“Danish saxophonist Signe Emmeluth, who now lives in Oslo after studying in Trondheim, Norway, has made a strong impact on the European free music scene in the last couple of years, not only due to her ferocious sound, but also through a stylistic openness...
This solo outing — a single piece recorded live for Ingebrit Håker Flaten’s Sonic Transmissions Festival — contains its fair share of fire-breathing, with tart boppish phrases ricocheting toward the horizon in upper register sallies, but it...

Carmina Escobar : voice sound toys, guitarron
Milo Tamez : home percussion, stones, branches, electronics
Thollem McDonas : synthesizer, vocals, clay pot

“Estamos Trio is an exploratory music ensemble formed through the cross-border Estamos Project founded by Thollem McDonas in 2010. The trio includes Carmina Escobar (vocals, electronics, guitarrón), Milo Tamez (percussion, found objects, electronics) and Thollem (keyboard, vocals, clay pot).
Recorded live at SITE Santa Fe, Dire...

“Sand is a Fields composition for 20 instrumentalists, three singers, and conductor. It combines three areas in which he has often worked: modularity, manipulation of text, and integration of composition and improvisation. Like Fields’ previous modular works, Sand is constructed of units whose interrelationships vary from weak to strong. In performance a conductor spontaneously selects, combines, sequences, and layers modules. Sand also includes improvisational elements within structures and “organic...

“So...Who is this guy?" These words are a touchstone in the liner notes for Mr. Flaherty's first solo release, 2003's Voices. The notes are an insightful reckoning on what it means to be a free improvising artist (he was 54 at that time, and had already been at it for most of his life). He speaks of "the artist in residence", that part of him that just wants to blow, to shed the tired conventions and self-conscious-over-thinking and just play. Play and see where it takes him. Play and chase the coattails...

“Flamingo explores sound, texture and dynamics. Sometimes verging on the threshold of hearing and at other times engaging in dense layers and waves of sound, the music of Flamingo creates a poetic space in which pure sound phenomena step forth on the eternal backdrop of silence.
Flamingo is Chris Heenan on contrabass clarinet, Adam Pultz Melbye on double bass, and Christian Windfeld on snare drum, percussion & objects. On LOUD they expand the trio with sound artist and engineer Roy Carroll. In LOUD...

“New York violinist gabby fluke-mogul is unabashedly experimental on this solo album recorded last summer. Employing extended techniques (rubbing, scraping, sawing, tapping), they extract a full spectrum of unconventional sounds from this conventional instrument. Coupled with occasional vocalizations, threshold is an exhilarating ride.” AMN reviews

Michael Foster: tenor & soprano saxophones, samples, oscillators

"The Industrious Tongue of Michael Foster is a 2-part work probing the most intimate and sensitive glands of the saxophone's internal architecture.
This work is dedicated to several filmmakers whose work explores the erotic extremities and complexities of contemporary intimacy which has served as a focal point of inspiration for this album: Hisayasu Sato, Takashi Ishii, Naomi Tani and Jacques Rivette."

“No surprise in comparing this release to the Rova Sax Quartet. It features Jon Raskin, a founding member of that ensemble, as well as fellow saxophonists Frank Gratkowski and Phillip Greenlief. Recorded on two dates, one in 2007 and the other in 2010, this intrepid trio gives their instruments a workout across nine tracks.
Honestly, limited-palette releases like this can be hit or miss. But in the right hands, three saxes can offer a broad range of pitches and textures. Such is the case for All At...

“Having been recorded live the compositions are free flowing and continuous in sound throughout, with one piece blending into another either through the pieces being merged together through performance, and the possible use of sympathetic editing with Fujiwara’s drums often providing the link. Fujiwara’s drums generate a scattering of sound and the skittering rhythms create great interplay between the guitar and the trumpet. Brandon Seabrook is very deft at carefully using effects to colour the...

Violeta Garcia - cello

"Violeta García is a cellist, improviser and composer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has been studying music since 1998. She is a performer in many art forms, including free improvisation, contemporary and trans-media experimental repertoire in violoncello and electronic and collaborations with dancers and other artists. She is eager to improvise, compose and create new experimental sounds with extended techniques, prepared instrument and work with dynamic, rhythmic and.

Frode Gjerstad: alto sax and Bb clarinet
Isach Skeidsvoll: piano

“Norwegian saxophone legend Frode Gjerstad started his career in the late 1970s playing clarinet, saxophone and flute. Gjerstad's tone is searing, his accents are forceful, he eschews regular tunes and improvises with the speed and dexterity of a seasoned veteran.
Gjerstad is joined on Twenty Fingers by Isach Skeidsvoll a dramatic, young newcomer on piano. The result is a spontaneous, edgy and bright series of duets that.

Zeena Parkins - electric harp/objects
Mette Rasmussen - sax/objects/voice
Ryan Sawyer - drums/objects

“Not too long ago, harpist Zeena Parkins, alto-saxophonist Mette Rasmussen and drummer Ryan Sawyer gathered at a studio in Brooklyn to record their second record as Glass Triangle. Parkins describes the scenario as strange, a three-hour, early-morning session during which they had to work around another band’s recording set-up. “It shouldn’t have yielded results,” she says. “But...

"Empiricism in the west" is a revelation, two amazing wind players - saxophonist, clarinetist and flautist Vinny Golia and saxophonist Urs Leimgruber - in a series of free improvising duos pushing their instruments into unusual and captivating territories.
The aim of this luxurious collaboration is to obtain a synergy of the sounds of all the instruments, keeping in mind all that the technique involves: circular breathing, search for dissonances, multiphonics, exaltation of acoustic dynamics...

Madison Greenstone - Bb clarinet

"Each of these studies takes as its basis a mode of resonance latent in the Bb clarinet. This album collects iterative and essayistic reflections on the self-generative qualities of these resonances. The instrument becomes a site of indeterminacy. What happens when resonance overflows? Each resonance has some form of inner agency, some form of emergent phenomena that I search to breathe into being. This demands a continually renewed attunement to the liveliness...

Alexandra Grimal - soprano saxophone

“Alexandra Grimal’s new record is an exploration of her inner improvised language in resonance with the very special acoustic of the castle of Chambord. Refuge was recorded in the double revolution staircase in the castle of Chambord in September 2020.”

Mary Halvorson-guitar
Chris Speed-sax
Eivind Opsvik-bass
Tomas Fujiwara-drums

“Halvorson is a highly inventive composer and improviser, playful, yet fierce when she needs to be, with a knack for oblique melodies and rhythmic hooks which her crack New York quartet knock in and out of orbit.
Reverse Blue's ten tracks feature some genuinely lovely tunes alongside some ingenious twists, with Halvorson wrapping her fingers around pretty Baroque figures, Moroccan modes, wiggy...

Ig Henneman – viola
Jaimie Branch – trumpet
Anne La Berge - flute

“
Three eccentric sketching women who succeeded in converting the concert hall into a spectacle with a drowned diesel engine on a race track, although it did not turn into a crazy fair. No, it was primarily an ode to the ingenious freedom, an intensely varied and colorful performance that was permeated by fun and games, but one of the kind that made your feelers and imagination run wild by its fresh originality, abrasive...

Tristan Honsinger-cello, voice
Antonio Borghini-double bass
Axel Dörner-trumpet
Tobias Delius-tenor sax, clarinet

“Tristan Honsinger, Axel Dörner, Tobias Delius and Antonio Borghini played their first concert as a quartet in the legendary Berlin venue “Miss Hecker” in 2010. The spontaneous meeting turned quickly into a working band named “Hook, Line & Sinker”. The combination of music, movement and theater, trademark of Honsinger’s work in the last 40 years, finds in this quartet a.

Hermione Johnson - solo prepared piano

“Auckland-based Hermione Johnson’s Tremble evokes the sound of a large Indonesian gamelan orchestra via the insertion of small chopstick-shaped rods at diverse angles, establishing different timbral zones, contraposed in imbricated, polyphonic textures. On “See My Permanent Face” she sets chime and gong tones against a cyclic pattern suggestive of a carillon of bells, later adding a fast moving harp sound and low muted strings. Many pieces employ like...

“Happy Jazz gathers the results of a studio gig in the fall of last year, but in usual Relative Pitch fashion additional details are few and ultimately secondary to the deliberate and distinctive nearly 80-minutes of music-making on offer.
The album title isn’t exactly an intuitive appellation describing the structured sounds the three players conjure together, but it does seem a fair summation of their shared mood from moment to moment in each other’s company. As with the scant annotative...

Tristan Kasten Krause - double bass
Jessica Pavone - viola

"New York City-based Pavone and Kasten Krause met by being placed together in the ensembles of other like-minded music experimentalists. It wasn't long before they realized their unique sonic preferences, aesthetics, and approaches to their instruments were similarly aligned and worth further investigation. Over the course of two seasons, they explored and experimented with sound worlds and structures, resulting in the four pieces tha

“Google is a useful tool in the topical unpacking of Uncompahgre, an improvised conclave between cornetist Kirk Knuffke and clarinetist Ben Goldberg that makes the absence of other instruments inconsequential and even preferred. The album title derives from the Ute phrase for ‘muddied water’ and references a plateaued peak in the San Juan Mountains that is also the most elevated section of the Colorado River drainage basin. Geography and language aside, the instrumentation also directly recalls earlier...

“Two of the most fascinating musicians of the free improvisation scene are Ingrid Laubrock on sax and Tom Rainey on drums, partners in life and partners in music. Their musical universe is something special, one of resonance and emphasis, of intimate immediacy and deep restraint, rather than effects and spectacular outbursts.
Or to put it differently, the rawness of the duo setting is softened by the lyricism and accuracy of the playing. Laubrock's tone is warm and round as usual, while Rainey's...

Ingrid Laubrock - soprano and tenor saxophones
Tom Rainey - drums

One of the great creative music duos of our present time!

“Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey played relentlessly during the pandemic. Laubrock and Rainey clearly have finely honed their improvising skills through touring and rehearsing together. This release is comprised primarily of composed pieces by Laubrock and Rainey.”

“Bass and flute represent significant tonal contrasts and here, flutist Jerome Bourdellon and world-renowned bassist, composer and improviser Joelle LEandre divulge innumerable perspectives and quite a bit of food for thought on these duets. However, Bourdellon employs bass clarinet and bass flute on two tracks, as no other instruments are nestled into the mid-sections of the program and the artists follow similar modalities to complement and support each other.
Each piece presents a different ...