Jazz & Improvisation / Free Jazz

Donaueschingen, October 1979. Karl Berger brought the orchestra of his Creative Music Studio from Woodstock to the German contemporary music festival, and Südwestfunk and MPS recorded it. The roster reads like the CMS guest book: Don Cherry on trumpet and bamboo flute, Lee Konitz on alto, Oliver Lake on alto, soprano and flute, George Lewis on trombone, Leroy Jenkins on violin, Trilok Gurtu on tabla and congas, Peter Apfelbaum on drums and baritone, Ingrid Sertso singing, Berger on vibes and pia…

Donaueschingen, 21 October 1967. Archie Shepp with Roswell Rudd and Grachan Moncur III on trombones, Jimmy Garrison on bass, Beaver Harris on drums. One piece, One for the Trane, forty-three minutes, three months after Coltrane's death, opening with a seven-minute Garrison solo and ending in The Shadow of Your Smile.

MPS studio, Villingen, 14 September 1980. Cecil Taylor alone at the Bösendorfer Imperial the studio had bought for Gulda, after two days of practising. Eight pieces, one of them fifty-three seconds long, the first side running as a suite. Berendt heard Tatum, Bud Powell and boogie in it. Taylor wrote the title in the guest book.

Wolfgang Dauner's 1967 SABA septet: Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, Gerd Dudek on tenor and clarinet, Eberhard Weber on cello, Jürgen Karg on bass, and two drummers, Mani Neumeier and Fred Braceful. Mingus-like themes that dissolve into free playing, Neumeier on tabla for the Spanish disguise. Out of print for forty years.

Villingen, 27 and 28 June 1968. Barney Wilen, the tenor of Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, with a young Joachim Kühn on organ and piano, Aldo Romano and Wolfgang Paap on two drum kits, Mimi Lorenzini's guitar and Günter Lenz's bass. Ode to Billie Joe, Respect, Lonely Woman and the Supremes, dedicated to Timothy Leary.

Another of Berendt's meetings, SABA 1967. George Gruntz, the Basel pianist who would later run the Berlin Jazz Festival for twenty years, with Sahib Shihab on saxophones and Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and a group of Tunisian musicians: a bendir and darbuka drum ensemble and Salah El Mahdi on ney flute. The title turns Dizzy Gillespie's tune on its head. UK Vibe, reviewing the Nicola Conte compilation that includes Djerbi, points out that the famous names are not the point: it is the lesser-known …

Villingen, 23 October 1967. Irène Schweizer's trio with Mani Neumeier and Uli Trepte, a year before Guru Guru, meets Dewan Motihar's sitar, tabla and tambura, with Manfred Schoof and Barney Wilen. Three pieces, two of them long, and the seventeen-minute Sun Love. All About Jazz calls it an unqualified success.

Baden-Baden, Südwestfunk studio, 12 to 14 December 1969, the annual Free Jazz Meeting. Steve McCall had persuaded the organisers to invite the Chicago musicians living in Paris: Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, and the pianist Dave Burrell. They met sixteen Europeans: Albert Mangelsdorff, Kenny Wheeler, John Surman, Willem Breuker, Terje Rypdal, Tony Oxley, Alan Skidmore, Heinz Sauer, Gerd Dudek, Eje Thelin, Bernt Rosengren, Hugh Steinmetz, Leo Cuypers, Claude Delcloo and Karin Krog…

December 1966, a month after the premiere at the Berlin Philharmonie: Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity, fourteen players, Brötzmann, Schoof, Hampel, Mangelsdorff, Dudek, Breuker, Kowald, Niebergall, Liebezeit, Neumeier. Two pieces, Globe Unity and Sun. European free jazz declaring itself.

Donaueschingen, 17 October 1970, and Berlin, 7 November: Sun Ra's first German concerts, commissioned by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, with the Black Forest Myth written for the astrological moment and never played again. Berendt cut five hours of tape into forty minutes. Der Spiegel called it cosmic chaos.

CD eissue of Don Cherry's classic Eternal Rhythm Group, recorded at the Berlin Jazz Festival, 1968. An amazing line up of: Cherry (cornet, gender and saron [gamelan], flutes), Albert Mangelsdorff (trombone), Eje Thelin (trombone), Bernt Rosengren (tenor sax, oboe, clarinet, flute), Sonny Sharrock (guitar), Karl Berger (vibes, piano, gender), Joachim Kühn (piano, prepared piano), Arild Andersen (bass), & Jacques Thollot (drums, saron, gong, bells, voice). Two "side-long" pieces with gamelan under…

Joe Henderson's quintet live at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach in 1970, with Woody Shaw, George Cables, Ron McClure, Tony Waters and Lenny White. Deluxe 3LP edition with five unreleased tracks and new liner notes.

Rudolph Johnson's second album for Black Jazz, from 1973, with Kirk Lightsey, Kent Brinkley and Doug Sides: free, expressive playing in the wake of Coltrane, with little of the fusion of its time. Real Gone reissue on black vinyl.

The 2018 debut by Chicago saxophonist Isaiah Collier with The Chosen Few, recorded when he was 20: 66 minutes of spiritual jazz after Coltrane, between gospel, free improvisation and heavy rhythm. Japanese edition.

Two x 2LP sets that examine the influence and expression of the underground jazz that evolved in California and surrounding states during the latter part of the 20th century.

Two x CD sets that examine the influence and expression of the underground jazz that evolved in California and surrounding states during the latter part of the 20th century.

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.

Pharoah Sanders' 1996 Verve album with Bill Laswell producing, Foday Musa Suso, Hamid Drake, Bernie Worrell and Charnett Moffett: hip-hop pulse, Gambian kora and the full-cry tenor on one record. Back on vinyl for the first time since the rare French original, on 180g black vinyl

Passerine began in the fall of 2024 when my older son left home for college and friends began to ask if I were experiencing empty nest syndrome, or half-empty nest syndrome, as was the case. Each time, my reply was a simple, “nah, I’m good…everybody’s good.” And that was true. My wife, the boys, and I were all doing relatively well after many difficult, often harrowing years of helping our first-born navigate deep and dangerous mental health struggles — struggles so severe that we’d already had …