Jazz & Improvisation / Contemporary

To experience this music, over the relocations of time and place, is an opportunity to confront complex truths and seductive mysteries, discover the poetry in sound, and share a rare “ecstatic instant.” – Art Lange Ran Blake pianoDave Knife Fabris electric guitar (tracks 11-18)

Temporary Super Offer! To be free. What does that actually mean? Not in a social or even political sense. But as a human being? As a musician? When we speak of free improvised music, freedom is the mother of all things. And that in a literal- al sense. You free yourself from yourself. As human beings, we always act with the sum of what we have collected, stored and reflected in all the years before. An improviser does not have to apply his knowledge and skills intellectually, but instinctively. …

Neither musician has to be dominant to prove that he has something to say. Instead of trying to outdo each other, they develop a compelling, very soulful world of their own. In the history of jazz they are two more rhapsodists continuing the tradition, while changing the context of the stories and thus making them plausible. What is amazing is their calm maturity that does completely without the frills of elec- tronics. Dense and compact but at the same time transparent and delicate the music pr…

Temporary Super Offer! In 1908, Charles Ives wrote a work called “The Unanswered Question”. It was for the unusual instrumentation of offstage string ensemble, woodwind quartet and, most significant for our purposes here, solo trumpet. Though it was inspired, we think, by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Sphinx”, Ives provided his own explanatory text. The trumpet asks “The Perennial Question of Existence” seven times, to which the woodwinds provide only six increasingly disordered answers, while…

Temporary Super Offer!  Musicians as different as Bill Dixon, Wadada Leo Smith, Axel Dörner, Susana Santos Silva have experimented with the lonely, no-safety-net discipline of solo trumpet playing. It is one of the hardest avocations in music: no harmony instrument, no pedal notes, no supportive pick-up if things go wrong. Schmid seems to follow in that line and yet the solo performances on Augmented Space, for all the extreme discipline of his technique, seems very different to the artists abov…

The J&F Band is on the move once again! The new musical journey taken by the band with "Star Motel: an American music  experience" spans from the North-East Chicago blues, with Route 66, to the funk of the deep South, going West to L.A. via Nogales, Arizona, to meet the Mingus ghost and his visions, back through the Great Plains where the Rez is the way of life for many. To end where it all began, in the South-East country and funky vibe... The 30-minute Mingus celebration, in the 100th annivers…

In the second half of the eighties, I heard the duo of Charles Gayle and Peter Kowald at the Jazz Days in Novi Sad. A few years later, when Szilárd Mezei and I met, and played music together, I told him a lot about the experience that this concert had given me. I remember that the intensity, the density, the strikingly different quality of Gayle's music-making was beyond my comprehension, or even my measure. And then the world changed, and what seemed unattainable at the time became reality. A j…

This year, one of the greatest pianists of improvised music, Marilyn Crispell became the winner of the famous NEA Jazz Masters 2025 award, thus joining the ranks of such jazz wizards as, among others. in Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Sun Ra, Gil Evans, Sarah Vaughan, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Muhal Richard Abrams and Anthony Braxton, with whom, by the way, Marilyn spent several years in his second great quartet. As all of us intrigu…

"The starry floor/The watery shore/Is given thee til the break of day.“ - William Blake Music records a dream in which your other body goes out for a walk with a friend or two or more and brings back things you can grasp in the real world. If the ground beneath you is water and reflects the stars you may dream you're walking on stars. One morning, the Somnambulist woke up from his dream-walk with a record in his hand and miraculously they were all there: the uncanny encounters, spooling elucubra…

Everything is True is an album of a personal and sentimental nature, where various musical styles blend, influenced by music from different cultures, contemporary, orchestral, and electronic music. The instrumentarium is equally diverse, combining acoustic, electronic, and even unconventional instruments such as lithophones or prototypes of string instruments like the bassdesmophon. This fusion creates timeless-sounding pieces with exceptional tonality. Most of the tracks on the album were recor…

A tribute to NY reedist & wind player Mark Whitecage, who passed away in March 2021, in a concert at Rochester's BopShop in 2018 by the band he is probably best known for: Nu Band, with trumpeter Thomas Heberer taking Roy Campbell's original seat, plus Lou Grassi on drums and Joe Fonda on bass, a great concert blending modern creative jazz with passionate playing and a bit of hard bop.

PolyTropos / Of Many Turns is the highly-anticipated new release from influential saxophonist / composer Steve Coleman. Comprised of two live sets recorded during a tour in France, it features his band Five Elements, with long-running partners Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet and Sean Rickman on drums, with new addition Rich Brown on bass. Recorded in concert in Paris and Voiron, the performances are raw, relying on spontaneous conversions of rhythmic and tonal shapes that weave musical figures int…

‘The Susceptible Now’ is the new record by drummer and 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner Tyshawn Sorey, who on this occasion offers covers of some of his favourite tracks. With his trio consisting of Aaron Diehl on piano and Harish Raghavan on bass, Sorey continues in the wake of his masterful ‘Continuing’, a record that placed fourth in the 2023 rankings voted by over 150 jazz critics in the Francis Davis Poll and was described by The Guardian as: ‘5 stars: seething with reinventions of ancient magic.…

Zealous Angles is the first documentation of pianist/composer Matt Mitchell’s long-running trio featuring bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dan Weiss.Pi Recordings’ not-so-secret weapon, Mitchell now has six releases as a leader or co-leader and fourteen appearances on the label. His 2024 release Illimitable (on his and Kate Gentile's Obliquity Records) was called “one of greatest albums of spontaneously composed solo piano music, ever…. a masterpiece of twenty-first century solo piano music” by…

Bassist Kim Cass is among a vanguard group of Brooklyn-based improvisors who are creating works at the leading-edge of rhythmic acuity. Levs, his debut with Pi Recordings, features pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, who called Cass “a singular composer and player: the man can do things that don’t seem possible on the bass, displaying a technical command of the instrument on the level of the most celebrated virtuosic performers in any genre of music.”The compositions on Levs were in…

Unknown Rivers is bassist Luke Stewart’s debut for Pi Recordings. An omnipresent and galvanizing force on the music scene, Stewart is a leader or co-leader of such bands as Irreversible Entanglements, Exposure Quintet, Blacks’ Myths, Heart of the Ghost, and Remembrance Quintet. He is also among the most in-demand collaborators, having performed with the likes of David Murray, Nicole Mitchell, Moor Mother, Jaimie Branch, Nate Wooley, Ken Vandermark and countless others. Stewart is also a curator …

Brian Marsella is one of the most accomplished keyboard virtuosos in the Downtown scene. A vital member of projects by Cyro Baptista and John Zorn for decades, his fluid keyboard stylings and intense energy is legendary—and Medietas is his masterwork: a sprawling three-hour long work that embraces jazz, rock, funk, classical, world music, exotica, folk, soundtrack moods, and so much more. Segueing from song to song seamlessly, this is a work that puts you into an ecstatic dream world—a psychedel…

The Bill Evans Trio's 1973 concert in Tokyo was his first recording for Fantasy and it produced yet another Grammy-nomination for the presentation. With bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Marty Morell, this LP mixes offbeat songs with overlooked gems, familiar standards, and surprisingly, only one Evans composition, the demanding "T.T.T.T. (Twelve Tone Tune Two)”. The Tokyo concert reveals the trio functioning at a high level, with each member by this time able to anticipate whatever direction the …

"Duck Baker should be a national treasure. He should be an international treasure. Should be? In my book he already is. I first came across his work in the 1970s on early Kicking Mule LPs in my local library in the UK, which was his temporary base then, and is his permanent home now. Many years later I was astounded by Spinning Song, his CD of Herbie Nichols compositions. Around the same time, I made contact with him by way of thanks following a review he wrote of my work on Stuff Smith and, lat…

CD Version Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On is the new album by Scottish composers Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman. The pair have orbited each others worlds for a number of years through audio visual collaborations spanning record releases, films and sound installations. Wasylyk’s cinematic compositions have been nominated for the Scottish Album of the Year Award and been awarded BBC Radio 6 Music’s Gideon Coe’s Album of the Year. He has collaborated with former National Poet for Scotland, Liz Lo…

*Limited Edition of 100. Pink Vinyl! 2024 stock* Super groups are not a riskless endeavor—but when they’re made up of longtime friends and master improvisers, they tend to work. On their collaboration, simply titled Volume 1, up-and-coming American saxophonist John Dikeman (When The Time Is Right, 577 Records, 2021) is accompanied by a group of UK-based music masters: pianist Pat Thomas, a 577 Records mainstay (Shifa Live at Cafe Oto 2019, BleySchool 2019, Shifa Live in Oslo 2020, Educated Guess…

*2024 stock* Can music liberate us? Francisco Mela, who worked and partnered with the legendary jazz musician McCoy Tyner, believes so. On this album, the second volume of Music Frees Our Souls, Mela collaborates with pianist Cooper-Moore and bassist William Parker to build a 2-part extended track project of advanced dialogue between 3 of the genre's most important instruments. Tyner was well-known for his boundless musical talent, and perhaps best-known for playing in John Coltrane’s quartet, w…

7 years since its release; the iconic debut from Godtet gets a repress. The self-titled LP marked the inception of La Sape Records along with the genesis of Godtet. Stitched together more like a beat tape. 12 movements recorded live with no overdubs; "This record came about with no preconceived ideas of what we were making or what it would sound like". A crystallisation of Godtet which aided to form the sound of La Sape. Traversing across spiritual jazz, dub and experimental gestures. It caught …

‘Harlesden Sessions’ is a collection of duo recordings between versatile saxophonist David Bitelli and gifted drummer Ollie Usiskin, whose imaginative improvisations take us on a journey through post-bop, jazz-funk and free jazz landscapes. The two North West London natives would meet up on occasional Thursdays to play improvised sax and drums duo sessions. As their understanding grew, they decided to start recording them and ‘Harlesden Sessions’ presents the best of these concise improvised exc…

*300 copies limited edition* The first duo recording between towering free jazz saxophonist Paul Dunmall and the highly creative saxophonist Kevin Figes, sees them perform ten improvised pieces using an assortment of instruments, including various saxophones, clarinets and flutes. With no pre-composed themes or motifs, what you hear are two master musicians in the moment of creativity. The wholly improvised conversations seem to encompass and distil the history of jazz, moving between free and c…

** First ever standalone vinyl reissue. Carefully remastered. 4 page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. Heavyweight 180 gr. LP ** In May 1972, the wave of anger and the thirst for freedom that had swept the world in 1968 arrived in Madagascar. The Malagasy youth took the opportunity to exile in search of a brighter future. Several of them, all jazz musicians and often polyintrumentalists, came to Paris with their afro hair and bellbottoms. Their names were Sylvin Marc, his cousin Ange "Zi…

Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) is the powerful new work by composer & alto saxophonist Darius Jones. Both of his tremendous artistic strengths are to the fore here in a fully committed trio communion with longtime collaborator Gerald Cleaver (drums) & Chris Lightcap (bass). Five potent new Jones compositions, and a striking arrangement of “No More My Lord” (a prison song rec. by Alan Lomax at Parchman Farm). Legend of e’Boi is the 7th chapter (of 9 on completion) in Jones’ expansive Man…

Foster, Wick and Bennett each subvert the traditional expectations of their instruments in favor of a timbrally rich palette of unconventional sounds. The interplay on these improvisations is sympathetic; they communicate fluently in their own collective language.

Composer/Performer Zeena Parkins announces the release of two multi-part compositions, inspired by discoveries she made combing through the Walter Benjamin archives in Berlin. “Past Turned Space” features virtuoso players William Winant/percussion and Brett Carson/keyboards navigating a set of vignettes, flickering in response to Benjamin’s intimate descriptions of childhood memories. “Dam Against the Spring Tide” is graced with an all-star band of composer/performers, including: Zeena Parkins/a…

Horizons Held Close is the first unadorned Trance Map release featuring only Evan Parker and Matthew Wright since their 2011 debut. The sounds are strange but utterly compelling. Parker's soprano snakes its way through Wright's turntables, software, and processing/sampling.

Living on different continents, the possibilities of linking up were few and far between but we did keep in touch and perform when the occasion presented itself. The software SonoBus solved the problem of distance and we recorded, Mark on the edge of a desert in San Diego and me in the middle of three Australian deserts at Alice Springs. A selection from these sessions you hear on this CD.The duos were recorded direct to stereo live.On the last track you will hear our most recent guest Vladimir …

Camila Nebbia and Angelica Sanchez form a remarkable duo with an immediate affinity that is truly striking. Sanchez's austere lyricism beautifully complements Nebbia's highly expressive language, resulting in duets that showcase their creative and profoundly interactive nature.

This foursome is resolute in its acceptance of communal responsibility and creation. Vocalist Kyoko Kitamura sings and speaks in wordless flurries, matching and Taylor Ho Bynum’s brassy exhortations on cornet. Cellist Tomeka Reid and guitarist Joe Morris worry and pluck their respective strings, applying speed and torque in the loosing of spidery cascades of crinkled and crenelated tones. Pitch and timbre differentials are a big part of the interplay with instruments juxtaposed in bursts of acti…

Using 'everyday' objects to prepare the instrument in a simple way structures this  "Prose Métallique", in which each piece offers a poetic approach to language and textual references. Recorded in one day, these close-miked solo pieces for alto saxophone explore the area where voice and instrument converge.

The Norwegian jazz scene is like the hat of a magician: when you think nothing more can get out from its mysterious hole, there’s something else emerging to amaze us. Snik is such a case. The compositions are from two of the members of this quartet, trombonist Kristoffer Kompen and double bassist Ole Morten Vagan. Vagan is one of the most respected names of the Scandinavian jazz, with his membership of Joshua Redman Trio and his quintet Motif, writing scores for the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra or p…

January 2nd, 2023. Aside from being the second of a new year, it was a pretty ordinary night at ETA in Los Angeles, where guitarist Jeff Parker - alongside his ETA IVtet with saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose - had been holding down a regular Monday gig since 2016. At the time, nobody knew it was the first gig of the last year that ETA would be open for business. Over seven years of holding down that residency, Parker’s ETA ensemble evolved from a band th…

“For me this music felt like coming home. Or perhaps I should say this feels where I should really be; proud to be associated with it.” - Sam Richards

What Happens Has Become Now is Jessica Pavone's fifth solo viola album and her fourth for Relative Pitch Records. Over the past twenty years, Pavone has been developing solo music based on the pitches of the open strings intended to accentuate the natural sympathetic resonances of her particularly loud viola. Over the years, she has incorporated and experimented with electronic effects to give herself a "partner" to play with and more texture to her compositions. This album features a track perf…

"This recording of solo improvisations was initiated and realized by my longtime friend and collaborator David Bailey. We recorded nearly all of these pieces on the evening of a lunar eclipse, after David brought his vintage reel-to-reel tape machine to my old warehouse living room. The process and timing created an energy of focused intensity and stark intimacy, which is apparent in the music. I am grateful for the support, diligence and patience of my friend, whose unending faith in the myster…

ONCEIM (Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisations Musicales) is a French new music ensemble, established in 2012 by pianist Frédéric Blondy, and comprising over 30 European improvisers and members of prominent jazz, free jazz, free improv and contemporary classical groups. Through the in-depth exploration of improvisational practices, the Onceim musicians have developed a rich and unique panel of know-how. It’s as if each musician were one tool within a toolbox, all at…