Modern Free

Each of these ten tracks feature Steve Lacy in duo performances. Compiled by the soprano saxophonist, and not released until 1997, there are highlights galore throughout, making this an essential recording for any admirer of Lacy's work. Each tune (most of which were composed by Lacy)...

Long before he became the standard-bearer for the "ECM sound," churning out discs with a mildly medieval or Scandinavian flavor spiced with enough ew age fluff to guarantee sales, Jan Garbarek produced a string of superb albums, culminating in Witchi-Tai-To, his masterpiece....

Recorded in 1983 in Nessa's Acme studio in Chicago, Procession of the Great Ancestry is among Wadada Leo Smith's most obscure, but ultimately most satisfying, recordings. Featuring Kahil El'Zabar, Louis Myers, Joe Fonda, John Powell, Mchaka Uba, and Bobby Naughton, this was the...

This CD has an interesting combination of players. It may be the only recording to include both pianist McCoy Tyner and his successor with the John Coltrane Quartet, Alice Coltrane (who adds atmosphere with her harp). This set also matches the young altoist Gary Bartz with Wayne Shorter...

As a composer Mark Dresser walks no lines; he enters and exits the musical body without regard for boundaries or conventions imposed from outside his musical view. As a soloist, improviser, and bandleader, Dresser is well-known for turning the musical tract inside out in order to get what he...

Paramount among several excellent albums by Wadada Leo Smith that appeared during the first years of the 21st century on John Zorn's Tzadik label, Luminous Axis -- The Caravans of Winter and Summer is described by the artist as "An Electronic Sonic Garden of Delights and...

This recording, comprised of two complete Art Ensemble of Chicago albums -- Les Stances a Sophie with singer Fontella Bass from 1970 and People in Sorrow from 1969 -- offers two very different sides of the group's sound from this key period in their development. Recorded in France and...

Originally, this 1973 recording was released without a title; Atavistic's 30th anniversary reissue is titled FMP 130, after the original album's catalog number, which is how most fans refer to it. Unlike most albums including this trio of players (reedsman Peter Brötzmann, pianist...

Tim Berne's latest band Science Friction is heard here for the first time in front of a live audience in Switzerland in April 2003. A complete concert spread out over two CDs, Sublime And offers a different view of Berne's ever-expansive compositional ideas and how those notions meld...

Vladimir Rezitsky, or Volodya as he is affectionately known, has led the Jazz Group Arkhangelsk for over 22 years -- on the edge of the Arctic Circle. He has survived not only the cold but extreme poverty, and has prevailed in organizing international festivals and recording some 30 albums in...

Highly regarded improvising bassist Joelle Leandre aligns herself with a multinational, all-star entourage of forward thinking and like-minded improvisers on this 2000 release simply titled Joelle Leandre Project. Essentially this outing represents a series of works that interweave in somewhat...

This fourth effort is by far Not Missing Drums Project's best album to date. While the previous ones tended to lack focus, multiplying short tracks, guest contributors, and approaches, The Gay Avantgarde has a clear purpose. Joachim Gies (saxophones, keyboards) and Thomas Böhm-Christl...

The holy "la" of Steve Lacy's title for The Holy la refers to A, the note most musicians tune to. This 1998 trio date -- with two guest vocals by Lacy's wife and musical collaborator, Irene Aebi -- is a kind of summation and statement of progress on the journey of...

This sophomore effort by the Who Trio -- pianist Michel Wintsch with drummer Gerry Hemingway and bassist Bänz Oester -- is a rambling, startling exercise in textures, layered dynamics, and process. Certainly it is a jazz record, rife with beautifully studied compositions and carefully...

Invisible Baby is easily the most out-there thing Marco Benevento has ever released, and it's also the most accessible. Benevento and his piano, Mellotron, "circuit bent toys," and mountain of other keyboards in various states of disrepair blasted through Leslie speakers and a big...

The musical traditions of the avant garde and ebop worlds are bridged through the powerful playing and array of grooves resulting from the collective improvisations of Hamiet Bluiett, D.D. Jackson, and Kahil El'Zabar on The Calling, Bluiett's eighth recording for the Justin Time...

William Parker continues to go beyond the status quo on Raining on the Moon, his second offering in labelmate Matthew Shipp's Blue Series. Known mostly to a coterie of specialists in a niche field of avant-garde bass players, Parker's discography represents his enormous value to the...

William Parker's Violin Trio band is one of the more surprising and delightful bands to come out of New York's modern free jazz scene. Parker and his truly singular tone and ingenious modes of attack, violinist Billy Bang, and drummer Hamid Drake conjure the notion of song as it...

When the U.K. hard drum 'n bass "duo" Spring Heel Jack began collaborating with Thirsty Ear and their #Blue Series curator Matthew Shipp, one doubts they had any idea that their own sense of proportion and direction would shift so far away from their source material as it has....

The title of the Vandermark Five's Elements of Style...Exercises in Surprise refers to the tight juxtaposition of structural post-bop formalism and free jazz improvisation. The band -- Vandermark, reeds; Dave Rempis, saxophones; Kent Kessler, bass; Jeb Bishop, trombone; and Tim Daisy, drums...