The group‘s lustral, emotion-loaded music - and indeed, the savage volume level at which it is administered - rules out neutral fence-sitting. You‘re either for these musicians and the directions they represent, or against them, it seems to me. Indifference is not an option. Personally I still consider the group‘s emergence a sort of 7th-Cavalry-to-the-rescue scene in the final reel of The Story Of Free Jazz (an image often underlined by the call-to-arms of Shannon Jackson‘s snare drum and Brötzmann‘s charging horns.)

Peter Brötzmann; Mats Gustafsson; and Ken Vandermark are three of the leading voices in contemporary improvised music. Together they have formed SONORE; a reed trio organized to investigate the melodic; rhythmic; and textural possibilities of freely improvised music.

Recorded live in Cologne on February 2006. Peter Broetzmann; saxophones; Marino Pliakas; electric bass; Michael Wertmueller; drums. A record against the establishment: against the canon; against the idea that only certain sounds are permitted; against the CD as flat decor; against a self-satisfied lifestyle.

In May 2011 these three musicians played in the film theater in Peitz,where the Jazz workshop was launched in the early 1970s.After a break of almost three decades, free Jazz was back here. This CD appears in the year of Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky's ninetieth birthday.

Peter Ehwald writes: "It is our homage to the sound of the quintet in Jazz. Ultimately, it was about not focusing too much on pitch/rhythm/harmonies etc. but on our idea of what the sound of the Jazz quintet means to us. We wanted to translate a kind of nostalgia/meaning from an earlier time into our sound language and into the present."

By sharing their potent ideas, Ehwald and Schultze have produced something greater than the sum of its parts.

By thinking of the duo as one instrument and sometimes reversing the instruments' roles, our focus is to create our own amalgam of textures, resonances and electronic timbres by exploring and extending many new sound possibilities. Nowhere One Goes masterfully exposes the infinite sonic palette available from just keyboard and percussion. Like the other works of imagination referenced here, the CD also marks a defining statement from two cultivated and mature musical artists.

Charles Gayle, William Parker, and Hamid Drake three main designers of the New York scene, initiators of SoundVision festivals meet with her trio each other on a stage in Peitz.

If there is one figure in jazz who remains similarly inexplicable, it is Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker has contributed so much to the syntax and grammar of jazz that no contemporary jazz musician exists today who is not influenced in some way by Bird’s jargon, either directly, or in echoes. Of course, every language has to be able to change with the times, otherwise it could not describe the atmosphere, the reality of the present. This mutability and the will to change is what makes Charlie Parker's dialect so special.

In early March 2020, I performed my new set, short stories, at the church Kulturkirche Nikodemus in Berlin. The thing I didn’t realize that evening is that it would be my last solo performance before the world locked down. In my short stories, I revisit memories of inspiring trips and the kind of encounters that make us come alive – everything that is and will be so precious to us in these unusual times.

Common Ground plays music that pushes into new areas, preserving the commitment to expand feel, harmony and pulse. Matthias Akeo Nowak's new album ORIMUSIC features compositions of all four band members, inventing sound narratives with high intensity and a sovereign, calm fire.

Lee knew all the standards, but in his last 25 years he always played the same ones, drawing from a repertoire of about 25 pieces. We played together for the first time in Dortmund in 1986. Eventually Lee and I began playing more as a duo. The recording of our concert from the LOFT in Cologne, 1996, is documented on this CD. The LOFT was packed that night. Charlie Mariano was there and a lot of students and lecturers from the conservatory. They seemed to like what they heard.

Processes: Neural pathways that transmit and convey signals. The music on this record is characterized by the passing on of signals, messages that do not wait for a specific answer yet formulate any question we ponder. They are messages we were not looking for, but find we simply need after hearing them. This record is a skillful interweaving of playfulness and artistic expressiveness that does not hunger for acknowledgement — it asserts itself in the pure, abstract and simultaneously crystal clear form in which it appears. The structure of its compositions is an idea that is further developed and catalyzed with every creative impulse of the performing musicians. The musicians seem to act independently, yet in doing so only promote the core principle of musical unity all the more clearly. No note, no contribution seems random here. Instead, it is a collective conceptual development, a collaborative grappling with an idea that the musicians bring to a conclusion while playing, arriving at their own answer. The quintet plays Max Koch's original compositions, as well as a piece by Ornette Coleman. Musical openness is unwaveringly central, not restricting the collective artwork but enhancing it. The five musicians engage in the total commitment and concurrent abandonment of the individual to bring about a unity of sound, expression and sensibility. And in doing so, they have created a distillation of the powerful potential of each passing moment.

This exceptional trio connects virtuosity, humor and spontaneity. Through the use of exciting instruments and the application of free improvisation, an immense musicpicture is constructed. Fink’s diverse compositions seamlessly blend 70s sound and more abstract sonic palettes. Saxophone, cello, and drums work as natural complements creating a performance that is as unique as it is delightful.

Abîme, the new album from the Céline Voccia Trio, showcases the formidable talents of three of the finest musicians on the Free Jazz scene today. Pianist Voccia is joined by Jan Roder on bass and Michael Griener on drums, and together they create a remarkable sound world that integrates the spontaneity of Free Jazz with the structures of modern composition and the performance practices of the avant-garde. The interplay of the three musicians involved is of particular note. The music is not only technically complex but also deeply felt, thanks to the trio’s ability to compliment, subvert and reframe each other’s musical gestures at a moment’s notice. The result is a fascinating collection of music where first-rate technique is combined with a considerable richness of feeling— in turns, fierce, restrained, delicate, furious, playful and melancholy, with the trio’s keen sense of focus always to the fore.

Throughout the album it is easy to perceive that Voccia, Roder and Griener each have a strong appreciation of how unity and individualism within the group can be coordinated on both large and small scales. This instinctive understanding clearly functions as a source of continual inspiration for the performers, as they mould and sculpt their shared musical material, creating a captivating body of music that is constantly developing into surprising new forms. For the listener this culminates in an outstanding album of unique sonic intensity and emotional depth.

The CONTACT 4TETT plays experimental improvised music with elements of Jazz, Art Rock, Modern Chamber Music and Sound Art. The history of CONTACT 4TETT begins in 1970, when bassist Alois Kott, drummer Michael Jüllich and clarinetist Theo Jörgensmann formed the CONTACT TRIO. After initial small successes, the group played as a newcomer at the Frankfurt Jazz Festival and toured several times through southern Germany and Switzerland, but the band broke up after two years. Theo Jörgensmann was replaced by guitarist Evert Brettschneider, with whom the group had already worked in an extended line-up. This occupation was internationally successful.

At the beginning of 1980, Michael Jüllich left the CONTACT TRIO, which was also one of the first progressive, professional jazz groups in the Ruhr area and had released 3 LPs by then. With Peter Eisold on drums, the group played until 1984 and then disbanded. Since 2015 there has been a new edition of the band as CONTACT 4TETT, which includes the former soloists in the band Theo Jörgensmann, who now plays alto clarinet, and Evert Brettschneider. New members are Kai Kanthak, electric bass and Sascha Sauerborn, drums and electronics. The CD WUNDERTÜTE is the first by CONTACT 4TETT for the label jazzwerkstatt.