Pi Recordings

"Party Intellectuals is the debut recording from Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog, a post-everything band combining the energies of two masters of downtown New York mayhem: guitarist/vocalist Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, John Zorn, Robert Plant, T-Bone Burnett...

"A visionary guitarist, Ribot is a fount of pithy commentary."-New York Times

"Almost a polar opposite of his last release, Party Intellectuals, Silent Movies is mostly filled with gorgeously contemplative compositions performed solo, with...

"What is Spiritual Unity?

Spiritual Unity is a group formed by guitarist Marc Ribot dedicated to re-creating and re-imagining the music of the great saxophonist Albert Ayler, one of the pillars of modern jazz. Ribot (Lounge Lizards, Los Cubanos

Totally SMOKIN' electric jazz trio set from this band of equals. Grimes and Chad sound great together and this is one of the best things I have heard out of Ribot. Includes two late period Coltrane tracks (Sun Ship & Dearly Beloved), two by Ayler...

"Song of Silver Geese is the latest release from groundbreaking, experimental vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist and dancer Jen Shyu, whose critically acclaimed Sounds and Cries of the World was praised by The Nation and The New York Times as one of the best releases of the 2015.
Named a 2016 Doris Duke Artist and voted Rising Star Female Vocalist in the 2017 Downbeat Critics Poll, NPR extols her music as 'intensely personal. Nothing sounds quite like it &[It] operates in some unpatrolled...

Jen Shyu: composition, vocals, percussion, piano, Taiwanese moon lute, Japanese biwa
Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet
Mat Maneri: viola
Thomas Morgan: bass
Dan Weiss: drums

“Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses, the new work by sui generis vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu, is a collection of songs devoted to the marginalized voices of women around the world, and a profound elegy to personal loss. The album is dedicated to her father, who passed away in 2019..

"Vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu is best known for carving out new improvisational terrain for the voice through integrating traditional music discovered through rigorous research and fieldwork. Sounds and Cries of the World is a culmination of her travels through East Timor, Korea, Indonesia, and Taiwan, where she has spent months and years in each place immersing herself in the language and forgotten musics of various indigenous cultures. She has done this while continuing to be an...

"Synastry is a collaboration between groundbreaking vocalist Jen Shyu and master bassist Mark Dresser that demonstrates new possibilities for jazz singing. Shyu, a member of influential saxophonist Steve Coleman’s Five Elements, is well known for her...

"The Year of the Elephant is the first album by the Golden Quartet as a working band. Their previous album, Golden Quartet, was recorded before the band had ever played out live together. The time in-between the two recordings has given the group the...

"This is the first full duo recording of Wadada Leo Smith and Anthony Braxton ever. There have only been three times that the two have actually performed as a duo. The previous times were in Chicago and France. Some 30 years later, on April 5th, they play

"Saturn, Conjunct the Grand Canyon in a Sweet Embrace is the second release, in the two part series, of a live duo performance of Wadada and Braxton. It was recorded April 5th, 2003 at Tonic in NYC.

Wadada and Braxton’s relationship dates back.

“The Adornment of Time is a monumental meeting between drummer Tyshawn Sorey and pianist Marilyn Crispell, two titans of contemporary music. Recorded live at The Kitchen in New York City, the performance is the apotheosis of fully-improvised music, a dialogue between two artists who are masters at bringing compositional form to their improvisations.
Sorey, a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, has been named by The New Yorker as "among the most formidable denizens of the in-between zone... An...

Tyshawn Sorey - drums
Christopher Tordini - contrabass
Cory Smythe - piano

Alloy is the highly anticipated new release from drummer/composer Tyshawn Sorey, his first as a leader since his Oblique-I topped multiple critics polls as...

Tyshawn Sorey - Drums
Aaron Diehl - Piano
Matt Brewer - Bass

“Continuing is drummer Tyshawn Sorey’s highly-anticipated follow-up to Mesmerism and The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism, his two critically-acclaimed 2022 release that feature this avowed avant-gardist’s surprising forays into classic, swinging jazz. Those two prior releases were voted #4 and #5 best albums of the year, respectively, in the annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll of over 150 jazz critics. In two 4 ½ Star reviews.

Tyshawn Sorey – drum set
Aaron Diehl – piano
Matt Brewer – bass

“Mesmerism is a beautiful, swinging trio meeting led by drummer Tyshawn Sorey featuring two musicians whom he has considered his closest colleagues: pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Matt Brewer. Sorey – a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, collaborator with Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis, Roscoe Mitchell, Hafez Modirzadeh, Myra Melford, Marilyn Crispell and other musical luminaries – puts..

"Oblique I is the highly anticipated new release from drummer Tyshawn Sorey, delivering what his fans have long been seeking: an album that combines his virtuosic playing with his compositional mastery. On each of his two prior releases as a leader, he...

Tyshawn Sorey drums
Cory Smythe piano
Chris Tordini contrabass
Chern Hwei Fung violin
Kyle Armbrust viola
Rubin Kodheli cello
"Drummer Tyshawn Sorey is widely considered to be among the most important young artists at the intersection between composed and improvised music. The New York Times has called his work 'gestural and philosophical', and his prior release, Alloy 'elegant and shadowy'. Not just known for his impossibly virtuosic technique and his mind boggling ability to.

“The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism is a blazing three-volume set recorded live at The Jazz Gallery in New York, featuring drummer Tyshawn Sorey’s trio with special guest alto saxophonist Greg Osby. Increasingly celebrated for his notated works in the contemporary classical realm – Sorey was recently called “composer of the year” by The New York Times – and generally associated with the avant-garde, Off-Off Broadway is a return to his musical roots: a celebration of collective improvisation over...

Tyshawn Sorey drums
Christopher Tordini bass
Cory Smythe piano

"Verisimilitude is the latest in drummer/composer Tyshawn Sorey’s continuing effort to shatter the jazz piano trio tradition by extending the form to encompass the influence of the likes of Feldman, Debussy and Xenakis.
One of the most in-demand drummers in improvised music – he has in recent years collaborated extensively with the likes of John Zorn, Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, Claire Chase, George Lewis, and Roscoe...

"'Dirt... and More Dirt" is the latest from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and multi-reedist Henry Threadgill, a living legend whom the New York Times calls a "composer and bandleader of intense, unyielding originality." Featuring a brand new ensemble, 14 or 15 Kestra: Agg, the new release continues Threadgill's groundbreaking work in utilizing "a serial intervallic language" in improvisation, a system he has honed over the last 16-years with his long-running band Zooid. Inspired by the conceptual art...

"Double Up, Plays Double Up Plus is Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Henry Threadgill's highly anticipated follow-up to Old Locks and Irregular Verbs, which was voted the best jazz album of 2016 in the NPR and Jazz Times Critics Polls. Like on that release, which NPR called "a masterpiece," this album also features Ensemble Double Up, this time with the remarkable inclusion of three concert grand pianos, in addition to saxophones, flute, cello, tuba, and drums. Alive with the multi-layered counterpoint...

Henry Threadgill – conductor
Alfredo Colón – alto saxophone
Noah Becker – alto saxophone, clarinet
Peyton Pleninger – tenor saxophone
Craig Weinrib – percussion, electronics
Sara Caswell – violin
Stephanie Griffin – viola
Mariel Roberts – cello
Christopher Hoffman – cello
Jose Davila – tuba
David Virelles – piano
Sara Schoenbeck – bassoon
Adam Cordero – bassoon

“The Other One, the latest from Henry Threadgill, is the musical c

"A year ago Pi Recordings released the first new Henry Threadgill recording since 2001: This Brings Us To, Volume I. This is the second release from the same recording sessions of November 2008. Threadgill's Zooid band is a quintet, with Liberty Ellman...

"This Brings Us To is the first release from Threadgill since 2001. He has spent those eight years, the longest time between releases in his career, creating and perfecting a new system of improvisation in a group setting...

"Tomorrow Sunny / The Revelry, Spp is the new release from Henry Threadgill, whose prior releases This Brings Us To, Volumes 1 & 2 topped many critics’ year end lists in 2009 and 2010. The CD features Zooid, the longest-running band of Threadgill’s 40...

Zooid is Henry’s first all acoustic band since The Sextet, and his first band since X-75 which has focused so heavily on strings. A “zooid” is an organic cell capable of independent movement or several cells forming a colony. As always with Henry the...

"Henry Threadgill's important new release Old Locks and Irregular Verbs is his heartfelt tribute to an old friend, the composer-conductor Lawrence D. Butch Morris, who passed away in 2013. He describes the work as 'An emotion, a thought, a feeling that I retained in my memory of Butch.'

Threadgill first came to know Morris - a significant figure in jazz who was responsible for creating a distinctive form of conductor-led collective improvisation for large-ensemble built on a technique he called....

Henry Threadgill - alto sax, flute, bass flute
Jose Davila - trombone, tuba
Liberty Ellman - guitar
Christopher Hoffman - cello
Elliot Humberto Kavee - drums, percussion

"In for a Penny, In for a Pound is the latest installmen

Henry Threadgill – alto saxophone, flute, bass flute
Liberty Ellman – acoustic guitar
Jose Davila – tuba, trombone
Christopher Hoffman – cello
Elliot Humberto Kavee – drums

“Poof is composer, saxophonist and flutist Henry Threadgill's latest work for his band, Zooid, his musical laboratory for the last two decades. Their last release together, In for a Penny, In for a Pound, was the winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music, whose committee called it "a highly original work i

"Juncture is a large-scale collaborative project made up of original stories, drawings, paintings, photos and music by over fifty of the finest artists of our generation. The book, with accompanying visuals, was recently published by Soft Skull press...

Igbó Alákọrin (a phrase in Yoruba which can be loosely translated as The Singer’s Grove) is the realization of pianist David Virelles’s long-held dream to document the under-sung musicians of his birthplace, Santiago de Cuba. Virelles, who was named the #1 Rising Jazz Pianist in the 2017 Downbeat Critics Poll, is one of the most in-demand pianists on the contemporary jazz scene, recording with the likes of Henry Threadgill, Chris Potter, and Tomasz Stanko. He also has four prior releases under his own...

“Nuna is a book of compositions for solo piano by Cuban-American pianist and composer David Virelles. A 2021 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, Virelles has worked with musicians as distinct as Henry Threadgill, Andrew Cyrille, Ravi Coltrane, Mark Turner, Chris Potter, Tomasz Stanko, Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Tom Harrell and Milford Graves. His release Continuum (Pi 2012) was named the best jazz release of that year by The New York Times. After three...

“Saxophonist/flutist Anna Webber has been an active performer and bandleader on the New York scene for the last decade, playing with the likes of John Hollenbeck, Dave Douglas, Matt Mitchell, and Jen Shyu. Her own projects, which are clear expressions of her knotty compositional sense, have been hailed by The New York Times as "bracing, argumentative and engineered to show the range of the group members: fulminous, intense collective improvisation; rapid, chromatic steeplechases; research into long tones...

“Idiom by composer/saxophonist/ flutist Anna Webber is the follow-up to her critically-acclaimed release Clockwise, which the Wall Street Journal called "visionary and captivating" and NPR described as “heady music [that] appeal to the rest of the body.” Idiom is a series of six pieces, each of which is based on a specific woodwind extended technique -- a broad term meaning any non-traditional way of producing sound on an instrument, including the use of multiphonics, alternate fingerings, key clicks...

"Recently named one of Five Drummers Whose Time Is Now by the New York Times, Dan Weiss is one of the most in-demand musicians on the jazz scene, performing with Rudresh Mahanthappa, Miguel Zenon, Lee Konitz, and Dave Binney, among many others. He has....

"'Sixteen: Drummers Suite' is the follow-up to 'Fourteen', the acclaimed release by Dan Weiss that The New York Times named one of the top ten releases of 2013, calling it '...forceful... full of its own convictions. There is no pressure in the world pushing anyone to make a record like this: choral antiphony, new-jazz rhythmic meshing, tabla patterns transferred to drum set, hand-clap patterns transferred to voice, structured improvisation metal.... Mr. Weiss spins it all into a flowing fabric.'...

Dan Weiss-drums, compositions
Trevor Dunn-electric bass
Ben Monder-guitars
Matt Mitchell-piano, synths
Craig Taborn-piano, Fender Rhodes, synths

This is a pretty incredible, rehearsal-intensive, 'math-jazz' release with by a tremendous line-up. Compositionally & performance-wise, it basically sounds a jazzier, recent-era Present. Hugely recommended!

"Starebaby is the upshot of drummer Dan Weiss's long-running dream to bring together some of the most accomplished players

Dan Weiss-drums, compositions
Trevor Dunn-electric bass
Ben Monder-guitars
Matt Mitchell-piano, synths
Craig Taborn-piano, Fender Rhodes, synths

This is a pretty incredible, rehearsal-intensive, 'math-jazz' release with by a tremendous line-up. Compositionally & performance-wise, it basically sounds a jazzier, recent-era Present. Hugely recommended!

"Starebaby is the upshot of drummer Dan Weiss's long-running dream to bring together some of the most accomplished players

THESE copies have a bent corner and we have knocked $6.00 off the price. They are not terrible, but they are not in perfect condition in terms of the cover (vinyl is 100% new and perfect)
Dan Weiss-drums, compositions
Trevor Dunn-electric bass
Ben Monder-guitars
Matt Mitchell-piano, synths
Craig Taborn-piano, Fender Rhodes, synths

This is a pretty incredible, rehearsal-intensive, 'math-jazz' release with by a tremendous line-up. Compositionally & performance-wise, i

"This is a smart, passionate, yearning, exploratory and generous set of performances from a young trumpeter who came to my attention via his work in the TransAtlantic Ensemble CDs of Evan Parker and Roscoe Mitchell. I have been a little wary of his...