talented two musicians from Norway, trumpeter Erik Kimestad and drummer Simon Albertsen. The President is their first album recording. The material was created at DKDM studios in Copenhagen and mastered by another Polish artist highly regarded for his directorial efforts, Albert …
Seuil de Feu
Xavier Camarasa - Fender Rhodes, Jean-Marc Foussat - Synthi AKS, voix jouets and Marc Maffiolo saxophone baryton
Escale
Xavier Camarasa - Fender Rhodes, Jean-Marc Foussat - Synthi AKS, voix jouets and Marc Maffiolo saxophone baryton
From The Source
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…
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…
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…
Spiritual Jazz 15: A Tribute to 'Trane
Gatefold sleeve. Includes download code. Many artists achieve greatness but very few produce work that is so moving it's considered sacred. Whether you choose to call them hymns, psalms or spirituals, their songs are a healing force for troubled times. Jazzman's Spiritual Jazz series would not exist without the inspiration and leadership of the spiritual messiah that is John Coltrane. It can therefore only be right and proper that a whole album is dedicated to his legacy and lasting influence. S…
GNASH
"This overdue duo record by longtime colleagues Tashi Dorji (guitar) and Dave Rempis (saxophones) is a monument to the endless musical curiosity that links them. These two come at it from remarkably different backgrounds – Dorji combining his Bhutanese ethnicity with a love for metal, punk, American blues and folk, and anarchist political theory, with Rempis riding the outer edges of the jazz world throughout his career, while also inspired by his Greek ethnicity and a longstanding interest in f…
Silent, Listening
Silent, Listening is a major addition to ECM’s distinguished line of solo piano recordings, featuring one of the outstanding improvising pianists and jazz masters of our time: Fred Hersch. The album features seven original creations and a handful of well-chosen standards, including Billy Strayhorn’s “Star-Crossed Lovers”, Sigmund Romberg’s “Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise”, Alec Wilder’s “Winter Of My Discontent” and Russ Freeman’s “The Wind”, all played with the focus, sensitivity and gracefuln…
Gateway
With “daring and visionary spirit”, to quote a Downbeat review from the year of this album’s release, master improvisers John Abercrombie, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette forged a unique vision of trio interplay on their first joint effort under the Gateway moniker. The trio tackles Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette originals with a visionary idea of what three-way conversations in jazz could sound like. As The Observer remarked in an article of the time, “the telepathic ensemble playing and per…
Angel Song
“Destined to go down in history as a jazz classic” was the verdict with which The Guardian greeted this album on its release in 1997, saying, “Wheeler’s compositions and four of the world’s greatest improvisers make for a tranquil set that rewards with every listening. This is beautiful, golden music.” Angel Song is among the apexes of the label’s catalogue, uniting four master-improvisers – each with a unique artistic identity – in an intimate, drummer-less quartet session. Kenny Wheeler is the…
Ganzfeld
After the resounding success of their last album "Garden Island," released in 2021, the octet hailing from Tenerife is back with a new album titled "Ganzfeld." While "Garden Island" drew inspiration from the philosophy of César Manrique and his groundbreaking ecological work on the island of Lanzarote, for this new album, Gaf & The Love Supreme Arkestra turn their creative gaze to the lowland areas of northern Tenerife aka Isla Baja (the low island). Here, they envision a retro-futuristic soundt…
Towards The Flame, Vol. 2
*50 copies edition* "Three of Europe's most acclimated and proven improvisers—pianist Robert Mitchell (Steve Coleman, Greg Osby), bassist Neil Charles, and drummer/percussionist Mark Sanders (Jah Wobble, Rachel Musson)—band together as The Flame for the first time and emerge from pandemic isolation, and the forever wars and broken civics that accompanied it, with a hypnotic performance captured absolutely live on Towards the Flame.
Recorded at London's Cafe Otto in February of 2022, The Flame co…
Crazy Town
*100 copies edition* The story of Room 31 began when drummer Marlon Patton and saxophonist Greg Sinibaldi first crossed paths while playing in the band Kenosha Kid back in 2008. The two formed an instant connection, and fate brought them together again when they both relocated to New York City in 2019. Sharing a practice space, they embarked on a musical journey that would lead to the birth of Room 31. Inspired by their surroundings and the room number of their current practice space, they chose…
Telepathic Mysteries, Vol. 2
*50 copies edition* This eclectic group features the legendary multi instrumentalist Daniel Carter as well as the scientist/pianist Matthew Putman, drum wizard and 577 Records co-founder Federico Ughi, together with the brilliant up-and-coming member of the New York downtown scene, Texas-born clarinet player Patrick Holmes plus veteran bassist Hilliard Greene, a mainstay of the avant-garde for the last 20 years.
The Night is the Night
Nelly Klayman-Cohen is a singer, pianist, composer, and lyricist performing under the moniker Rotem Geffen. The album The Night is the Night consists of eight newly written songs and follows her critically acclaimed debut album, You Guard the Key (Zeon Light 2021). The lyrics, written in German, English, and Hebrew, delve into memory, love, sorrow, and the poetics of the night. The "I" and the "You" merge as relational organisms, their boundaries continuously shifting, blurring, and being redefi…
Plays Carter, Plays Mitchell, Plays Shepp
Founded by saxophonist and composer Johan Jutterström, the Swedish septet STHLM svaga has emerged as one of the most intriguing and distinctive jazz ensembles of the 2000s. Their expertise lies in crafting jazz with remarkably soft dynamics, resulting in a wholly distinctive and captivating ensemble sound. Plays Carter, Plays Mitchell, Plays Shepp is their new release and features specially composed pieces by three iconic figures in jazz history: Ron Carter, Roscoe Mitchell, and Archie Shepp, pe…
Black Classical Music
*2024 stock* Celebrated multi-instrumentalist and visionary artist Yussef Dayes announces his highly anticipated debut solo studio album ‘Black Classical Music’, released on September 8th via the revered Brownswood Recordings, Warners and Cashmere Thoughts Recordings. Alongside this, Dayes shares a first taster of the record, the title track “Black Classical Music” featuring Venna & Charlie Stacey. First single “Black Classical Music” is an incredible opening statement and entry point to this ne…