Joe McPhee, brass and reeds
"In his upstate NY secret laboratory, home-based in Poughkeepsie, Joe McPhee diligently documented his activities throughout the '70s, with the help of Craig Johnson, the producer who started CjR as an outlet for McPhee's music. Among the unreleased tapes waxed in that span, Alone Together is unique and especially beautiful. Like Sound on Sound (released by Corbett vs. Dempsey in 2010), these recordings make use of multitrack recording, overdubbing McPhee upon McPhee...

“Who was that masked man? This question is on many lips having seen and heard the Defiant Jazz episode of the hit TV show Severance, the one in which the show's protagonists are allowed a company dance party, accompanied by a light show and increasingly wild, funky, saxophone-driven music. The masked man? None other than Joe McPhee, Poughkeepsie, New York's best kept secret, one of the great figures of contemporary improvised music. A living legend looming large, you might say. And now a presence in...

“Joe McPhee is one of the great multi-instrumentalists of contemporary improvised music. His instrumental battery has included saxophones, clarinets, valve trombone, pocket trumpet, sound-on-sound tape recorder, and space organ, but another arrow in his quiver is text.
McPhee has been writing poems since the 1970s. He occasionally introduces one into performance, as an introduction or afterword to music, and in recent years he's been known to do full-on readings, text only, featuring his inimitable...

“Joe McPhee's response to the challenge of making a new CD of solo music during COVID was to go at it head on, to address the present in its starkest aspects, to reach for comfort in the music of great composers, and to speak directly to the virus in no uncertain terms. The result is unlike any other of McPhee's many records, a variety show of improvisations, favorite compositions, field recording, multi-tracking, incantation and recitation. After searching for the right studio-like setting with an...

Joe McPhee on tenor and soprano saxophone
Recorded live by Claude Robert October 11, 1977 at Salle Ste Croix des Pelletiers in Rouen, France.

"Variations on a Blue Line/'Round Midnight was recorded in October, 1977, during a highly significant period in Poughkeespie, NY, multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee's work, as he was pioneering the transatlantic, collaborative spirit that has helped to define the last three decades of his career. Blue Line comes from a concert in Rouen, France, when McPhee...

“Two masters of wind instruments blowing in from the Windy City. In 2003, as part of the seventh annual Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music, Joe McPhee and Evan Parker squared off for a round of intimate dialogues. The resulting recording is just the second time they had played as a duet, the previous also being in Chicago, at a studio in 1998, where the limited their instrumentarium to tenor saxophones, resulting in the Okka Disc classic Chicago Tenor Duets (2002).
In this case, they...

“It's easy to be cynical these days, maybe difficult to imagine that music can change the world, but not for Joe McPhee and Hamid Drake. With Keep Going, they will make the planet a better place for humanity, a place to be humane, to preserve humankind. At 78-years-old, Poughkeepsie multi-instrumentalist McPhee is a national treasure, and he's making more music than ever before, pushing himself to tour incessantly, issuing astonishing new records at a fierce rate. But this release, with legendary Chicago...

“In the year that Juneteenth was finally declared a national US holiday, 2021, Joe McPhee and Tomeka Reid united for a live concert in celebration. Multi-instrumentalist McPhee was deeply moved by the historical nature of the circumstances, the incredible freight of that history of oppression and liberation represented in the legislation, both the insanity of its overdue-ness and the joy of its institutionalization. As a preamble to the music, McPhee led off with two poems, read with trembling, vehement...

Thurston Moore, guitar
Frank Rosaly, drums, percussion

"Guitar hero Thurston Moore and improvising drummer Frank Rosaly met for a first encounter in 2012 at the Neon Marshmallow Festival, at the Burlington in Rosaly's hometown, Chicago. The results were monumental. The slow build of Moore's gigantosaur sound and Rosaly's clamorousness and gradually escalating propulsion made for an idea match over the course of an electrifying 35-minute piece, the thunderous conclusion of which left no ear...

Larry Stabbins : soprano and tenor saxophone
Manfred Schoof : trumpet and flugelhorn
Pat Thomas : piano and electronics)
Sirone : bass
Tony Oxley : percussion and electronics

“British percussionist Tony Oxley returned to his piece "Angular Apron" multiple times after debuting it in the early 1970s. Drawing equally on his interest in contemporary composed music by folks like Xenakis and Ligeti and on his long tenure as one of the central figures in European improvised music, Oxle

Tristan Honsinger, cello, voice
Jean Jacques Avenel, bass
Tiziana Simona Vigni, voice
Sean Bergin, saxophone
Michael Vatcher, percussion
Toshinori Kondo, trumpet

"A little-known gem of Dutch free music, Picnic is the brainchild of cellist Tristan Honsinger, who composed all but one of its 12 compositions. Brilliant and whimsical, the tracks bring to mind Honsinger's work with ICP Orchestra, for whom he has also composed extensively. Here he's working in an incredible ensemb

Tenor Saxophone – Frits Krogh
Piano – Tom Prehn
Bass – Poul Ehlers
Drums – Finn Slumstrup
Recorded in Copenhagen, October 13th, 1963

"Arguably the rarest LP of European free jazz, Axiom was recorded in 1963 for the Swedish label Sonet. Test pressings were released to the musicians, but they were not approved and the label never printed more than the two first copies. Prehn's music, which is exclusively known from a 1967 release that was reissued on the Unheard Music Series, is n

Dudu Pukwana - alto saxophone, whistle
Misha Mengelberg – piano
Han Bennink - drums, clarinet, viola, trombone

“A reissue of Dudu Pukwana, Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg's Yi Yole, originally released in 1979. Recorded at the ICP Jubileum, a festival in Uithoorn, Holland, in 1978, Yi Yole brings together the core of the Instant Composers Pool -- pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink -- with legendary South African alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana.
Longtime member of the.

Hans Reichel was a brilliant (difficult, but brilliant) guitarist and instrument-maker. Starting in the 70s, he released a number of truly amazing solo albums, most of them on the FMP label.
Using regular and self-made instruments, his music truly sounds like no one else's. This is his second and is the 1st time it has appeared on CD! Conditionally hugely recommended!

"Second LP in the catalog of German guitarist and instrument inventor Hans Reichel (1949-2011), a program of microtonal...

“Repertoire for cello represents a little-explored niche of the greater jazz songbook. In 2013, cellists Tomeka Reid and Fred Lonberg-Holm turned their arranger-ly and composer-ly attention to this terrain, assembling a selection of four originals (three by Lonberg-Holm, one by Reid) and four works by other composers.
The latter include "Pluck It" by pioneering jazz cellist Fred Katz, member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet and soundtrack composer for Roger Corman films; "In Walked Ray" by intrepid..

“Artist and musician Rosa Barba paired up with drummer Chad Taylor for their first duo record, In a Perpetual Now of Instantaneous Visibility. Documenting a September 2019 performance and installation at New York's Park Avenue Armory, part of an invitation by pianist Jason Moran, the CD's two mesmerizing tracks clock in at over 30-minutes each. Patiently built as collaborative soundscapes, they feature Barba's unorthodox conjoining of cello and film projector in which she uses the celluloid as an...

Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet, flugelhorn, flute, steelophone, percussion, gongs

"On the occasion of improvisor and composer Wadada Leo Smith's exhibition Ankhrasmation: The Language Scores, 1967-2015 at Chicago's Renaissance Society, Corbett vs. Dempsey is pleased to present Red Chrysanthemums, a previously unreleased live recording of solo performances by Smith, documented in Los Angeles in December, 1977. Three adventurous, spacious tracks feature Smith's unique and innovative trumpet, as well as..

Byard Lancaster - flute, alto saxophone
Khan Jamal – vibraphone
Monnette Sudler – guitar
Billy Mills - bass; Dwight James – drums
Rashid Salime – congos
Omar Hill – percussion
vocalists on "New Horizon/Backstreets of Heaven" are unidentified.
Recorded at Columbia University, NYC, in 1973.

“Hailing from the Germantown section of Philadelphia, well known as the site of the Sun Ra Arkestra communal homestead, Sounds of Liberation were at the forefront of '70s Black

Recorded March 10, 1963, Choreographer's Workshop, New York City.

"A special 2-CD reissue of the hyper-rare El Saturn LP, recorded in 1963, early in the Arkestra's NY period, paired with a full disc of extra material. Loaded with John Gilmore, one of the greatest & rarest slabs of Sun Ra vinyl, on disc for the first time!"

Michael Wadada - esraj, sitar
Style Scott - drums
Lizard Logan - bass
Kalu Zeria - table
Aziz Zeria - harmonium
Big Red - violin
Bubblers - piano
Mothmen - cuica, percussion
Maria Aiawa - vocals
Mark Stone - flamenco guitar
I. Green - bassoon
Tony Sullivan - banjo
Moot Beret - Chinese shawm

"A reissue of Suns Of Arqa's Revenge Of The Mozabites, originally released on Rocksteady Records in 1980. One of the key ensembles in the history of wh

“First-ever reissue. 11th Street Fire Suite is a post-BAG (Black Artists Group) classic. An emotionally ranging set of blues-drenched duets by alto saxophonist Luther Thomas and flutist Luther C. Petty, it's one of the great documents of the St. Louis creative music diaspora, a wild ride through turbulent and beautiful terrain on a slab of vinyl that's as rare as hen's teeth in its original form.
Relocated from their midwestern hometown to New York City, Thomas and Petty entered the studio in 1978....

“With his riveting performance in the inaugural Sequesterfest online festival in April 2020, Ken Vandermark inspired the Black Cross Solo Sessions. Already in the early days of lockdown, making good on the promise -- or threat -- of protracted off-road time, Vandermark had dedicated himself to the creation of a new book of works for solo reed instruments, which he debuted that day. The result of this watershed moment for the Chicago-based improvisor and composer was a body of works that reassert his...

"Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Chicago saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark have worked together extensively since the mid 1990s, in groups of their own and as members of the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet. Oddly, they had never performed duo before March 2013, when they squared off at Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery. The result was a delirious journey through extended techniques, intimate improvisation, and full-throttle flame-throwing, with an emphasis on the more delicate, sensitiv

Günter Christmann - cello, trombone
Alexander Frangenheim, double bass
Mats Gustafsson - soprano saxophone
Thomas Lehn, live-electronics
Paul Lovens – percussion

“Since its first iteration in 1979, Vario has appeared in some fifty different versions, with a great variety of musicians, also actors, dancers, and filmmakers. It's the brainchild of Günter Christmann, a powerhouse of improvised music in Germany whose influence is out of scale with his acclaim. Since his emergence on.

“Since 2015, Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio has been the host of Option, a series of intimate concerts of improvised music. Featuring an uncommonly wide range of players representing virtually all haunts of free music, the series has fostered not only an important exchange of ideas in musical form, but it has also promoted literal conversation about the music, usually substituting a dialogue with the musician or musicians for the requisite second set.
In 2018, the series was funded by...