The new double-album from master bassist-composer-improviser-bandleader William Parker, recorded live with one of his core flagship groups & presenting all-new compositions including the five-part suite "Eternal Is The Voice Of Love", along with a new iteration of the band's elemental theme. Featuring pianist Cooper-Moore, alto saxophonist Rob Brown and drummer Hamid Drake, In Order To Survive is one of the great jazz groups of the past quarter century. Launched in 1993, In Order To Survive was Parker's first dedicated small group. It has always featured Cooper-Moore & Rob Brown, together with a series of drummers (including Denis Charles & Susie Ibarra) and occasional additional brass/reeds. A top live draw in New York during that heady decade, their initial phase culminated on record with the double-album, The Peach Orchard, an era-defining work released in 1998. The dawn of this century saw the launch of a new William Parker Quartet, featuring Brown, trumpeter Lewis Barnes & drummer Hamid Drake. The impeccable albums O'Neal's Porch, Sound Unity, Corn Meal Dance and Petit Oiseau were all created during that first decade.

Bassist Kim Cass is among a vanguard group of Brooklyn-based improvisors who are creating works at the leading-edge of rhythmic acuity. Levs, his debut with Pi Recordings, features pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, who called Cass "a singular composer and player: the man can do things that doesn't seem possible on the bass, displaying a technical command of the instrument on the level of the most celebrated virtuosic performers in any genre of music." The compositions on Levs are deeply idiosyncratic, built on stilts of complex, polyrhythmic structures over a sea of harmonic murkiness. Cass plays with a precision - often combining with the piano as a unified voice - that seems beyond the instrument's technical limitations. Sorey's structured improvisations on the drums alternately reinforces and disrupts. It might project a fa�ade of free improvisation, but exists as the direct result of intense, energetic coordination. Levs is volatile yet dreamlike, and imbued with a sense of ominous mystery.

SYNOVIAL JOINTS

LUMINESCENCE

SOUNDDANCE

FIREFLY

LE BEBE DE BRIGITTE (LOST IN TRANSLATION)

Unknown Rivers is bassist Luke Stewart's debut for Pi Recordings. An omnipresent and galvanizing force on the music scene, Stewart is a leader or co-leader of such bands as Irreversible Entanglements, Exposure Quintet, Blacks' Myths, Heart of the Ghost, and Remembrance Quintet. He is also among the most in-demand collaborators, having performed with the likes of David Murray, Nicole Mitchell, Moor Mother, Jaimie Branch, Nate Wooley, Ken Vandermark and countless others. Stewart is also a curator and presenter of multiple concert series in New York and Washington, D.C., a writer, activist, producer and D.J. Featuring his long-running Silt Trio, with Brian Settles on tenor sax, and drummers Trae Crudup on four studio tracks and Chad Taylor on three live ones, Unknown Rivers sees the band pushing towards greater emphasis on rhythmic acuity, highlighting the different approaches to the music of the two drummers. Settles - a stalwart of the fertile Washington DC jazz scene - plays with a quiet intensity, possessing a sound that reminds of players from a distant past set against a modernist's vocabulary. Stewart is the master of a deep, wide groove that cushions and propels, making every musical situation he finds himself in sound good. The Quietus has called the band "gripping... relies on subtlety and insinuation to register it's uncanny power." The Silt Trio is that magical juxtaposition of playing with raw spontaneity while maintaining the music's intent and purpose.

2018 release. 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, and odd-angled swing that is Threadgill's hallmark, the work is rich with intricate detail and grand gestures.

Old Locks and Irregular Verbs (CD) Henry Threadgill - With his recent Pulitzer prize for composition still hot in his pocket, Threadgill comes up with another album with his compositions, a tribute to his longtime friend and colleague, musical pioneer Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris. Threadgill doesn't play a note here, but his presence is felt in the way that Ensemble Double Up, a band with two pianos (Jason Moran and David Virelles), two alto saxophones (Roman Filliu and Curtis McDonald), cello (Christopher Hoffman), tuba 8Jose Davila), and drums (Craig Weinrib), coalesces and comes apart. Despite the fact it doesn't contain a single note of his own searing saxophone playing, Old Locks and Irregular Verbs remains pure Threadgill and a highlight in career stocked with more than a few classics.

Roscoe Mitchell Orchestra performs two masterpieces for the Fault Zone Festival April 21 2022. Distant Radio Transmission Fault Zone and Sustain and Run II features Roscoe on Alto Sax, James Fei on Synth, vocalist Thomas Buckner and a stellar thirty piece orchestra.. Also from the festival is Cards in 3D colors a duet written by Mr Mitchell for Piano and Violin and two Pieces from Space Trio

FOR THOSE WHO ARE STILL

INNER SPECTRUM OF VARIABLES

POUTING GRIMACE

Having left an indelible mark on numerous classic albums by David S. Ware and Matthew Shipp, drummer Whit Dickey has produced a substantial body of his own work in the ensuing years. These sessions have often brought out the best from all involved, and that is certainly the case here. Between these musicians is a luminous web of deeply affecting work - now spanning decades - and these are the brand new recordings. Dickey chose Tao Quartets as the name for these distinct yet interrelated groups as the Tao wholly incorporates an understanding of Yin Yang, and that same understanding is here to be heard. Representing the Yin is Peace Planet, a fluid, supple and dynamic flow of instantly composed wonder; each of the pieces presents as a mini-suite, with astonishing cohesiveness. Gentle lyricism and rhythmic/melodic invention abound. Also of note is "Suite for DSW"- a paean to Dickey/Shipp/Parker's former bandleader, David S. Ware, whose profound & enduring inspiration is powerfully felt by all. Box of Light brings the Yang herein, with fiery energy and crackling interplay to the fore. The inspiration of Dickey's early studies with Milford Graves are clear here, as is the precedent set by such as the New York Art Quartet (feat. Graves/Tchicai/Rudd). It is likewise clear that the idea of total sensitivity, to each and from each musician toward the evolution of the music, is also to the fore. It is AUM's great pleasure to present these very first works of Dickey's recent & powerful creative re-birth.

RAINING ON THE MOON / GREAT SPIRIT

LOVE & GHOSTS

MISE EN ABIME

MOVING STILL

ALTITUDE

BETWEEN WHILE

HANNIGAN SINGS ZORN VOLUME ONE

The Balance presents an outstanding David S. Ware concert, in trio with William Parker and Warren Smith. A tenor sax / bass / drums excursion of full-on intensity, this is a suite of spontaneous form created at NYC's Vision Festival in 2010. Ware had been a perennial at the vital annual gathering since it's beginning; this was his first time back since his revered Quartet bid farewell there in 2006, and a wholly exhilarating return. This particular Trio convened only three times over their 10 month existence: the Dec. 2009 studio session for Onecept, the June concert here, and the Oct. 2010 album release celebration at the Blue Note in NYC, documented on Live In New York, 2010. Also included are four out-takes from the Onecept session - all of which had been completed & considered for inclusion at that time. This new release, together with the two aforementioned, present the complete works which this group created. Packaged in a limited edition deluxe 6-panel digipak, with liner notes by Ware's long-time producer, photographs from the concert, and the vivid witness painting on the cover, which was made during this performance.

PLANETARY UNKNOWN

ONECEPT