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ESPDISK 5084CD
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Joe Morris's recording career began in 1983 and has made him one of the most revered avant-garde jazz guitarists. Down Beat magazine dubbed him "the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation," while The Wire magazine called him "one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S." His revelatory 2012 book Perpetual Frontier/The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing) is a detailed and rewarding accounting of his approach to improvisation. He has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory of Music since 2000. This is his fifth album as guitarist on ESP-Disk': two as leader, two in Fay Victor's SoundNoiseFUNK, and now this unique duo. Elliott Sharp began recording in 1979 and has continued prolifically adding to his discography ever since, working fluently in genres ranging from blues and jazz to free improvisation and modern classical composition. A cornerstone of the downtown NYC music scene and collaborator with musicians from around the world, he has extended the vocabulary of the guitar in ways that led Guitar Player magazine to include him in its 30th anniversary issue's list of "The Dirty Thirty: Pioneers and Trailblazers." (He also plays saxophone.) His 2019 book IrRational Music (TerraNova Press) is a crucial document of his work that goes beyond biography into musical philosophy. Realism is his first album released on ESP. Recorded and mastered by Jim Clouse, Park West Studios, Brooklyn, NY on July 17, 2023. Mixed by Elliott Sharp and Jim Clouse at Park West Studios on August 1, 2023. Produced by Steve Holtje for ESP-Disk'.
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ESPDISK 5111LP
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$35.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 5/30/2025
Double LP version. Rose Tang has previously been heard on ESP-Disk in the band ATTITUDE!, whose album Pause & Effect came out in 2021 (ESPDISK 5048LP). She writes: "There was a school of philosophy in ancient China whose core theory stems from a debate entitled 'A White Horse Is Not a Horse.' In a book by Gongsun Long (公孫龍 320-250BC, about 200 years after Confucius) in the Warring States Period, two persons argue if a white horse is a horse: the protagonist argues it is not, because 'white' is the color of a (particular) horse while a 'horse' is a shape and a generic term. It's a linguistic/logical paradox, or sophistry. Ridiculed by his contemporary philosophers and forgotten for centuries, Gongsun is now considered the only philosopher in ancient China who delved into logic and philosophy of language. I was about 12 when my artist father first told me about the debate. He's painted many horses, especially white horses. Long before I discovered I'm a Mongol, I had always loved horses. Funny, my high school politics (Maoism/Marxism) teacher nicknamed me 'Wild Horse Running off the Reins.' That's how I see myself when playing music. Music offers instant and countless ways of freeing myself and connecting with people and the multiverse. It's all about following the qi, the energy, the flow. It's like cooking or making love, with senses and feelings all out in the open, without thinking. Improvising in a group is the most democratic activity. And all sounds are equal -- birds, traffic, construction, the ocean, kids -- all music to my ear. All instruments are my toys (some are indeed my daughter's toys). For every instrument I play, I feel the physical and spiritual connections with them. Ask not what your instrument can do for you, ask what you can do for your instrument. I look for the sounds that an instrument isn't 'supposed' to make. Music is the most abstract art form and the closest to the truth, yet it's the most institutionalized. My slogan is 'Learn through play. Play by ear. Fuck the rest!' So here it is, just some Weird Shit, music that is not music. A white horse is not a horse." All music improvised by Rose Tang and Patrick Golden. Recorded by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios, Brooklyn, on August 28, 2024.
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ESPDISK 5106CD
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This is the first to be released of a series of albums ESP started recording in 2023 combining artists who hadn't worked together before. In this case, saxophonist Larry Ochs teams up with the Flow Trio rhythm section of drummer Charles Downs and bassist Joe Morris. They meshed magnificently on their first encounter! Larry Ochs, co-founder in 1977 of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, was born in New York City but has long been based on the West Coast, specifically the Bay Area. He has also been a member of the Glenn Spearman Double Trio, Maybe Monday, the John Lindberg Ensemble, What We Live, The International Creative Music Orchestra, and Room, along with many other collaborations. ESP-Disk has previously released albums featuring Ochs by ROVA, Jones Jones, and his duo with Donald Robinson. Joe Morris, guitarist and bassist, studied with ESP-Disk legend Lowell Davidson. Morris formed his first trio in 1977 and began his recording career in 1983, with well over 50 albums as a leader and many more as a collaborator, including albums on ESP-Disk under his own name and with Flow Trio and Fay Victor's SoundNoiseFUNK -- and a guitar duo with Elliott Sharp. He's also the author of the crucial book Perpetual Frontier/The Properties of Free Music and on the New England Conservatory faculty. Charles Downs, the senior member of the trio, is also known to jazz aficionados as Rashid Bakr, the performing name he used while drumming in various Cecil Taylor groups and elsewhere. He's also been in groups including Ensemble Muntu, Other Dimensions in Music, Flow Trio, and What You May Call It, and has recorded with Billy Bang, Glenn Spearman, Jamie Saft, Ras Moshe Burnett, William Parker, Arthur Doyle, Sabir Mateen, Joe McPhee, and many more.
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ESPDISK 5095CD
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When Michael Bisio heard Korean pianist Eunhye Jeong's ESP-Disk 2021 album NOLDA, he expressed interest in working with her. After a successful and riveting duo concert in Kingston, NY showed what a good match they were, ESP was eager to document their musical affinity. One of the concert attendees was avant-jazz sax icon Joe McPhee, who guested with the duo at their subsequent studio session along with one of ESP's favorite drummers, Jay Rosen. Magical moments abounded, as you can hear on this album. Recorded March 8, 2023 at Park West Studios by Jim Clouse, who also mixed and mastered. Produced by Steve Holtje for ESP-Disk. Liner notes by Paul R. Harding. Cover art from "Shanghai Sunrise" by Dawn Bisio.
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ESPDISK 5089CD
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Formed 29 years ago (1996) by Nate Young, Wolf Eyes is currently a duo generally characterized as "noise," though they have called themselves "psycho jazz" (among other things). Extremely prolific, they have literally hundreds of releases and are a towering presence in underground music. Saxophonist Anthony Braxton was an early member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and has won a MacArthur and been named an NEA Jazz Master, though his work is hardly confined to jazz. He's also an extremely prolific recording artist, debuting on record in 1968. Braxton famously first heard Wolf Eyes at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville and immediately bought all the band's CDs that they were selling that night; a year later, they made their first album together, Black Vomit (also a concert recording). Their new untitled album (calling it Live At Pioneer Works, 26 October 2023 is merely a way of helping people distinguish it from their other collaborations and to give it a vintage) is the third Wolf Eyes/Braxton release. The LP has no track titles or even side designations. ESP has tried to keep that same spirit in the other formats.
"Both parties clearly understand what the other stands for and adapt their approaches accordingly. Braxton purists are in for a solid headache, of course, but something really clicked between these artists, and it was all in good fun. As far as Wolf Eyes' discography goes, this is also one of their best-recorded albums." --François Couture, All Music Guide, regarding Black Vomit
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ESPDISK 5089LP
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LP version. Formed 29 years ago (1996) by Nate Young, Wolf Eyes is currently a duo generally characterized as "noise," though they have called themselves "psycho jazz" (among other things). Extremely prolific, they have literally hundreds of releases and are a towering presence in underground music. Saxophonist Anthony Braxton was an early member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and has won a MacArthur and been named an NEA Jazz Master, though his work is hardly confined to jazz. He's also an extremely prolific recording artist, debuting on record in 1968. Braxton famously first heard Wolf Eyes at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville and immediately bought all the band's CDs that they were selling that night; a year later, they made their first album together, Black Vomit (also a concert recording). Their new untitled album (calling it Live At Pioneer Works, 26 October 2023 is merely a way of helping people distinguish it from their other collaborations and to give it a vintage) is the third Wolf Eyes/Braxton release. The LP has no track titles or even side designations. ESP has tried to keep that same spirit in the other formats.
"Both parties clearly understand what the other stands for and adapt their approaches accordingly. Braxton purists are in for a solid headache, of course, but something really clicked between these artists, and it was all in good fun. As far as Wolf Eyes' discography goes, this is also one of their best-recorded albums." --François Couture, All Music Guide, regarding Black Vomit
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ESPDISK 5102CD
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Memphis, Tennessee quintet Deepstaria Enigmatica doesn't sound like your father's free jazz. It's spacier; it's moodier; sometimes it sounds like ambient drank a lot of expressos and got down; sometimes it sounds like one of Miles Davis' mid-'70s electric bands ate shrooms and got freaky while Miles wasn't around; sometimes it sounds like a funky lounge band from the Antares system. Deepstaria Enigmatica is a quintet of improvisers from Memphis, Tennessee dedicated to creating otherworldly soundscapes. Named for a rarely seen, bell-shaped jellyfish discovered by Jacques Cousteau, the group's every note is inspired by that famous ocean explorer's sense of discovery. But don't assume the five veteran musicians create only chaos: they are as attuned to melodies and harmonies as they are to fine gradations of noise. What emerges with each extemporaneous performance can range from dark swirls of frenetic fury to interplanetary hard bop, to sunlit ambient dreamscapes punctuated with snatches of folk song. The diverse experience of the players sets the tone for their deep dives: David Collins is the composer and guitarist behind Frog Squad, a Memphis group who have blended jazz improvisation with visionary music as disparate as that of Horace Silver and Erik Satie; he's equally at home playing simple, unfettered guitar lines or rocking, effects-drenched rave ups. Chad Fowler played alto saxophone with both Frank Lowe and George Cartwright in the 1990s, and now teams up with the likes of William Parker, Kidd Jordan, Ivo Perelman, Zoh Amba, Matthew Shipp, or Brian Blade for music released on the Mahakala Music label. Keyboardist Alex Greene first studied musique concrète and computer synthesis with composer Judy Klein in the 1980s, before playing in a variety of Memphis groups ranging from Alex Chilton to Big Ass Truck to Reigning Sound, not to mention over twenty years of work with New York composer Dave Soldier. Now he improvises with multiple keyboards simultaneously, including a vintage Roland Juno-106. Since completing his jazz studies at the University of Memphis in 2016, drummer Jon Harrison has cast a wide stylistic net with the groups he's joined, which include the Southern Comfort Jazz Orchestra, Frog Squad, Hope Calyburn's Soul Scrimmage, Joe Austin, Roderick Duran, PXLS, and the Church Brothers. Bassist Khari Wynn, best known as the guitarist for hip-hop sensations Public Enemy, regularly tests more unorthodox waters with groups such as Energy Disciples, often under the name Mysterioso Africano. Together, these five musos cohere with a surprising unity of purpose, as their listening and playing gel into what often sound like prepared compositions. Sharing an uncanny telepathy, they transport listeners to new worlds of musical possibility.
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ESPDISK 5111CD
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Rose Tang has previously been heard on ESP-Disk in the band ATTITUDE!, whose album Pause & Effect came out in 2021 (ESPDISK 5048LP). She writes: "There was a school of philosophy in ancient China whose core theory stems from a debate entitled 'A White Horse Is Not a Horse.' In a book by Gongsun Long (公孫龍 320-250BC, about 200 years after Confucius) in the Warring States Period, two persons argue if a white horse is a horse: the protagonist argues it is not, because 'white' is the color of a (particular) horse while a 'horse' is a shape and a generic term. It's a linguistic/logical paradox, or sophistry. Ridiculed by his contemporary philosophers and forgotten for centuries, Gongsun is now considered the only philosopher in ancient China who delved into logic and philosophy of language. I was about 12 when my artist father first told me about the debate. He's painted many horses, especially white horses. Long before I discovered I'm a Mongol, I had always loved horses. Funny, my high school politics (Maoism/Marxism) teacher nicknamed me 'Wild Horse Running off the Reins.' That's how I see myself when playing music. Music offers instant and countless ways of freeing myself and connecting with people and the multiverse. It's all about following the qi, the energy, the flow. It's like cooking or making love, with senses and feelings all out in the open, without thinking. Improvising in a group is the most democratic activity. And all sounds are equal -- birds, traffic, construction, the ocean, kids -- all music to my ear. All instruments are my toys (some are indeed my daughter's toys). For every instrument I play, I feel the physical and spiritual connections with them. Ask not what your instrument can do for you, ask what you can do for your instrument. I look for the sounds that an instrument isn't 'supposed' to make. Music is the most abstract art form and the closest to the truth, yet it's the most institutionalized. My slogan is 'Learn through play. Play by ear. Fuck the rest!' So here it is, just some Weird Shit, music that is not music. A white horse is not a horse." All music improvised by Rose Tang and Patrick Golden. Recorded by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios, Brooklyn, on August 28, 2024.
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ESPDISK 5079CD
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From Howard Mandel's liner notes: "Reut Regev is a boundary-crossing composer-trombonist born in Israel, living and active in New York City and its metroplex since 1998, noted for four previous albums with drummer and coleader Igal Foni (her husband), three featuring the quartet R*time, the last two co-starring electric guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly, all loaded with spiky, funky, free-wheeling originals, performed with a bang. Meeting Hammond after a concert in Austria, Regev and Foni were delighted to discover the man whose oeuvre they had long admired was equally enamored of their sound and attitude. Correspondence led to It's Now: R*time Plays Doug Hammond, a unique collaboration setting the eminence's mature reflections on life, love, and music with the energy to render them timeless. Doug Hammond is a veteran American composer, drummer, percussionist, bandleader, singer-songwriter, essayist, and educator who is not nearly as well known in the U.S. as his music warrants. That may be largely because he's been based in Linz, Austria since 1989 as a professor at Bruckner University, making only periodic visits back to his native Detroit. Hammond's sixty-year career, begun with bluesman Earl Hooker and the R&B duo Sam & Dave, comprises more than a dozen albums under his own leadership starting with Reflections in the Sea of Nurnen from 1975, on which he played melodica and ARP synthesizer as well as drumming, crooning, and directing an octet. Independence, originality, fundamental tunefulness, and a spirit of inquiry characterize those Reflections as well as his subsequent releases, which include an anthology spotlighting hometown colleagues and first recordings of singer Angela Bofill (Doug Hammond Special), Steve Coleman's nascent M-Base (Spaces), through-compositions for flute, piano, and cello (Pictures and Hues), trios with trumpet and bass (May Be Blue and Singing Smiles), an ambitious, eponymous (Tentette), live solo 'griot' shows (Be You). He's had professional associations with Smokey Robinson, Sonny Rollins, and Charles Mingus (who recorded 'Moves,' heard here with lyrics, as an album title track), among others. Musicians abroad regard him as a beacon.
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ESPDISK 5100CD
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"Duck Baker should be a national treasure. He should be an international treasure. Should be? In my book he already is. I first came across his work in the 1970s on early Kicking Mule LPs in my local library in the UK, which was his temporary base then, and is his permanent home now. Many years later I was astounded by Spinning Song, his CD of Herbie Nichols compositions. Around the same time, I made contact with him by way of thanks following a review he wrote of my work on Stuff Smith and, later, other historic violinistic books and CDs. Duck's knowledge and learning about the ancestry of so many musical genres is prodigious, whether jazz, avant-garde, improvisation in general, various forms of country music, Irish, blues, ragtime, swing, you name it. He draws on so much to make his own unique playing and composing. And none of it is to go by the troublesome term 'appropriation;' Duck absorbs, pays tribute, and is himself, wherever his fingers might move across his flamenco guitar, including, of course, its wood body. This previously unreleased collection consists of fourteen solos and two duos with Eugene Chadbourne. The performances are drawn mostly from demo sessions or live recordings, and were recorded at various locations between 1976 and 1998. They run the gamut of moods and tempos, from the reflective 'Peace' and brooding 'Like Flies' to burners that rank with Baker's most animated free playing on record, like the title track, 'No Family Planning,' and 'Buffalo Fire.' The only so-to-speak standards are Thelonious Monk's 'Straight, No Chaser' and Billy Strayhorn's 'Take the 'A' Train,' the latter featuring fascinating and humorous interplay between the two guitarists?. Duck's catalogue is now vast, including a recent CD release of Thelonious Monk compositions, which beautifully complements the aforementioned Nichols CD. As well as solo efforts, past records include collaborations with the likes of Chadbourne, Roswell Rudd, John Zorn, and John Butchers or, at the other end of the spectrum, Stefan Grossman, John Renbourn, Leo Kottke, Molly Andrews, and Maggie Boyle. I, for one, never tire of listening to Duck playing in whatever context. He is a master and every recording is a gem." --Anthony Barnett
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ESPDISK 5088CD
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Performed live by Thollem McDonas at Sala Perriera, Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, Palermo, Sicilia, 13 May 2023. Recorded and mixed by Simone Sfamelli. Mastered by Sean Mac Erlaine at Studio Saile, Dublin. Design and artwork by ACVilla.
From the liner notes by Thollem McDonas: "My approach to the piano is unique, based on my lifelong relationship with the instrument. It is also universal, born out of the context of everything and everyone who came before and during. I have been influenced by my classical piano training, my pianist parents, growing up in the culturally diverse SF Bay Area, West Coast punk rock, Kuumbwa Jazz Club, The Cabrillo Music Festival, and my life of traveling and living without a homebase. This album expresses the culmination of my life's experiences in dialogue with the universe and my fellow human beings, including all the artists I've worked with over the years. Those collaborations have continuously helped stretch me into new shapes. An 'infinite-sum game' is the opposite of a 'zero-sum game' in that all of the participants benefit from each other, a symbiosis of sorts, biologically, culturally, financially, politically. It's the heightened state of mind of recognizing that our lives are better when others are also doing well and we put in the effort to facilitate this outcome. Since I was a child, the confluence between musics has been at the forefront of my curiosity. As a result, my music is genre-bending, code-switching, omni-idiomatic, and intersectional. Growing up, all of the composers I was studying were telling me to tell my own story. I was hyper-aware that 'Classical Music' was actually a constant revolution, and that this was the same for jazz and rock and roll too. The greatest way to honor the revolutionaries of the past is to respond to the dynamics of one's own time. I never set out to play a certain style of music, or to emulate anyone, but through my own particular explorational approach, sounds inevitably arise that conjure someone else's music, which is wide open for interpretation. Some of these comprovisations have been included on previous solo albums of mine. I see this recording as the ultimate, and final, document of these pieces. Thank you for listening!"
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ESPDISK 5096LP
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While their name may conjure images of avian origami, rolled cannabis, or cut-up 10th letters, Paper Jays are an instrumental music body from Rhode Island that became fully formed during the session for this eponymous release on ESP-disk. Previously, Jesse Cohen and Justin Hubbard's guitar duo (a trio, only if counting the unmanned feedback drone of a hollow-bodied Gibson) had been contentedly performing and apartment taping for a solid five years. But after witnessing drummer and percussionist Matt Crane back Linda Sharrock at the local House of Pizza, their vision for Paper Jays widened. The ensuing studio recording date with Crane yielded results that greatly pleased all three gentlemen, and a new Paper Jays began. When playing, Jesse and Justin bend, abstract, and honor world and domestic string traditions through their amplified guitars. Matt brings tight (and loose) syncopated rhythms with occasional freer excursions on his array of percussion instruments from varied folkloric sources. Overall, their output travels from intentional, pleasant figures merged with staggered but controlled phrasing to more extemporaneous, unsystematic, and liberated expressions.
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ESPDISK 5110CD
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Volume 2. One might think that an album titled Louis Armstrong's America is a tribute to the famed trumpeter, and certainly he's a focus here, but a normal tribute would feature compositions by him, or at least associated with him. Allen Lowe doesn't operate in the realm of the predictable, though; instead, the concept -- powered entirely by Lowe compositions -- takes in not just Armstrong's influence but also the evolution of jazz starting with influences (not all jazz) on Armstrong and continuing to the end of his five-decade career in 1971 -- which means that even Albert Ayler is touched on in this wide-ranging album (heck, even indie-rock icon Steve Albini is referenced). In his liner notes, Lowe quotes himself: "I think that Louis Armstrong may have been the first true post-modernist, picking and choosing between a hierarchy of personal and public musical sources and tastes, but without any concern for the way in which hierarchy acted on all of this in terms of class and even, ultimately, race (e.g.; think of Armstrong's reverence for opera and the way it effected his broad and classically expressive method of phrasing). So he fits all the definitions of post-modernism, even as a kind of anachronistic vessel for so much that was still to come not just in jazz but in all of American popular music, in particular but not only through the mediation of black life and aesthetics. Black song, vernacular and popular, is amazingly flexible it its ways and means of expression, lyrically, rhythmically, and sonically." Personnel includes Aaron Johnson, Frank Lacy, Ray Anderson, Lewis Porter, Ray Suhy, Will Goble, Rob Landis, Brian Simontacchi, Rob Landis, Loren Schoenberg, Ethan Kogan, Ursula Oppens, Nick Jozwiak, Colson Jimenez, Kresten Osgood, Matthew Shipp, James Paul Nadien, Jeppe Zeeberg, Marc Ribot, Huntley McSwain, and Andy Stein.
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ESPDISK 5109CD
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Volume 1. One might think that an album titled Louis Armstrong's America is a tribute to the famed trumpeter, and certainly he's a focus here, but a normal tribute would feature compositions by him, or at least associated with him. Allen Lowe doesn't operate in the realm of the predictable, though; instead, the concept -- powered entirely by Lowe compositions -- takes in not just Armstrong's influence but also the evolution of jazz starting with influences (not all jazz) on Armstrong and continuing to the end of his five-decade career in 1971 -- which means that even Albert Ayler is touched on in this wide-ranging album (heck, even indie-rock icon Steve Albini is referenced). In his liner notes, Lowe quotes himself: "I think that Louis Armstrong may have been the first true post-modernist, picking and choosing between a hierarchy of personal and public musical sources and tastes, but without any concern for the way in which hierarchy acted on all of this in terms of class and even, ultimately, race (e.g.; think of Armstrong's reverence for opera and the way it effected his broad and classically expressive method of phrasing). So he fits all the definitions of post-modernism, even as a kind of anachronistic vessel for so much that was still to come not just in jazz but in all of American popular music, in particular but not only through the mediation of black life and aesthetics. Black song, vernacular and popular, is amazingly flexible it its ways and means of expression, lyrically, rhythmically, and sonically." Personnel includes Aaron Johnson, Frank Lacy, Ray Anderson, Lewis Porter, Ray Suhy, Will Goble, Rob Landis, Brian Simontacchi, Rob Landis, Loren Schoenberg, Ethan Kogan, Ursula Oppens, Nick Jozwiak, Colson Jimenez, Kresten Osgood, Matthew Shipp, James Paul Nadien, Jeppe Zeeberg, Marc Ribot, Huntley McSwain, and Andy Stein.
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ESPDISK 5075CD
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Buck Curran says: "The foundation of this recording is the musical chemistry between Jodi Pedrali and myself. Jodi and I had been playing music together since 2017 and the band we assembled for this session, centered around the idea of having London native Dave Barbarossa play drums with us. Dave Barbarossa (Bow Wow Wow and Adam Ant) was my favorite drummer during my formative years playing guitar in high school. Dave and I first met over a pint in London (in Soho) in April of 2022. We talked about fatherhood and life, but mostly about music. It was wonderful to discover that he shared my love for the music of Pentangle. Soon after that meeting, we started discussing the idea of recording a Live session in the manner of some of the performances of Pentangle that we had watched on my cell phone in the pub. And so, once Dave agreed to fly to Bergamo to record with me and Jodi -- to round out the session we recruited the brilliant Italian singer Adele Pappalardo and bass player Robert Frassini Moneta. 'Black Is the Colour' is quite a different arrangement of this traditional Scottish-American folk song and features Adele singing lead vocals. The arrangement started with the bass line I wrote (influenced a bit by Danny Thompson's work with Pentangle). This track is one of the cornerstones of the new record and was recorded mostly improvised in one take. The essence of what we documented on this record is the energy of a quickly assembled group who had never played together before, and due to time restrictions, we arranged parts and rehearsed for only a few hours the day before entering the studio. All the songs performed by the band were recorded in the studio by Marco Fasolo as a 'Live' session (4, 5, and 6 July 2022) -- the tracks we used were from first or second take performances (Jodi and I really wanted to capture the energy of playing music together Live in the same space). I can hear things got a little loose in places, but overall we were really happy with how we all played together and grateful for recording the energy of that moment during those fleeting summer days in 2022." This is a co-release by Curran's Obsolete Recordings and ESP-Disk.
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ESPDISK 5099CD
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Frank London writes in his liner notes: "Spirit Stronger Than Blood pays homage to some of the recordings that shaped my musical-spiritual aesthetic: Charles Mingus's Changes 1&2, Booker Little's Strength and Sanity, Pharaoh Sanders's Peace and Love, Clifford Thornton's Gardens of Harlem, Alice Coltrane's Ptah, The El Daoud. Each of these artists, as different as they are from each other, shared a commonality of intention that set me on my life and career path. Their music is spiritual, political, romantic, at turns angry and peaceful, and inspires us to transcend and challenge the inequities of quotidian existence in order to make the world a better place, to heal the broken world (tikkun olam). Some of the songs are inspired by Jewish texts -- 'Let There Be Peace' from the prayer Oseh Shalom, asking the Almighty to bring us peace; 'Abundant Love' is in the Jewish prayer mode, Ahava Raba, acknowledging God's infinite love for all of us. 'Poem for a Blue Voice' is a poem by Davida Singer, whose partner Isabel Deconinck never let her blood cancer quash her indominable spirit. 'Resilience and Resistance' are attributes that we need to get through the trials, tribulations, and indignities life can throw at us. Healing of course from disease, but also from trauma, from blind obeisance to dogma. I was recently diagnosed with myelofibrosis, an extremely rare and fatal blood cancer, and dedicate this recording to my dear friends and colleagues who have passed away from blood diseases and other cancers -- Lester Bowie, Thomas Chapin, Adrienne Cooper, Isabelle Deconinck, Jewlia Eisenberg, Ron Miles, and my namesake, Frank London Brown. Check out all of their work and be inspired." --Frank London, April 2024
The Elders are: Frank London, trumpet; Marilyn Lerner, piano; Hilliard Greene, bass; Newman Taylor Baker, drums; Greg Wall, sax (tracks 2,3, and 4). Produced by Frank London. Recorded and mixed by Andy Taub at Brooklyn Recording in July, 2023. Cover photo by Anna London.
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ESPDISK 5071CD
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Creativity is theoretically infinite. Just as improvisors can play the same song every night and have it sound different every time, existing recordings can have their materials combined in different ways, re-mixed, re-ordered, re-everything'd. Some people prefer the comforting solidity of a single version, unchanging, but that is antithetical to the jazz spirit. The infinity of creativity is being explored in two upcoming projects by Thollem (McDonas). Worlds in a Life, Two is the second of two albums that Thollem created using samples from all of the six Thollem/Cline Trio albums as the primary sound sources (including double bass, piano, organ, electric guitar, drums, MIDI-accordion, and voice). The approach developed naturally out of the process of creating The Light Is Real with Nels and Terry Riley on Other Minds Records. In 2012 came Thollem and Nels' first trio collaboration was with William Parker. The following albums include the Radical Empathy Trio with Michael Wimberly, and with Pauline Oliveros (Roaratorio). Worlds in a Life, Two was recorded in real-time on a Wavestate, with no overdubs, in January and February 2024. This music is a celebration of the limitless palette of sounds and the infinite, known and unknown, revealing discoveries made through intensive explorations over two months. Personnel: Thollem (composer, Wavestate); Nels Cline (guitars); Pauline Oliveros (MIDI-accordion); William Parker (double bass); Terry Riley (vocals); Michael Wimberly (drums).
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ESPDISK 5085CD
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This group evolves in leaps and bounds. You've never heard a jazz piano trio sound like this album -- not even this band on its previous album, the much-praised World Construct. That said, there is a through line from the first Matthew Shipp Trio album, 1990's Circular Temple (ESPDISK 4082CD, 2023 reissue) to New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz. Says Shipp, "Yes, we went there with that type of title this time. To anyone who thought the trio had reached its apotheosis on World Construct, you are in for a surprise -- this is light years ahead of World Construct. Of course each CD is its own world and valuable for that, but I am in complete and utter shock at what I am listening to. New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz sounds completely thoroughly composed and yet completely spontaneously improvised at the same time. This is a major album in jazz history. Newman Taylor Baker is one of the most profound percussionists ever. Michael Bisio sounds like God's angel on this album. He has dedicated himself to working in my vision for years now and I think this might be the ultimate of how we can read each other and hook up. This is one of the greatest trio albums ever. While creating a whole new cosmos we manage to escape every cliché that exists in jazz and in avant jazz. This really might be the last trio CD because it really cannot get better than this."
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ESPDISK 5047CD
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Guillermo Gregorio has been exploring space and form and gesture in music for a very long time. In 1969, with composers Norberto Chavarri and Roque de Pedro, he cofounded the collective Movimiento Música Más, which for a while staged public interventions, performances, and happenings even as the political skies were darkening again. He finally left Argentina in 1985, living in Vienna, L.A., and Cologne through the end of that decade, before settling in Chicago for the next 25 years. Already in Vienna, he began his fertile relationship with the Hat Art label, which eventually put out half a dozen records under his name, plus other sessions playing the music of Anthony Braxton and Cornelius Cardew, as guest soloist with Ran Blake, and a piece he wrote commissioned by the Makrokosmos Quartet. The present record reflects a sort of pivot to his new home, New York, where Gregorio moved in 2015. For the trio that performed at Edgefest -- the festival's 22nd edition in 2018 focused on the Chicago connection -- he reached out to close associates from two decades earlier, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Carrie Biolo, neither of whom live there anymore either. That trio was the most productive and enduring group he ever played with, and their nuanced rapport, the fine weave of their sound, the mutual instincts, seem but a continuation without pause of their past work together. Chicago also proved highly receptive to the fruitful convergence of free jazz and twentieth-century European music that allowed him to flourish and become a recognized figure there in the nineties. Concurrently, by the time of the festival, Gregorio had been performing with Nicholas Jozwiak in different settings around Manhattan and Brooklyn, as they did at Downtown Music Gallery in 2020 just before the world locked down. DMG, Bruce Gallanter's friendly institution packed into a tiny space, has for decades seen fit not just to sell records but to host weekly concerts of improvised music and Gregorio has played there on many occasions since well before he left Chicago. On this late date, the trio was completed by one of his newest collaborators, Iván Barenboim, like Jozwiak a couple generations younger and like Gregorio a porteño (native of Buenos Aires).
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ESPDISK 4084CD
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Look at those players Alon Nechushtan brought together for this gig! The late, great Roy Campbell; reed masters Daniel Carter and Sabir Mateen; mayor of the NYC avant-jazz scene William Parker; versatile drummer Federico Ughi. Then listen: they all live up to their reputations. And then there's Nechushtan himself, born in Tel Aviv and long a thriving presence in New York as both composer and improviser. This concert happened at a time of considerable ferment on the NYC scene, with established virtuosi meeting the next generation -- often, as was the case this night, in Brooklyn and specifically Williamsburg venues, of which Zebulon was one of the greatest supporters of the improvisation scene documented so well in Cisco Bradley's recent book The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront.
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ESPDISK 5083CD
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ESP-Disk presents They Tried To Kill Me Yesterday. Frequently lyrical, sometimes hard-hitting, nostalgic for jazz and R&B, proud of African-American heroes, Paul r. Harding has been around, has seen and heard things he reflects on and refracts to us with vivid words. Based in upstate New York, he's joined by bassist Michael Bisio (Matthew Shipp Trio) and, on half the tracks, by percussionist Juma Sultan (who played with Jimi Hendrix).
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ESPDISK 4082LP
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LP version. It has become clear that Matthew Shipp is the most interesting and important jazz pianist of his generation, the most continually evolving and pushing forward. Now that he's in his sixties and something of an elder statesman of the art form, he's overdue for a retrospective look at his catalog, and to help make that happen, ESP-Disk' will be reissuing some of his great early work that's gone out of print. The 1990 trio recording Circular Temple (originally self-released on Quinton, then reissued in 1994 by Henry Rollins on his Infinite Zero label) is now reissued in 2023. Circular Temple has marked many firsts for Matthew Shipp: his first CD release, first piano trio album, first of many times on record with Parker and Dickey, first album to be reissued, and on ESP-Disk's reissue of it, first CD-only album to finally appear on vinyl and first album to be released by three different labels. And, more trivially, the first Shipp album that current ESP head/reissue producer Steve Holtje acquired, back when the only choices were that and a 1988 LP-only duo by Shipp and saxophonist Rob Brown on the Cadence label.
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ESPDISK 4082CD
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It has become clear that Matthew Shipp is the most interesting and important jazz pianist of his generation, the most continually evolving and pushing forward. Now that he's in his sixties and something of an elder statesman of the art form, he's overdue for a retrospective look at his catalog, and to help make that happen, ESP-Disk' will be reissuing some of his great early work that's gone out of print. The 1990 trio recording Circular Temple (originally self-released on Quinton, then reissued in 1994 by Henry Rollins on his Infinite Zero label) is now reissued in 2023. Circular Temple has marked many firsts for Matthew Shipp: his first CD release, first piano trio album, first of many times on record with Parker and Dickey, first album to be reissued, and on ESP-Disk's reissue of it, first CD-only album to finally appear on vinyl and first album to be released by three different labels. And, more trivially, the first Shipp album that current ESP head/reissue producer Steve Holtje acquired, back when the only choices were that and a 1988 LP-only duo by Shipp and saxophonist Rob Brown on the Cadence label.
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ESPDISK 5041CD
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There are some jazz musicians long known by cognoscenti for a mere handful of recordings: Dupree Bolton, Earl Anderza, Hasaan Ibn-Ali, Alan Shorter, Dewey Johnson. Add saxophonist Mark Reboul to that list. Before the release of this album, his discography consisted of four tracks on three albums on which he was a sideman. On Higher Primates' Environmental Impressions (GM, 1987), he plays sax on two of the percussion-heavy album's five tracks: a fragmentary track, and a sixteen-and-a-half-minute improvisation; he has a percussion cameo (playing waterphone) on Bill Gerhardt and Cotangent's Stained Glass (SteepleChase, 2007); and on Gaelen McKenna's self-released 2004 album Woodbach, a Reboul improvisation is manipulated and looped. ESP-Disk is a label with a history of albums by under-documented musicians (Byron Allen, Lowell Davidson, Marzette Watts, Nedley Elstak) and thus the perfect label to redress the situation. The other musicians in the trio heard here have been more prolific in the recording studio. Piket, daughter of a classical composer and a standards singer, got a degree from the New England Conservatory, studied with pianists Richie Beirach, Stanley Cowell, and Fred Hersch, and was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk BMI Composers Competition. She has a baker's dozen albums as a leader, a smattering of collaborative projects, and work as a sideperson stretching back to a 1995 Lionel Hampton album. Mintz is Piket's husband (they married well after this recording was made). Three years ago, she made a solo piano recording of an entire CD's worth of his compositions. He also has a fascinating bio: already a gigging musician at the age of fifteen, and in his twenties recorded with Lee Konitz Nonet, Perry Robinson, and Gloria Gaynor, among others; during a period living in Los Angeles, he worked with an equally eclectic range of musicians, from Vinny Golia to Mose Allison to the Merv Griffin Show band. The style is free improvisation, but a quieter and more subtle form of free jazz than ESP is famous for. Reboul is a unique player, and that's why ESP considers this an important release that adds to fans' knowledge of the NYC free scene.
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ESPDISK 5062CD
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The most well-informed aficionados of NYC's jazz avant-garde speak of pianist John Blum with reverential respect, yet his discography is shockingly small for someone with a three-decade career: five albums as a leader, four as a sideman. Blum studied piano with seminal avant-gardist Cecil Taylor and ambidextrous master Borah Bergman, and it shows, yet his style at its most intense is more thickly textured than even theirs, and fully individualistic. Blum's left hand recalls James P. Johnson: energy, power, rock-solid rhythm driver of the improvisation's engine. And speaking of engines, some of Jimmy Yancey's locomotive motion is there as well. Blum is actually a very melodic player, but the melodies are short and fast and may not be repeated more than once, so that's not the quality that the average listener might take away from the experience. Nonetheless, in a 20-minute solo improvisation, he creates enough catchy motivic material that a dozen or more songs could be woven from it. Another of Blum's teachers was Milford Graves; they share the sense of music as a journey to a higher understanding and a life-altering and life-enhancing practice. Blum looks more like an athlete than a musician, but then, the way he plays piano is athletic and requires a lot of muscle and stamina. The power of the concert performance on this album (performed collaboratively with video) is a revelation. "Explosive Pianism!" --Nate Chinen, New York Times
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