"Recorded (and released) one year after Konrad Bauer's Disques Victo debut Toronto Tone, a solo-trombone-with-electronics affair, Three Wheels: Four Directions features his favorite trio at the time. Bauer, bassist Peter Kowald, and dru...

EVIYAN is Iva Bittova, Gyan Riley & Evan Ziporyn - 3 unique composer/performers merging into a singular sound, an intimate, acoustic blend of world roots, post-minimalism, jazz, rock, and cabaret.

Two monster proponents of noise esthetics, representing two continents whose cultures have often been described as incompatible, meet in the celebration of noise.

Braxton's Composition 361 is a staggeringly detailed 70 minute tour-de-force for his 12-tet, a work of shifting layers, counter-structures, quiet tensions and scorching explosions.

On the 30th anniversary of the Victo Festival Anthony Braxton took to the stage for a magnificent solo performance on the alto sax, performing 8 spontaneous compositions and an 8+ minute version of "Body and Soul", seamlessly crossing lyrical and complex approaches to the horn using his unique intervallic, trimbral and diagrammatic language, a stunning and embraceable accomplishment.

Braxton's Diamond Curtain Wall Trio with Mary Halvorson and Taylor Ho Bynum live using laptop and interactive electronics at the 24th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville.

American and London artists Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey performing as a duo at The Victoriaville Festival in 1986, an amazing exchange between two noted masters of free improvisation.

Compositions 159, 148, 161, 158 and John Coltrane's "Impressions", performed with Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway.

Composer/saxophonist Braxton performed "Composition NO 347 + 62'37" " at the 2011 Victo Festival with the "super-group" of Braxton alumni - Mary Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Jessica Pavone, Jay Rozen, Aaron Siegel, Carl Testa", on their respective instruments + iPods.

"Sombre is an unlikely pairing yielding unexpected results. The classically trained harpist Helene Breschand meets the maverick avant rock guitarist Jean-Francois Pauvros. She plays an electro-acoustic harp, which -- unlike Zeena Parkin...

Victoriaville celebrated European Free Jazz legend Peter Brotzmann's 70th birthday by presenting two concerts: one solo, and one with the amazing Trio Roma of Massimo Pupillo and Paal Nilssen-Love, both presented on this essential 2 CD release.

"Music for Three Rivers presents four improvisations (totaling 45 minutes) from British pianist Chris Burn's performance at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in May 1996, as well as five studio recordings f...

"This set by longtime collaborators Dave Burrell and David Murray (playing exclusively tenor sax here) was recorded at the Victoriaville Festival in Quebec in 1991. The live sound is good, the performances exceptional (even by their sta...

Eugene Chadbourne and Kevin Blechdom (aka Kristin Erickson) performing songs from their 2007 Victo performance, warped banjo rock instrumentals and songs.

"Even though Canadian saxophonist Paul Cram has led his orchestra for years, first in Toronto and then Halifax, Campin Out is the first recording by this ensemble since the 1987 LP Beyond Benghazi. One cannot accuse Cram of being too pr...

"Taken from a 1987 solo date at Quebec's venerable Festival Musique Actuelle, Labyrinths finds avant garde jazz pianist Marilyn Crispell balancing Cecil Taylor's cataclysmic and staunchly free piano style with her own melodic and spacio...

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Live recordings and Derome's first release under his own name, inspired by Japanese magic squares and haikus, and performed in a group including Actuelle collective members Pierre Tanguay and Pierre Cartier.

"The album title, Moment de Bonheur, is rather trite, but the concert was marvelous and the recording preserves all of its intensity and charm. This was a first meeting between Jean Derome (flutes, alto sax) and Louis Sclavis (clarinets...

Jean Derome's extended Dangereux Zhomes opened the 25th Victo Festival in 2008, adding Joane Hetu, Lori Freedman, Bernard Falaise, &c. for an incredible and expressive orchestra.

"This trio allies the spirited lightness of the Italian scene with the pastoral feel of the Swiss. Italian bassist Daniele Patumi and Swiss pianist John Wolf Brennan already played together in Pago Libre, an ensemble sharing a lot of af...

The late trumpeter Bill Dixon's final performance at the 2011 Victo Festival, performing with and directing an incredible group including Taylor Ho Bynum, Rob Mazurek, Stephen Haynes, Graham Haynes, &c. &c.

"Three traditions, three musics? Hardly. This trio of improvisers -- Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone; Benat Achary, vocals, percussion; Kazue Sawai, koto -- forgoes all pretenses of speaking a universal language or separate ones, but i...

Live recordings in France, 1999 from the trio of saxophonist Michel Doneda, turntablist Erik M, and guitarist/electronic/object player Jean-Marc Montera, a frenetic concert of sonic mayhem.

Great duo set from bassist Dresser and "hyperpiano" (read: heavily prepared) player Maroney.

"Even for the avant-garde fan acquainted with the Far East Side Band's first CD, Caverns, Urban Archaeology cannot fail to surprise. The group's blend of Oriental and Occidental instruments and music forms provides quite a change of sce...

A live recording from the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in 2009 of extended improvisations between guitarist Fred Frith, French clarinetist Louis Sclavis, and percussionist Jean-Pierre Drouet.

Two masters who rarely play together--guitarist Fred Frith and saxophonist Evan Parker--performing together as a duo at the 30th Musique Actuelle Festival in Victoriaville, Canada for an amazing exchange of ideas and intensely subtle dialog.

"The first completely solo Charles Gayle recording was recorded during a break in the Victoriaville Festival in 1994. Gayle went into a Montreal studio and played tenor on three tracks and bass clarinet on one, and preached while accomp...

"When Gianni Gebbia performed with his trio Terra Arsa at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in May 1997, he was already well-established in the Italian new jazz scene. His style draws from Coltranian jazz, ...

"Recorded in studio in November 1996, Ben Goldberg's project Eight Phrases for Jefferson Rubin was his second composition for sextet (after Twelve Minor, released by Avant in 1998). Rubin, who died tragically at the age of 35, was one o...

A duo of contrasts and compatabilities from German violinst Gunda Gottschalk and guzheng virtuoso Xu Fengxia, exotic and beautifully textured improvisation live from Victoriaville, 2008.

Avant noise guitarist Haino Keiji and experimental sound artist Masami Akita (Merzbow) in a powerful and varied live set at the Victoriaville, May 2007.

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The trio of violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Matthias Bossi explore the language of memory and dreams through songs, improvisation, and field recordings.

"Prior to the release of this CD, Mexican flutist/pianist Roberto Morales Manzanares was virtually unknown in North America. He met Japan-born violinist Mari Kimura when she played at Callejon del Ruido, a new music festival Manzanares ...

"Anamnesis: Ecumenical Mysteries was Yugoslavian saxophonist/composer Boris Kovac's first release out of Europe (on the Canadian label Disques Victo). It was also his first work recorded in Yugoslavia following the war that forced him t...

This amazing trio performed at the 25th Victoriaville Festival of Musique Actuelle in 2008 with 2 guitars, 3 turntables, one spy-microphone, and 201 spectators.

"Since the release of Sudori with his Sud Ensemble in 1995, Italian trumpeter Pino Minafra remained discreet as a leader, preferring to blend his voice among others in large-scale groups like the Italian Instabile Orchestra, Gianluigi T...