Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

Paul Bley was born in Montreal in 1932 and left for New York at the start of the 1950s. He had already taken over Oscar Peterson's chair at the Alberta Lounge as a teenager. In December 1987 he came home, sat down at Studio Tempo, and recorded ten improvisations for a local label that was then four years old. Solo was the first of the dozen or so records Bley made for Jim West's Justin Time over the next twenty years, a run that ended with About Time in 2008. It is also a digital recording from …

Five years after Julius Hemphill's death, the World Saxophone Quartet records its farewell to him: four horns alone, no drums, at Studio Victor in Montreal in 1999. David Murray's title piece, three Oliver Lake tunes, a Jack DeJohnette opener. The Penguin Guide calls it one of the group's most accessible records.

Cecil Taylor solo at the Talos Festival, Ruvo di Puglia, 10 September 2000: one continuous improvisation, unreleased for twenty-one years and issued by Enja in 2021 for its fiftieth anniversary. From the same week as the Willisau concert and the same trip that produced The Owner of the River Bank.

Studio Tempo, Montreal, 19 July 1996. Kenny Wheeler and Paul Bley, two Canadians who left for New York forty years earlier, in duo for the first time on record. Thirteen short pieces, seven by Wheeler and six by Bley, alternating; trumpet and flugelhorn against a piano that leaves most of the space empty.

Villingen, 26 February 1971. Friedrich Gulda's self-portrait in the form of a course, a double LP mostly of solo piano with Klaus Weiss on drums, Fritz Pauer and a horn section including Benny Bailey and Sahib Shihab. Prelude and Fugue, Play Piano Play, a set of variations on Light My Fire, and a Goethe setting.

Berlin, Teldec Studio, 7 November 1971, the same day Terumasa Hino was cutting Vibrations for Enja across town. Joachim-Ernst Berendt, who had brought Masahiko Satoh's trio to the Berliner Jazztage, put them in a studio with the Hungarian guitarist Attila Zoller: Satoh on piano, Yasuo Arakawa on bass, Masahiko Ozu on drums, Zoller on guitar. MPS released it in 1972. Six pieces. Meet, nine minutes, opens; Sazo is short; the traditional Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair is the ballad; Clos…

Four improvisers in a historic water tower in Braunschweig: overtone singing, Tibetan bells, trumpet, pipe organ, alto sax and double bass stretched into seven long, reverberant, meditative pieces. Limited to 350 copies.

Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano and Sven-Åke Johansson on voice, accordion and drums, live at Onkel Pö in Hamburg in March 1978: a free improvised take on the German Lied, recorded by NDR.

Solo percussion album recorded in August 1980 by Masahiko Togashi, alone with drums, gongs, bells and hand percussion on a kit of his own design, reissued on LP with obi and liner notes in the Spin This Now! series.

Nick Dunston's trio with Kalia Vandever on trombone and DoYeon Kim on gayageum: open structures between song and soundscape for bass, trombone and Korean zither, with liner notes by Wendy Eisenberg.

Debut of the trio Secret People: Nathaniel Morgan on alto saxophone, Dustin Carlson on guitar and Bass VI, Kate Gentile on drums and vibraphone, recorded in August 2019.

Wendy Eisenberg performs her own long-form text score, memorised and played from memory: one disc of solo guitar and one of solo banjo, recorded at Firehouse 12 in New Haven in March 2019.

Father and son duo: Michael Formanek on double bass and Peter Formanek on tenor saxophone and clarinet, recorded in December 2019 after their first tour together, with pieces by each of them and by both.

Solo record by drummer and percussionist Scott Clark, also on harmonica, recorded live in Richmond, Virginia, in May 2019 and named after Rilke's poem Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower.

The complete first concert of the two-trumpet quartet of Herb Robertson and Dave Ballou with Drew Gress and Tom Rainey, recorded at The Stone NYC in June 2007: the first set reissued, the second issued for the first time.

First vinyl edition of Nick Dunston's 2019 debut Atlantic Extraction, on translucent yellow vinyl limited to 200 copies: a quintet of double bass, flutes, violin and viola, guitar and drums.

Michaël Attias' first solo album, recorded in one session with no overdubs: alto saxophone played with the left hand and piano with the right, the saxophone setting the piano strings into sympathetic resonance.

In Energy Center, Ed Hazell tells the essential story of Studio Rivbea, the Lower Manhattan loft where Sam Rivers and Bea Rivers made radical music possible on its own terms. Drawing on new research, photographs, posters and an unrivalled sessionography, the book restores 24 Bond Street as a home, school, rehearsal room and self-determined cultural engine.

After a nine-year hiatus, Marteau Rouge  — Pauvros, Foussat, Sato — made a comeback for a one-off concert, this time alongside Daunik Lazro, one of their long-standing friends.

First meeting of two incredible talents - Tyshawn Sorey on drums and Pat Thomas on piano.