Six works by iconic composer Ellen Fullman in a duo with David Gamper, an original member of Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening Band — ecstatic and mesmerizing improvisations recorded in the resonant space of the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, CA — plus 2 tracks of a duo between Ellen Fullman and Deep Listening Band founding member Stuart Dempster on trombone & didjeridu.

Keyboardist Annie Lewandowski (London Improvisers Orchestra, Fred Frith, Samech) composed this song cycle about ancient Greek figures in collaboration with David Yearsley, Theresa Wong and Russell Greenberg, poetic pieces contrasting traditional use of instruments with subtle experimental approaches in a unique and fascinating set of compositional strategies.

A rare and exuberant exchange of sonic discourse between Chinese and American improvisers recorded in the Yunnan Province of China at the Lijiang Studio artist residency, in a uniquely voiced quintet with Theresa Wong on cello & voice, Lao Dan on saxophone & bamboo instruments, John McCowen on clarinet & recorder, Li Xing on electric & acoustic guitars, and Deng Boyu on percussion & found objects.

A fascinating 2-CD retrospective of the solo piano and computer work from 1990 to 2016 of San Francisco Bay Area experimental composer Chris Brown, whose work focuses on evolving paradigms of human-machine interaction through live signal processing, generative polyrhythmic textures, and a cohabitation of both formal control and indeterminacy.

The Polish trio OWL of Marcin Halat on violin, Maciej Garbowski on double bass, and Krzysztof Gradziuk on drums invited German pianist Pablo Held for a concert at Loft in Cologne, 2019, to perform three lyrical and dynamic compositions from violinist Halat, alongside a 6-part "IMPRO" collective improvisation, balancing free and lyrical approches to superb modern jazz.

A warm and relaxed saxophone trio album led by Finnish tenor saxophonist Pauli Lyytinen (Raoul Bjorkenheim's eCsTaSy), Polish double bassist Maciej Garbowski and drummer Krzysztof Gradziuk (RGG), the three focused on deeply expressive interaction and lyrical finesse, while performing live at Institute of Music Performance, in Katowice, Poland, in 2019.

Led by Polish multi-reedist and composer Przemyslaw Chmiel and his quartet of Mateusz Gramburg on piano, Piotr Narajowski on double bass, and Michał Szeligowski on drums, this is their debut album, presenting a sophisticated set of structured compositions that allow for great spontaneity and lyricism, a strong start for this expressive young band.

The third volume in this free improvising series, starting with the collaboration of Polish violinist Patryk Zakrocki and guitarist Marcin Olak, varying the additional players as they explore chamber-oriented free improvisation, here with the impressive vocal improvisation of Anna Gadt and cellist Annemie Osborne, ripping apart the calendar in 14 monthly machinations.

Reissuing this astonishing 1995 studio recording, capturing the first encounter between two legendary free jazz performers--UK saxophonist Evan Parker on tenor and soprano saxophones and pianist Augustí Fernández--in an 8-part dialog of mercurial speed balanced with moments of passionate introspection, resissued with new mastering, restoring this essential meeting.

After a tour through upstate New York State with Chicago cellist and electronic artist Fred Lonberg-Holm, saxophonist Frode Gjerstad headed to New York City for a planned trio recording which evolved into this informed quartet with Steve Swell on trombone and William Parker on bass, tuba, cornet & flutes, an outstanding example of Transatlanic collective improvisation.

Each of the three parts of NY pianist Joel Futterman's "Intervals" is unedited first takes, a referendum on 40 years of playing and expanding his powers at free jazz that embraces tradition and future, alway engaging his listeners through fully formed figures, phrase and motifs, a great combination of familiar jazz elements and imaginative free invention.

Saxophonist Ivo Perelman declares that he "metamorphosed into a string instrument" himself while playing with the dynamic string trio drawn of NY Downtown luminaries--cellist Hank Roberts, violinist Mark Feldman and bassist Mark Dresser--blending technical mastery with profound creative impulse as the quartet weaves a tapestry of free jazz and instant composition.

Drawn from some of New Yorks finest and most active improvisers, cellist Tomeka Reid's string-centric quartet with Mary Halvorson on guitar, Jason Roebke on bass, and Tomas Fujiwara on drums, take Reid's lyrical compositions into ebullient territory, showing the effective power of these versatile string instruments in creative and irresistible modern jazz.

Merging players from the NY, Philidelphia and Chicago scenes, the trio of drummer Chad Taylor, saxophonist Brian Settles and pianist Neil Podgurski have a history reaching into the 90s in NYC, bringing a confident kinetic energy to their playing, energized by Taylor's powerful rhythmic center and a lyrical bent that makes their music exuberant and intelligent at once.

The Stirrup trio of cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, Nick Macri (bass), and Charles Rumback (drums) is merged with improvisers from Lonberg-Holm's Lightbox Orchestra project--Keefe Jackson & Mars Williams on reeds, guitarist Peter Maunu, violist Jen Clare Paulson, trumpeter Russ Johnson & Zoots Houston on electronics -for this compelling structured performance at Elastic Arts.

The Thumbscrew trio of NY improvisers Tomas Fujiwara on drums & vibes, Mary Halvorson on guitar, and Michael Formanek on double bass, turn their focus to their shared history with composer and reedist Anthony Braxton as he celebrates his 75th birthday, performing 11 previously unheard compositions selected from Composition No. 14 through No. 274; masterful and profound.

The second album from the Norwegian electric jazz quartet of Havard Nordberg Funderud on guitar, Lauritz Lyster Skeidsvoll on saxophone, Karl Erik Horndalsveen on double bass, and Martin Heggli Mellem on drums, after their 2018 album The Concert Koan on the Clean Feed label, here in six powerfully thrilling tracks of youthful exuberance and impressive skill.

Taking their band name from a Thelonious Monk quote, the Norwegian power trio of vibraphone player Amund Storløkken Åse (son of keyboardist Ståle Storløkken and vocelist Tone Åse), guitarist Nicolas Leirtrø and drummer Øyvind Leite bridge the divide between 70's progressive rock, classical music, jazz and improvisation with a unique instrumentation.

Taking their band name from a Thelonious Monk quote, the Norwegian power trio of vibraphone player Amund Storløkken Åse (son of keyboardist Ståle Storløkken and vocelist Tone Åse), guitarist Nicolas Leirtrø and drummer Øyvind Leite bridge the divide between 70's progressive rock, classical music, jazz and improvisation with a unique instrumentation.

In 2018 guitarist Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen received an invitation from the festival at Vossajazz commissioning a work for the 2019 festival, for which she expanded her instrumental rock trio to a sextet with trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, drummer Torstein Lofthus (Elephant9), percussionist Ole Mofjell, and keyboardists Marte Eberson & Erlend Slettevoll.

Belgian composer Pierre Gerard presents a work that examines what we see around us, and what sometimes remains invisible, in three dramatic minimal works of powerful tones and tension, silence and motion: the first is 'the mechanics', the second 'the structure of a rock on a high mountain', the third 'the distance between the elements in a small forest area'.

A momentous 2020 concert at London's Cafe OTO, presented in two discs, the 1st with label leader Jean-Marc Foussat in a solo improvisation on synth and voice, the 2nd in a trio with Daunik Lazro on tenor & baritone sax, and Evan Parker on soprano sax, the 2 saxophones weaving and responding to Foussat's remarkable alien soundscapes and vocalization in an immersive extended improvisation.

Recording at the Lilypad in Cambridge, MA, the Boston-area trio of pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, bassist Damon Smith, and drummer Eric Rosenthal are captured in concert for an adventurous album of free improvisation, Karayorgis's compositions leading this piano trio of magnificent mastery into buoyantly exciting interaction as they take their listeners to a dizzying precipice edge.

Performing in the intimacy of the Birdland Jazz Club in 2011, New York innovative pianist Cecil Taylor met with London free jazz legendary percussionist and long-time associate in The Feel Trio, Tony Oxley, Taylor's rapid often percussive approach to the keys pairing with Oxley's percussive work, and both invoking lyrical beauty from the other.

With origins in Switzerland in the Recall Pollock duo of trombonist Roland Dahinden and pianist Hildegard Kleep, this trio with UK electronics artist based in South Africa Cameron Harris has its origin in the quartet CubeZ with visual artist Charbel Ackermann, here focused on their unusual language through acoustic improv altered and complemented by interactive electronics.

The 13th International Festival of Improvised Music "Ad Libitum" in Warsaw, 2018, themed "Women Alarm!", presented the new trio of Joëlle Léandre (double bass), Myra Melford (piano), and Lauren Newton (free improv voice), performing a masterfully energetic, quirky and indescribably enthralling set of trio and duo improvisations titled "Whisper" 1 through 8.

Aggressive "honk-n-skronk" free jazz from the Moscow based trio of alto saxophonist Anton Ponomarev, with Danish drummer Peter Ole Jørgensen (aka P.O. Jorgens known for his work with Peter Brötzmann) and bass guitarist Dmitry Lapshin, in a studio album of eight burning "Circles", demanding skirmishes of fiery imformed collective free jazz.

The second album for the duo of Japanese avant percussionist living in New Mexico Tatsuya Nakatani and Asheville, NC guitarist Shane Parish (Ahleuchatistas), recorded live at Static Age Records during Nakatani's extensive 2018 tour, finding both players intensely involved in their dialog, through highly interactive and deeply reflective passages.

The title referencing the discipline and often mathematical basis behind New York pianist Matthew Shipp's work, balanced by fascinating abstractions and a curious mind that drives Shipp's remarkable journeys in solo improvisation, these 11 pieces draw together fundamental elements of the jazz idiom and transform them into something intelligently complex and uniquely Shipp.

"Actions For Free Jazz Orchestra" was originally written by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki for the New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra, assembled by Don Cherry for the occasion and conducted by composer himself; this new extended reading and conduction of the score from 2018 was originated and directed by Mats Gustafsson, a powerful update and expansion of the original work.

"Actions For Free Jazz Orchestra" was originally written by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki for the New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra, assembled by Don Cherry for the occasion and conducted by composer himself; this new extended reading and conduction of the score from 2018 was originated and directed by Mats Gustafsson, a powerful update and expansion of the original work.

The music to composer Craig Shepards performance work that presents listeners with text drawn from court testimony in the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, here concentrating on the quiet long tones generated by wind instruments and ebow strings, where pure tones pass between the musicians to build a pulsating chord that then drops away tone by tone.

An album of controlled cacophony and slippery improvisation from the trio of Martin Klapper on amplified objects, toys & small electronics, Martin Kuchen on sopranino & soprano saxophones, snare drum resonator & metal objects, and Roger Turner on drums, small cymbals, metal and plastic, recording in Stokholm as they apparently try to build a shooting bear.

A collection of compositions from clarinetist Guillermo Gregorio alongside collective improvisations from the trio with bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Ramon Lopez, sophisticated chamber-oriented jazz from masterful players recording in the studio in New Jersey, as they explore the musical intersection of disparate cultural, geographic and life experiences.

A fully improvised cycle of seven miniatures, or "Mutations", recorded live on Kultur-Schranne in Dachau, Germany in 2019 by the trio of two masterful and legendary players--Catalan pianist Agusti Fernández and British double bassist Barry Guy--inviting young Catalog saxophonist Don Malfon as they transmute their conversation for fascinatingly creative conversation.

Drawing from four of the most active and prominent improvisers on the UK free improv scene, saxophonist Trevor Watts leads his quartet with pianist Veryan Weston, bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders through four free spirited, exhilarating and comprehensive collective conversations captured live at Cafe Oto in London in 2019.

Using the natural resonance of the Apodaka church in Alava, Spain, the Bilbao-based experimental improvising duo of cellist Francia Matías Riquelme and saxophonist Fernando Ulzion on soprano and alto, present an introspective and informed set of works titled as iconic jazz compositions, an implication of the impressionist approach their expansive and thoughtful playing invokes.

A constantly evolving electro-acoustic composition for percussion and microphones from the Swiss-based duo of Vincent Glanzmann and Gerry Hemingway, using cymbals, floor tom & percussion, directed by both graphic and collective compositional approaches while applying carefully controlled amplification to prodigious extended techniques on their instruments.

Recalling their brokenresearch LP from 2007, trumpeter Nate Wooley and drummer/percussionist Paul Lytton focus on unusual techniques and approaches to their instruments, using amplifiers and electronics to investigate new frontiers in interactive improvisation, each creating inexplicably interesting, masterfully interwoven sonic material.

A unique sextet of European improvisers active since 2015, comprised of two soprano saxophones, violin, piano, turntables and quarter tone accordion, in their second album of wide-ranging collective improvisation, their orchestration allowing moments of jazz, classical and electroacoustic improvisation to interweave and surprise their listeners; fascinating.

Norwegian guitarist and composer Ivar Grydeland and US guitarist, improviser and composer Henry Kaiser met in the studio with the goal of working on a soundtrack for a classic Norwegian silent film, "Ellsworths flyveekspedition 1925"; in a single take they recorded this amazingly detailed and beautiful improvisation, from which these 5 astounding tracks were selected.

Bassist Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten (The Thing) and Stale Storlokken (Elephant9, Supersilent, Terje Rypdal) join the Nordic Krokofant trio of Axel Skalstad on drums, vibraphone, Tom Hasslan on guitar, and Jorgen Mathisen on saxophone for the band's 3rd album, performing the 4-part work "Q", an intense and sophisticated album of complex and passionate instrumental rock.

Performing together since 1989, at first frequently and now as very special events, this concert at Concertgebouw in Brugge of pianist Georg Graewe, cellist Ernst Reijseger, and drummer and marimba player Gerry Hemingway, is a superb example of the both telepathic and confidently confrontational interplay of their chamber-oriented and superbly paced improvisation.

Surprising, singular and unconventional interpretations of four pieces from John Coltrane--"The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost", "Naima", "Improvisation For Mr. J.C.", and "Inspired by Seraphic Light"--from the Gdansk trio of Michael Gos (drums), Mark Tokar (bass) and Tomasz Gadecki (tenor & baritone sax), comissioned by and performed at the 2019 Jazz Jantar Festival.

Hailed as the most pyrotechnic and adventurous concert of the 12th Ad Libitum Festival in Warsaw, Poland, the collective quintet of Agusti Fernandez on piano, Artur Majewski on trumpet, Albert Cirera on saxophones, Rafal Mazur on bass, and Ramon Prats on drums, rage and flow through three movements of "Flux", starting at the "Source" and ending in an "Estuary"; awesome.

Using the natural resonance of the St. Martin's Church, in Smartno, Slovenia, percussionist Zlatko Kaucic leads the quintet of Michael Moore on alto sax & clarinet, Marco Colonna on clarinet & bass clarinet, Albert Cirera on tenor sax, and Silvia Bolognesi on Double Bass, in ten conversations from cinematic conversation to commandingly interactive.

The third SLD Trio album from the Argentinian free improvising band with a strong NY presence of pianist Paula Shoctron (also narrating on "Transformacion"), bassist German Lamonega, and Pablo Diaz, in ten diverse and confident recordings, performing compositions from each musicians one collective improvisation, and Duke Ellington's "Melancholia".

Three saxophonists -- Evan Parker, Lotte Anker, and Torben Snekkestad -- all on soprano sax plus Anker on tenor and Snekkestad on trumpet, in a primarily reed trio performing live in in Copenhagen, Denmark at KoncertKirken Blagards Plads, in two highly interactive improvisations that explore harmonic interaction, interference, and tonal intersections; fascinating!

Smalltown Supersound's sublabel Actions for Free Jazz presents this live concert at Oslo's St. Edmund's Church from the duo of frequent collaborators Joe McPhee on pocket trumpet & tenor saxophone, and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums and percussion, featuring compositions by James Weldon Johnson, Thelonious Monk and Joe McPhee plus two by McPhee and Nilssen-Love.

Bringing separate collaborations together as a trio, Swedish saxophonist Martin Kuchen (Angles), who has worked separately with Catalan drummer Vascto Trilli and Polish guitarist Rafal Mazur, come together as Nobject, recording at Lodz-Art Inkubator during the sixth Musica Privata festival in Lodz, Poland, for 2 sets of fully free, sinuous and assertive improvisation.