Jazz & Improvisation / Modal

** Special Time-Limited Offer ** Juju finds Wayne Shorter working with McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums – essentially the John Coltrane Quartet’s engine repurposed. The tunes, many with subtly African‑inflected rhythmic ideas, open broad spaces for exploration while maintaining clear thematic profiles. Shorter’s improvisations wind through these spaces with a storyteller’s sense of pacing, lingering on simple motifs before leaping into unexpected intervals. …

"Those who know know. Muriel Grossmann's reputation as a leading practitioner of spiritual jazz that grooves, deeply grooves, has grown steadily with every new recording. From early albums such as 'Quartet' in 2008 to 'Birth of the Mystery' in 2010 to her breakout album 'Golden Rule' in 2018 and her recent 'Devotion' in 2023, Grossmann's music has won accolades from critics and adoration from listeners around the globe. From her recording studio and her own label Dreamlandrecords on the island o…

Japanese master drummer Takeo Moriyama returns to BBE Music’s J Jazz Masterclass Series in a majestic live set showcasing his exemplary musicianship and stature as one of the leading names in Japanese modern jazz. Recorded in December 1990 at the jazz club Lovely in Nagoya, this set sees Moriyama’s quartet deliver an exemplary session of the finest modal, post-bop and spiritual jazz. Moriyama is backed by long-time colleague Fumio Itabashi on piano and the group perform a stunning rendition of I…

On Sketches of Spain, Miles Davis floats through Gil Evans’s lush, flamenco‑tinged orchestrations like a solitary witness, turning Spanish folk and classical themes into slow‑burning tone‑poems where jazz improvisation melts into modal ritual.

Our latest Holy Grail reissue is this private press spiritual jazz gem out of California from Rickey Kelly and his vibes & marimba. Features Diane Reeves (vocals) & Adele Sebastian (flute)!

2026 stock As the title of the album suggests, the new album by spiritual jazz legend Muriel Grossmann, MGQ live im King Georg, Köln, is a live recording of a concert at King Georg Jazz Club in Cologne. Recorded on November 11, 2022, the symbolic start of the Cologne carnival season, the album will be released three years later, at the end of the carnival season on Ash Wednesday, March 5. 2025. If by chance a concert in Cologne takes place on the November 11, it's only logical to stick to the nu…

2026 stock  ‘Music is not material, Music is Spiritual’. With this one line from what may be his earliest poem, Sun Ra sets before our minds what our ears and heart know to be true: music is a power, a force, and a mystery that can change our way of being, our way of knowing. Music is spiritual. And while the roots of jazz grew from spiritual traditions, it was the music of Sun Ra from the 1950s and especially John Coltrane’s recordings from the mid-1960s that defined spiritual jazz as we know i…

2026 stock Austrian alto, soprano, tenor saxophonist and composer Muriel Grossmann was born in Paris. She grew up in Vienna where she studied the flute and later switched to the saxophone (alto and soprano) to further her studies in music. Grossmann played and toured with various Rhythm & Blues, World Music and Jazz groups. In 2002 she moved to Barcelona where she started to lead her own bands for recordings and concerts. She played and recorded with many well-respected musicians including Chris…

2026 stock Looking at the world in which we live, I was often haunted by feelings of powerlessness and disillusionment. How could it be, that the force of destruction seems to cast a shadow over the beauty and universal creativity of our interconnected race. How can a single human turn things around so that we live the dignified life we so much long for and also deserve? Feeling small and insignificant really cannot change anything for the better, I understand that we need to find the change wit…

Tip! *Japan import with Obi Strip* In 1967, drummer Takeo Moriyama joined pianist Yosuke Yamashita’s group, later forming a legendary trio together with saxophonist Seiichi Nakamura in 1969. This group consisting of Moriyama, Yamashita, and Nakamura became known worldwide as one of Japan's leading free jazz combos. Moriyama left the group in 1975 and later returned to the scene in 1977 with the Flush Up live album, where he evolved and deepened his musicality in a more melodic and rhythmic direc…

"Ville Vannemaa Cassiopeia is an exciting quintet project led by reed player Ville Vannemaa, a key player in UMO Jazz Orchestra and known for his engagement in several other Finnish jazz constellations. With him on this date is vibraphonist Panu Savolainen, Kasperi Sarikoski on trombone, Heikko Remmel on bass and Jaska Lukkarinen on drums. Six sublime songs penned by Ville himself, plenty of detail and swinging from joy to melancholy in a melodic sense aimed for repeated listening. Future classi…

“Exceptional UK jazz” Gilles Peterson (BBC Worldwide) “A wonderfully expressive group who have a superbly fresh sense of tone and timing” – Dusty Groove Chicago   The second album by this critically acclaimed jazz quintet from Leeds continues to mature in their newest offering “ENOS” File under UK Modal/Melodic jazz.

Misha Panfilov, the Estonian composer whose name has become synonymous with space-age exotica and cinematic soundscapes, withdraws once more into the solitude of his studio and emerges with To Blue From Grey In May – a profound meditation on sound, time, and seasonal transformation. Recorded amid the ever-changing light and shadows of Tallinn between March and May 2025, this new album stands as a testament to complete immersion in the creative process. Here, Panfilov threads himself into the ver…

Christer Bothén’s artistry transcends genre, tradition, and the tangible. A key figure in avant-garde jazz and global improvisation, he has spent decades exploring sound’s spiritual depth. From playing in Don Cherry’s groundbreaking Organic Music Society to leading expansive projects, Bothén has embraced the unknown, continuously reshaping his musical language. At 83, Bothén remains deeply engaged, crafting L'Invisible, a trio album with vibraphonist (and drummer) Kjell Nordeson and bassist Kans…

Gustav Horneij’s Organic Pulse Ensemble blends jazz tradition with modern groove, inspiring unity & protest, uplifting listeners in the fight for freedom and justice for all.

*2024 stock* The compelling sense of vulnerability you get from walking barefoot on the grass connecting with the earth is аn immersive experience. It opens you to the energy within, walking at your own pace, appreciating where you are, comprehending the impenetrable mystery of life within and around you. It settles you into a restful state of mind and expands your awareness. Recorded live on all analog tape in Hämeenlinna, Walking On The Grass is the first album by Mush Tone Ensemble. There is …

*2024 stock* Muriel Grossmann has been living in Ibiza, Spain for about 20 years composing her distinguished brand of soulful spiritual jazz. ‘Universal Code’ is a 80-minute musical journey of modal jazz with influence of African music and soul jazz. It was composed as a natural successor of 2019 record ‘Reverence’. This album was achieved as a part of Muriel Grossmann’s spiritual and musical explorations. "This music on Universal Code is long on contemplative, instrumental dexterity, as well as…

* Edition of 100 copies, silk-screened cover, hand numbered and intended for musicians and their families. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. Very Few copies available * Founded in 1969 by the pianist Ole Mathiessen, the bassist Henrik Hove, the saxophonist Jesper Nehammer, and drummer Jon Finsen, Tordenskjolds Soldater was one of the great - albeit short-lived - projects in Copenhagen’s thriving scene of free improvisation and jazz of the late 196…

Home Thoughts is the late, luminous farewell from Michael Garrick, written for his Lyric Ensemble and recorded in 2011. Working with poetry by Shakespeare, Browning, Blake and others, he fashions 12 song-like pieces where jazz harmony, chamber textures and spoken or sung verse fuse into an intimate, autumnal meditation on memory, love and mortality.​

Tone Poems sees Michael Garrick orchestrating textures and images in a powerful display of big-band colour. Released in 2011 and performed by the Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra, the suite of eight pieces draws on myth, landscape, and autobiography - each composition unfolding as a miniature drama of shifting harmony and luminous ensemble interplay.​

Green and Pleasant Land finds Michael Garrick turning the English landscape into chamber jazz, writing for a luminous string-based group with piano at its centre. Across live performances from the early 2000s, he folds folk melody, hymn fragments and knotty improv into quietly radical miniatures that make the countryside feel haunted, restless and very much alive.

The New Quartet introduces Michael Garrick in close-up, stripped of choirs and orchestras and thrown into agile, conversational post-bop with Martin Hathaway, Paul Moylan and Alan Jackson. Across standards, Garrick originals and nods to Joe Harriott and Jaco Pastorius, the 2002 session turns lyricism into a pressure test, revealing how much drama four voices can conjure in a small room.

On Down on Your Knees, Michael Garrick revisits his sacred-jazz obsessions through the language of a modern small big band, setting hymns, blues, and standards in luminous, late-20th-century colour. With vocalist Anita Wardell alongside Martin Shaw, Steve Waterman, Jim Tomlinson and others, the 1999 album feels like a devotional songbook rewritten for restless, metropolitan believers.

In Lady of the Aurian Wood: A Magic Life of Duke, Michael Garrick salutes Ellington not with imitation but with a gleaming fever-dream of big-band narrative. Writing for the Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra with Norma Winstone in a central role, he turns characters, ghosts and side-stories from Duke’s orbit into a 12-part, 75-minute suite of blues, prayer and hall-of-mirrors swing.

Peter Pan Jazzdance Suite lets Michael Garrick turn J. M. Barrie’s myth into airborne big-band theatre. Written for the Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra and premiered for his 70th birthday, this 2003 suite paints Peter, Wendy, the Darlings, Tink, Hook, and the Lost Boys in vividly dancing themes that swing, drift, and menace by turns.​

Genius presents Joe Harriott in full, volatile clarity, stitching together live free-form recordings from 1961 with sharper-edged studio sides and collaborations. Across these eleven tracks, his alto saxophone burns through hard bop, standards, and abstraction alike, supported by Coleridge Goode, Phil Seamen, and pianist Michael Garrick, among others.​

Gigs: Introducing Michael Garrick catches Michael Garrick on the bandstand rather than in the chapel, a pianist still forming his voice through standards, ballads, and early originals. This live-feeling 2008 release frames him with a tight trio setting, revealing a restless, harmonically alert player already bending the jazz canon toward his own lyric intensity.

On Yet Another Spring, Michael Garrick enlarges his sacred-jazz universe into a full-scale orchestral meditation on birth, loss, and renewal. Scored for the Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra with recurring features for Norma Winstone, the 2006 suite moves from intimate prayer to blazing big-band catharsis, treating the life cycle as both liturgy and drama.

Inspirations finds Michael Garrick turning inward with his New Quartet, distilling a lifetime of big ideas into melodic, small-group conversation. Recorded in 2006, it honours John Coltrane’s legacy without mimicry, letting Garrick, Martin Hathaway, Paul Moylan, and Alan Jackson reimagine spiritual intensity as supple, lyrical post-bop.​

On Children of Time, Michael Garrick stretches his sacred-jazz imagination into cosmic scale, writing for the Jazz Britannia Orchestra and reuniting with vocalist Norma Winstone to explore creation myths, Eucharistic ritual, and his own visionary texts. The result is a 2006 suite that feels like a liturgy drifting through deep space, turning theology into glowing, unsettled sound.

With Jazz Praises at St. Paul's, Michael Garrick welds liturgical grandeur to jazz improvisation, conjuring an atmosphere as reverent as it is free. Featuring the Michael Garrick Sextet, John Marshall, and the St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir, this 2005 release radiates both spiritual inquiry and creative boldness, transcending boundary with every motif.​​

Big Band Harriott finds Michael Garrick scaling Joe Harriott’s music up to a roaring jazz orchestra, preserving the original’s sharp lines and Caribbean-inflected bite while opening them into rich new voicings, long arcs of tension and release, and solos that underline just how modern this repertoire still feels.

Down Another Road @ Stockholm Jazz Days '69 catches Graham Collier’s sextet in full flight, turning a cornerstone studio album into a raw, expansive live ritual where luminous themes, tough grooves and free-leaning episodes collide, sketching British jazz at the cusp of its most exploratory moment.

* CD packaged in 'mini-LP' gatefold sleeve with insert and sleeve notes by Graham Collier biographer Duncan Heining * To commemorate the 10th year since the passing of esteemed British jazz composer, bassist and bandleader Graham Collier, My Only Desire Records presents this 1975 recording of his previously unreleased suite 'British Conversations'.The recording features lead soloists trumpeter Harry Beckett and guitarist Ed Speight, alongside The Swedish Radio Jazz Group - made up of the hottest…

An electrified meeting of minds, Candy Girl is a lost 1975 session by jazz pianist Mal Waldron, recorded in Paris with core members of the mighty Lafayette Afro Rock Band, the American funk unit who had made France their home and whose deep grooves would later be mined by generations of hip-hop producers. By 1975, Waldron was a decade into his self-imposed exile from the United States—a transformed musician who had reassembled his sound in Europe and Japan after a devastating breakdown in the ea…

The term “private” is used quite liberally in the promotion of rare groove compilations these days. The team at Tramp Records tends to be rather defensive when it comes to such terms. Although, and this should not be misunderstood as arrogance, label boss Tobias Kirmayer & his crew have been doing nothing else for 22 years, strictly speaking. Every compilation series from the Upper Bavarian label, be it the “Movements,” “Feeling Nice,” “Praise Poems,” or “Can You Feel It” series, specializes in …

This live jazz album, recorded on June 15, 1968, at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, showcases the extraordinary artistry of Bill Evans on piano, accompanied by Eddie Gómez on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Capturing the trio at a peak of creative interplay, the album presents a captivating blend of original compositions and classic standards. The repertoire features Evans originals such as “One for Helen” and “Nardis”, alongside his masterful interpretations of timeless pieces lik…

There are many facets to Misha Panfilov's music. As a music lover himself, reflecting on his extensive catalogue reveals numerous references in his harmonic palette, making it challenging to fully encapsulate. This septet's formation embodies his unique sound on this, their second album "The Mesosphere And Beyond." The music is imbued with optimism, featuring airy, soothing space-age voicing reminiscent of Terry Riley and Raymond Scott, all revolving around jazz. The integration of the unconvent…

The Complete Pharoah Sanders Theresa Recordings reveals the revolutionary saxophonist's misunderstood 1980s period. Seven discs capture Sanders integrating avant-garde fire with melodic tradition, featuring collaborators like John Hicks, Elvin Jones, and Bobby Hutcherson. Essential rediscovery of an artistic evolution long dismissed by critics but blazing with spiritual intensity and technical innovation.

In February, 1968, as the false Spring of hope was rising in occupied Czechoslovakia, ESP instructed Karl Velebny to record his group of improvisers during their upcoming tour of Germany. In April, 1968, the clandestine project was completed. Karel survived a terrible auto crash and sent photographs to ESP, which were utilized on the LP cover as a symbolic reference to the plight of the Czech people. A must for anyone interested in European jazz and the history of its relationship with the '60s …