Guitarist Derek Bailey, one of the first practitioners of non-idiomatic free improvisation, once opined that solo extemporization was an inferior activity. Since he played unaccompanied concerts quite often, Bailey might’ve been pulling the interviewer’s leg, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t mean it, since his preferred playing situation was one where the musicians hadn’t fixed on a vocabulary yet.
A quarter century has passed since Bailey left this earth, but if anyone has his words and example committed to heart, it’s John Butcher. The English soprano/tenor saxophonist took Bailey’s precedent quite seriously as he developed his own capacity to operate within the realm of absolute freedom, and you can perceive elements…
Category: free jazz
Legendary saxophonist Don Dietrich and his powerhouse cellist daughter Camille Dietrich collide in Live Bahdu, a fierce musical union that music critic Byron Coley hails as “sheer wailing sonic pleasure.” Don, an untamed force who has spent over forty years shaping the explosive core of Borbetomagus, unleashes a volatile, lung-shaking roar, an unyielding take no prisoners wall of sound.
Camille answers with her own ferocity, channeling raw, electric intensity through the disciplined edge of her classical training, wielding her cello with the instinctive wildness of someone raised inside the storm of improvisation.
Together, they don’t just play-they engulf. Their sound floods a room, swallowing the air, saturating the senses, and leaving audiences…
Does 50 minutes of heady and chaotic free jazz appeal to you? Good. James McKain, Damon Smith, and Weasel Walter are here to help.
Recorded late last year, …seeing the way the mole tunnels… consists of wailing and screeching sax from McKain, scrapes, harmonics, and percussive strikes on the double bass from Smith, and Walter’s signature punk / prog improv. The trio moves at such a frenetic pace that even the downtempo passages are restless, textural, and full of ideas.
McKain extracts gritty textures and flutters from the lower register saxes, which couples well with Walter’s mix of blast beats, rolls, and fills. Indeed, all three musicians could be thought of as soloing collectively in a fashion that is curiously complementary. Harmonic and melodic…
The creative community centered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, can be seen as the modern-day equivalent of a city once known as New Amsterdam — a 17th-century Dutch settlement that would eventually become New York City.
Just as modern jazz flourished in mid-20th-century New York, some might argue that today’s hotbed of creative music resides in old Amsterdam. Evidence for this can be found in Old Adam on Turtle Island, a stunning musical creation by a multicultural quartet.
Led by American saxophonist John Dikeman, the quartet previously released Sunday at De Ruimte (2021) with Frank Rosaly on drums. In this new venture, Rosaly has been succeeded by Korean drummer Sun-Mi Hong.
Freedom from, or freedom to, that is the question. When the word was first applied to jazz, it was mostly the former; free jazz rebelled against increasingly confining practices and expectations. But when Argentine sopranino and tenor saxophonist Ada Rave and Polish pianist Marta Warelis play together, it’s more a matter of the latter. Do they want to form a tune on the spot, or sink deep into a sonic texture? Rip it up, or wax reflective? The answer is yes. When they recorded this album in concert on June 3, 2024, the Amsterdam venue Splendor’s stage was a free zone where anything was permitted.
But these are players who sincerely reckon with the responsibility that accompanies such freedom. They have responsibilities to each other…
Gilles Peterson presents International Anthem is a double-LP-length compilation of tracks from Chicago-born record label International Anthem curated by legendary London-based radio host, DJ, label head, and cultural impresario Gilles Peterson.
The twenty-nine tracks on this compilation chronicle Peterson’s long-standing affinity for and connection to International Anthem’s expansive creative music community, and were chosen by an extensive review of playlists from his broadcasts on BBC 6 Music, Worldwide FM, and various syndicated radio programs.
The compilation includes a previously unreleased track recorded by Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly at Peterson’s Brownswood Basement studio in London.
Some books are divided into chapters — numbered, titled, and carefully structured. The musical equivalent is the tracklist: segmented, labeled pieces presented in order. But Ecliptic by the trio Shifa (Arabic for “healing”) rejects that format entirely. This 46-minute set of improvised music by saxophonist Rachel Musson, pianist Pat Thomas and drummer Mark Sanders unfolds without titles, track divisions, or breaks. It is a single, uninterrupted performance recorded live at London’s Café OTO in February 2023.
Like their previous releases, Live in Oslo (2020) and Live at Café OTO (2019), Ecliptic operates as a musical equilateral triangle — no dominant voice, no designated leader, just balanced collaboration. Each musician contributes equally,…
ESP-Disk offering a recent, live capture of towering figures of avant-garde jazz and underground noise music who join forces in a combustible conference of splendid spontaneity. live at pioneer works, 26 october 2023 by Anthony Braxton and Wolf Eyes dryly denotes in its title the place and time of the occasion but there’s nothing parched about the music made there that night.
Anthony Braxton — the mastermind behind so many elongated intricate, creative opuses — still likes to just get on a stage and jam with cats a generation or two behind him, and they come in all shapes and sizes. The cats this time are Wolf Eyes, a prolifically-recorded legend noise band out of Detroit. The moniker originally applied to Nate Young alone when he started it in…