Jazz & Improvisation / Modal

Finnish vinyl nerds, Svart Records, dig obsessively into the vaults of international music history to uncover rare gems. “Mondo Svart” can be defined as “exceptionally Svart.” This is the core of the Svart Records exploration for gold at the back of the record crate. Those rare, undiscovered, and sometimes secret, albums only talked about in hushed voices between collectors in the know. Priceless and out of touch for the general masses, until now.One of the rarest albums on the infamous Jazz lab…

Rare Brazilian spiritual jazz reissued for the first time worldwide from the original master tapes. Legendary sessions produced by Amado Maita, deluxe numbered limited edition with OBI and thick cover. Recorded live at São Paulo in 1982, the album was originally issued on Amado Maita’s small indie label called Poitou in the '80s, and features one of the best Brazilian sax players, the legendary Nestico and his sister composer, piano player Lilu. Nestico joined several Jazz ensembles in São Paulo…

Roman pianist and film composer Armando Trovajoli scored over 300 feature films during his remarkable career. Starting out in the 1930s as a player in Orchestra Rocco Grasso and Sesto Carlini’s beloved jazz orchestra, in 1949 he represented Italy at the Festival du Jazz de Paris and he began composing films three years later. Jazz Piano, released by RCA in 1959, saw Trovajoli fronting a quartet with three of his regular orchestra members, namely drummer Sergio Conti, bassist/arranger Berto Pisan…

*2020 small repress*  Here is music for your strange mood. The piano starts the first track, slow tempo beat, a strict beat, a swinging beat. Lillemor—here minor harmonies give the tune a rural, romantic feeling of some place in Spain or France. The tempo changes to medium fast—the flute solos. Light phrasing contrasts beauti¬fully to the earthy, swinging beat of the rhythm section and the repeating piano figures. The trombone adds a new color, a counterpoint of sound and phrasing, backed by the…

It was a really great idea to search for pieces, with the taste of a collector, and to produce this compilation, with jazz pieces and pieces extracted from refined sound tracks which have a subtle and intelligent taste, among the production of some of the biggest Italian composers in this sector. It is a piece that has never been reedited and it is of great taste, and consequent will to give works to an audience that otherwise are difficult to discover.  And therefore has taste for the cinema an…

Recorded in April 1964, In ‘N Out falls square in the middle of the formidable run of five classic Blue Note albums that launched tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson’s legendary career. The line-up featured the transcendent frontline of Henderson and trumpeter Kenny Dorham along with a powerful rhythm section with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones. The music charted expansive post-bop territory on three Henderson’s originals (“In ‘N Out” “Punjab” “Serenity”) and two…

After his six years with the seminal John Coltrane Quartet, the mighty drummer Elvin Jones signed with Blue Note Records in 1968 and made a series of 10 fantastic albums including 1972’s Mr. Jones, produced by Francis Wolff and George Butler, and featuring saxophonists Dave Liebman, Steve Grossman, and Pepper Adams, Thad Jones on flugelhorn, pianist Jan Hammer, bassist Gene Perla, and percussionists Carlos “Patato” Valdes, Frank Ippolito, and Albert Duffy. The music delves into expansive post-bo…

Lost jazz files: Recently discovered treasures from the world renowned "German ambassador of jazz", trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff from Frankfurt/ Main. Unique modern jazz and hard bop recorded in the late 1950s and early 60s - sadly forgotten or previously unreleased, featuring Joki Freund, Hans Koller, Peter Trunk, Heinz Sauer, Günter Lenz and many more big names from the German scene. Collection of nine lost tunes including original material and arrangements like "Improvisation zu einem Klang…

2016 release. This is a previously unreleased 1966 live club performance from Yusef Lateef, the brilliant multi-instrumentalist whose mixing of jazz and Eastern music was a great influence on some of the finest musicians of the era including John Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders.  Accompanied at Ronnie Scott’s by the house band of pianist Stan Tracey, double bassist Rick Laird and drummer Bill Eyden, most of the repertoire played comes from Lateef’s earlier recordings for Savoy and Prestige such as …

Pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams played with nearly every major jazz performer during her long, illustrious and varied career, in addition to recording many solo works. Born Mary Winn in Atlanta in 1910 and raised in a 'shotgun shack', where local musicians gathered to jam, she played by ear from a tender age and learned the boogie-woogie style upon moving to Pittsburgh with her older sister Mamie. While still in high school, Williams toured with the Theatre Owners’ Booking Association, br…

A Japanese rarity from 1984, Benkei is a unique jazz funk session that sees the drummer Akira Toyoda working with a group that features Joe Lovano on sax, Peter Madsen on piano and Dean Johnson on bass. This early document showcases the beginning of Lovano’s career as a fine jazz player as well as being an excellent testimony of the vibrant Japanese jazz scene of the mid-80s that drew many American players to visit the Land of the Rising Sun.

2018 small repress. Double LP; Part two of two double LP versions. Textured, gatefold sleeve; Obi strip. Jazzman Record's latest examination of esoteric, modal, and progressive jazz of the 20th century has taken them to Japan. The liberating force of jazz has been created and felt all around the world, but few nations on earth embraced the jazz message with the passion and intensity of Japan. From the dawn of the jazz age to the present day, Japanese audiences have been renowned tastemakers, ent…

**500 copies** In the beginning there was John Coltrane. Teodross Avery experienced an epiphany at 13 when he first heard Trane’s Giant Steps. He emerged in the mid-1990s with two critically hailed releases for GRP / Impulse! Avery’s long and productive journey has taken him down many musical paths, from gigs with jazz legends and hip hop stars to sessions with NEA Jazz Masters and platinum pop albums. With his Tompkins Square label debut After the Rain: A Night For Coltrane, Avery has found his…

Le Tres Jazz Club present a first time vinyl reissue of Hiromasa Suzuki's Primrose, originally released in 1978. Hiromasa Suzuki is a Japanese pianist who began his recording career in the early '70s. Nicknamed "Colgen" in Japan, he is well-known for two amazing records combining jazz-fusion and traditional Japanese instruments (Rock-Joint Biwa and Rock-Joint Cipher on the RCA label), jazz-funk oriented albums (High-Flying and Skip Step Colgen), and the famous record from the Electro Keyboard Or…

**250 copies** Two unreleased tracks from the critically acclaimed album sessions, limited 10 inch! Two groovy tracks from reed player Ville Vannemaa's Cassiopeia album, with him on this date is vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, Kasperi Sarikoski on trombone, Heikko Remmel on bass and Jaska Lukkarinen on drums. First time on vinyl.“… it’s the new album by Finnish saxophonist Ville Vannemaa, Cassiopeia, that has us swooning and reaching for the replay button.”- UKVibe

Following hard on the heels of BBE delving into the archives of Detroit’s Strata Records and delivering their widely acclaimed and hugely in-demand exploration of J Jazz, comes another crate digger’s delight - Ralph Thomas' Eastern Standard Time, which dropped in the USA back in 1980, on the obscure Zebra Jazz imprint. LA based DJ, producer and music supervisor Mathieu Schreyer discovered this gem for BBE. This is the is the kind of “spiritual’ jazz gem that appears on YouTube and upon checking …

"Esoteric, modal and deep jazz from Prestige Records, 1961-73" - The tenth edition of our Spiritual Jazz series takes a closer look at the music Prestige was recording at the start of the 1960s. This was the period when the modal jazz sound pioneered by Miles and Coltrane was starting to percolate through the jazz underground.In its heyday, Prestige was the only jazz label that could hold a candle to Blue Note. Prestige was always quick off the mark to record new artists, and in the years after …

**Limited bundled edition, 100 copies made.** "Bubbha Thomas is a revolutionary, spiritual jazz bandleader, drummer, and activist from Houston. This is the definitive collection of his four classic albums with his Lightmen band, each mastered from the original tapes, expanded with bonus tracks and alternate mixes. Bubbha Thomas had toured America with R&B revues, served as a session musician for Peacock and Back Beat Records, and played straight ahead jazz with legends before the political and s…

Jazz drummer Greg Adams was active on the Los Angeles experimental jazz scene of the early 1980s. Based in the working class coastal town of Long Beach, California, and with longstanding ties to the industrial east coast city of Wilmington, Delaware, Adams sought to hearken back to the naturalistic form of be-bop, which is why he recorded the material on Koolin Out in a live session with no overdubs in April 1983. Privately pressed in minute quantities as the sole entity on his own hip city impr…

**all the five groundbreaking LPs in bundle ** here are the first ever official individual re-issues of all five of the iconic Lansdowne recording sessions by the legendary UK jazz combo, the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet.The five albums; Shades Of Blues (1965), Dusk Fire (1966), Phase III (1968), Change Is (1969) and Live (1969), have reached almost mythical status in the collector's world. Regarded as holy grail artefacts for even the seasoned aficionado, the collective second hand market value…

**2019 stock, reduced price** Why some artists achieve the recognition they deserve while other equally talented ones don't depends on many things. But one thing is clear, that obscurity does not always mean lack of talent. Regardless, it is always a pleasure to discover little known but immensely gifted musicians and it is really a great pleasure to hear the reissue of The Diamond Five's Brilliant!. The Diamond Five, a Dutch quintet led by pianist Cees Slinger, was founded in 1959 and lasted un…

**Exact LP repro edition. Limited Edition of 200 copies, remastered sound.** Although he was one of Italy’s leading jazz musicians, playing the piano at an international level in a mainstream style, it is probable that Romano Mussolini owed some of his fame to also being the third son of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. A common idea that everyone had before listening to his music, and discovering the importance he always gave to every musician who had the opportunity to play and grow arti…

2013 release. Previously unavailable, this unearthed 1968 BBC Session contains markedly different versions from Michael Garrick's 1970 classic 'Heart Is A Lotus' album. A Londoner's rain-soaked riposte to modal jazz exotica, this long lost recording is already being hailed as an essential release. Michael Garrick’s 1970 LP Heart Is A Lotus went on to become one of the most important British jazz albums of the subsequent decade. For a few years prior to the record’s release Garrick and his sextet…

Never before released fantastic Modal Jazz/Free/Hard-bop from Norwegian NRK radio archives. First official release, limited to 500 copies. Two exclusive quartet tracks taken from NRK radio archives 1969. Recorded in 1969 by NRK broadcasting, these two tracks are lifted from a showcase program featuring Norwegian jazz musicians. Contains the beautiful lyrical modal piece ‘Cointreau’ and the Jon Henderson penned ‘Upsurge’ Featuring Erik Andresen on Alto-Sax, Egil Kapstad on Piano/electric piano, T…

**250 copies** More music from trumpeter extraordinaire Etuk Ubong! We’ve run a limited hand-stamped vinyl run with the best tracks from his first album and EP from 2016 and 2017, 'Miracles' and 'Tales of Life'. The music is simplistic yet thoughtful modal jazz that was written around the time of the death of Ubong’s mother Margaret. The Quartet features an all-star Nigerian rhythm section rounded up with Ubong’s unique voicing. "Short and snappy, ‘Battle For Peace’ opens with a tight electric b…

My Favorite Things October 14, 1977 presents a superb collection of tracks recorded by the great Sun Ra and his Arkestra at the Variety Recording Studio, NYC. One of the rarely heard documents of the El Saturn label of the ‘70s, these recordings catch Sun Ra and John Gilmore firmly in the foreground, especially when performing on masterly interpretations of John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things and Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy. The performance shows that both are capable of masterfully reflecting the…

Musicism is the core concept of transcultural artistic research that rose to prominence at the beginning of the 80s thanks to the ingenious mind of Karlton Hester. Composer, flautist and saxophonist Hester set himself as the promoter of a multidisciplinary idea in which musicians, visual artists and poets collaborate in a synergic manner to produce new art forms. Hesterian Musicism is an avant-garde spiritual jazz record composed and issued by Hester on his San Francisco based label Hesteria in …

2019 Repress. Jazzman presents the definitive anthology of pioneering ethno-musicologist, mystical adventurer and real life jazz guru Dr Lloyd Miller. This album tells the fascinating life story of one man and his journey through Europe and the Middle East, living off nothing but his wits, talent and an open-minded attitude towards music and jazz.Master of dozens of languages and hundreds of instruments, Miller has spent fifty years immersed in the music of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.Featu…

Due to overwhelming demand for our 5LP boxset which sold out on the day of release, here are the first ever official individual re-issues of all five of the iconic Lansdowne recording sessions by the legendary UK jazz combo, the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet.The five albums; Shades Of Blues (1965), Dusk Fire (1966), Phase III (1968), Change Is (1969) and Live (1969), have reached almost mythical status in the collector's world. Regarded as holy grail artefacts for even the seasoned aficionado, th…

Due to overwhelming demand for our 5LP boxset which sold out on the day of release, here are the first ever official individual re-issues of all five of the iconic Lansdowne recording sessions by the legendary UK jazz combo, the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet.The five albums; Shades Of Blues (1965), Dusk Fire (1966), Phase III (1968), Change Is (1969) and Live (1969), have reached almost mythical status in the collector's world. Regarded as holy grail artefacts for even the seasoned aficionado, th…

Due to overwhelming demand for our 5LP boxset which sold out on the day of release, here are the first ever official individual re-issues of all five of the iconic Lansdowne recording sessions by the legendary UK jazz combo, the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet.The five albums; Shades Of Blues (1965), Dusk Fire (1966), Phase III (1968), Change Is (1969) and Live (1969), have reached almost mythical status in the collector's world. Regarded as holy grail artefacts for even the seasoned aficionado, th…

"From the inheritor of John Coltrane's mouthpiece a re-integration of deep South African jazz roots with the Black Atlantic spiritual jazz continuum. Celebration's release trumpeted the emerging dawn of South Africa's epochal changes. Sainted and blessed, Bheki Mseleku appeared as the herald of a new era, a prophet of rebirth and reconnection. This is a work signalling change, a sign of a South African music that was properly reconnected with global currents. Recognizing Bheki as a kindred spiri…

Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve with liners notes and pictures; Includes download card. Jazzman Records deliver A New Life, Vol. II: Independent and Regional Jazz in Great Britain 1968-1988, continuing their series of under-heard jazz from the UK. It's been three years since Jazzman's A New Life (JMAN 075CD/LP, 2015) alerted jazz heads to the existence of an unknown world of British jazz private pressings and indie obscurities. Back for a second round, compilers Francis Gooding and Duncan Bro…

Recorded in 1973, “Morning Flight” by trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura is a stunning modal and spiritual jazz album! Genius work from Japanese trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura – working here at the helm of a twin-trombone group that also features the talents of Shigeharu Mukai – in a style that's filled with soul and free-thinking imagination! The two players work together beautifully here – avoiding any of the cliches of trombone-heavy groups from the past – and instead, using the open-ended Three Blind …

Exact LP repro edition A grey-area edition of the legendary 1967 modal masterwork by one of the greatest unsung jazz pioneers of the 20th century. A ture lost underground jazz classic from the late '60, filled with long, flowing tunes that have tremendous modal energy and a very cohesive feel. Backtracking a little, Nathan Davis was born in 1937 in Kansas City, Kansas and attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence before shipping off to military service in Germany in 1960. After being dischar…

LP version. Mastered at half speed. 180 gram vinyl; Stoughton tip-on sleeve. We Release Jazz (WRWTFWW Records' new sister-label) presents its first release, the official reissue of Ryo Fukui's highly sought-after masterpiece Scenery, originally released in 1976. Unquestionably one of the most important Japanese jazz albums ever recorded, Scenery reveals Ryo Fukui as a miraculously brilliant self-taught pianist fusing modal, bop, and cool jazz influences for a very personal, dexterous, and g…

Double CD Edition. Jazzman Record's latest examination of esoteric, modal, and progressive jazz of the 20th century has taken them to Japan. The liberating force of jazz has been created and felt all around the world, but few nations on earth embraced the jazz message with the passion and intensity of Japan. From the dawn of the jazz age to the present day, Japanese audiences have been renowned tastemakers, enthusiasts, and champions of the music -- in the 1980s, Japan was the biggest per …

** 2012 Audiophile Remastered Edition of 500 copies with Original 3page-Multi Fold Out Cover, long out of print, few copies available ** An early session from German pianist Wolfgang Dauner – one with a sound that's every bit as great as you'd expect from the title! The "dream talk" component here is one that comes from Dauner's gentle, yet modern approach to the keys – one that's clearly learning lessons from 50s modernists like George Russell or Bill Evans, but which is stretching out here in …

Pheon is the new label started by Jonny Trunk with James Pianta from Votary / Roundtable. Both have a love of obscure library music, film music and jazz. Using those musical fields as a starting point, the label will be issuing very limited, vinyl only short runs of desirable and obscure LPs, compilations and new old discoveries. The third Pheon Records LP release is the 1969 debut by Indian jazz guitar legend Amancio D’Silva. A perfect storm of amazing, accessible British jazz and incredi…

**very last copies** Limited numbered 1/70 only with hand-made foder cover, printed labels and black inner sleeves! dj qbico mix a selection of very rare/obscure 45 from Us, none of these tracks had been reissued or appears on any compilations