Jazz / Improvised Music

This 7-CD set contains 19 selected performances from the Ftarri Festival, held in April 2008 (Kyoto / Tokyo), and the Ftarri doubtmusic Festival, held in September 2010. The 7 CDs, together with a sequentially numbered Ftarri Collection card, come in a special handmade felt bag about 18 cm high and 17 cm wide. Each bag has a different design. Ftarri Collection 1 with Opera Southern Cross (Taku Sugimoto: composition, images. Katsuaki Iida: words, reading. Toshimaru Nakamura: no-input mixing board…

Taco Bells has been playing their own music since 2006 and mostly with various friends as addition to the trio. Also the previous LP Vadelma / Hawaii (Ikuisuus 2009) came up from the first meeting of the Finnish master Pekko Käppi and Taco Bells in Helsinki 2007. Taco Bells doesn't play too much at private rehearsal places for themselves. Usually there's always at least tiny audience following the situation. Galleries, tours, weddings, bars, cellars… Recordings of Vinterströssel were made in a t…

About Trumpet and Saxophone brings together New York based trumpeter Nate Wooley and London based saxophonist Seymour Wright for a series of intensely material duo improvisations that inhabit the tricky overlap between these two instruments. Recorded on their second encounter, there's an intriguing balance of freshness and reflection in the music here, one that matches their deep knowledge of improvised music's various pasts as well as their commitment to experiment and discovery.

2009 issue "The album begins with a percussion intro that sounds more like a gunfight than any sort of recognisable drumming routine, and continues to get weirder and weirder from there on. New York avant-garde-ists Zs might be seen as a kind of post-modern free-jazz ensemble, combining sax, guitars and live kit sounds with all the tumult of contemporary electronic drone music. This LP absorbs the impact of no-wave, industrial music, Merzbow and (on the ornate rhythmic figures of 'MMW I…

A previously unreleased concert recording from 1986 of a group of leading out jazz artists (Billy Bang, Fred Hopkins, Andrew Cyrille, &c.). Part of the magic of jazz in New York City is groups of musicians coming together for brief engagements and then moving off into other groups and configurations, leaving fond memories but little recorded evidence of their existence. The Group was a very talented amalgam of musicians, veterans of the free jazz and loft scenes: Ahmed Abdullah on trumpet …

**CD edition** 1974 recordings at WKCR in NYC from the quintet of Charles Brackeen (flute & sax), Ahmed Abdullah (trumpet), William Parker (bass), Roger Blank (drums) and Tony Waters (percussion), beautifully recorded and essential free improvisation. "The dominant influences at this time were John Coltrane and Albert Ayler (both of whom had passed away relatively recently); and Ornette Coleman (who had not yet gone Harmolodic). Although some musicians had sought to push the Fire Music of late C…

"Good old free music and the best one: never too wild but always outta sight. I liked it from the very beginning 'cos it's DIFFERENT & UNIQUE." EP/Sagittarius A-Star. Sabir Mateen - Tenor saxophone, Sirone - Bass, Andrew Barker - Drums. Recorded June 30, 2008 by Andrew Barker in Brooklyn, NYC. Cover painting by Karl Francke.

Western Front New Music is proud to announceÊEvan Parker's return to the Western Front to celebrate our 40th anniversary with a live performance and the release ofÊVaincu.Va! Live at the Western Front 1978. Restored and mastered from the original archived quarter-inch tape that captured his dynamic, innovative performance 34 years ago, Parker'sÊVaincu.Va!Êremains well ahead of its time. His work is unconventional and unpredictable, and this album, to be issued on limited-edition LP, with n…

2022 restock, last copies. Recorded on April 18, 2010 at Clemente Velez Center, New York City. German free jazz saxophonist and clarinetist Peter Brötzmann: alto and tenor sax, B-flat clarinet, tarogato. American jazz drummer/percussionist, Hamid Drake: drums and percussion. Multi-reedist Peter Brotzmann and drummer/percussionist Hamid Drake met in the studio in New York City, April 2010, to record this double album of fiercely intense and beautiful improvised music. Consisting of 6 improvisati…

The complete remastered recordings on Black Saint & Soul Note is a monographic box-set collection aimed at recounting the most beautiful chapters that revolutionised the history of jazz. This new series was launched in March 2010 with the simultaneous release of four box-sets, including albums by some of the artists who participated in the success of the outstanding labels. A philological work, beginning with the original recordings on multi-track master tapes, patiently integrally remastered pa…

Gatefold LP compiled from tour recordings documenting the guitar-drum duo of Bill Orcutt and Chris Corsano. Twelve tracks recorded August & September of 2012 in Brooklyn, Easthampton, Philadelphia & Baltimore. Edition of 500.""The photo you see above stretches across the inner spread of Bill Orcutt and Chris Corsano’s The Raw and the Cooked LP. Each man’s mid-shred image occupies a whole half of the gatefold stage, their eyes connecting across the jacket’s spine, which lines up with the mic stan…

If jazz, as the eminent critic Whitney Balliet once wrote, is the “sound of surprise,” Cuts, an intensely cathartic, fiercely turbulent collaboration between Japanese noise purveyor Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi and Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustasfsson, is the “sound of shock and awe.” A sonic assault of epic proportions, it blends the bombast of Merzbow’s grinding white noise barrages with Pandi’s thunderous pulse on the kit and Gust…

The Respect Sextet, a young New York jazz group, plays music by Sun Ra and Karlheinz Stockhausen, drawing comparisons between the two composers and asking how the idea of space shaped their work.

Four-CD box of duo improvisations for saxophones, drums, percussion and electronics by Anthony Braxton and Gerry Hemingway, their first recorded collaboration in twelve years, made at Wesleyan University in August 2007.

Recorded at home in October 2006 (electric guitar on the 11th, acoustic guitar on the 14th). Mastered by André Gonçalves at the Etching Table. Limited Edition of 500 copies.

Double LP by Dave Okumu, Tom Herbert and Tom Skinner, recorded live at The Crypt in Camberwell, London, on 15 June 2018: covers of Abercrombie, Björk, A.K. Paul and Miles Davis alongside originals.

Keith Jarrett's solo piano concert of 26 September 2005 at Carnegie Hall, New York: ten improvised parts and five encores, including My Song and Time On My Hands. Released by ECM as a double CD in 2006.

Double live album of freely improvised music by Keith Jarrett (piano), Gary Peacock (double bass) and Jack DeJohnette (drums), recorded in April 2001 at Orchard Hall and Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo. Released by ECM in 2002.

Keith Jarrett improvising on two and three clavichords in nineteen pieces, recorded in four hours on 14 July 1986 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg, produced by Manfred Eicher. First released by ECM in 1987.

Keith Jarrett's 1976 solo piano studio improvisations in four suites (Staircase, Hourglass, Sundial, Sand), recorded in May 1976 at Studio Davout, Paris, produced by Manfred Eicher. 2CD.