By Fotis Nikolakopoulos Organismic Theory is the Greek duo of Nicolas Skordas on various wind instruments and Selfish Limbs on analogue synth and fx. On this cd they approach jazz and free jazz, from another point of view. As especially Skordas is mostly know for free playing and being an acolyte of free jazz, A Space from Spaces seems quite different –especially for the small Greek scene. On the four tracks of the cd, all mentioning the word space on their title but concerning a different (social, personal, public, intimate) field of what we call space in this age of social media, the liste ..read more

  Photo by Cristina Marx/Photomusix What is your greatest joy in improvised music? To play the clarinet What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with? Swing. Which historical musician/composer do you admire the most? Charlie Parker. If you could resurrect a musician to perform with, who would it be? Eric Dolphy. What would you still like to achieve musically in your life? To play like Benny Goodman. Are you interested in popular music and - if yes - what music/artist do you particularly like? I don't like pop-music at all. If you could change one ..read more

By David Cristol From March 28 to 30, the 2024 edition of (Ne)poslušno / Sound (Dis)Obedience took place in Ljubljana, in the Španski borci cultural center housing different rooms for rehearsals and performances, a bar, terrace and records stand, in the center of Slovenia’s capital. Programmed by musician Tomaž Grom – who also operated as a good-humored and entertaining MC throughout – the festival is produced by the Zavod Sploh organization, dedicated to sound performance and associated research, education and publishing (through a record label) of acts that fit under the “free improvis ..read more

By Sammy Stein Songs Of The Fathers is a recording by Phil Raskin and Frank Doblekar, the duo at the core of the Satya collaboration, here enhanced by Synthesist Malcolm Cecil and Paul Anthony who created the orchestral feel the duo wanted. It should be mentioned there is a caveat here. I was asked to write the liner notes for this album and readily agreed. The recording is a mindful tribute to Abdullah Ibrahim, one of music’s great masters. Each track is a first-take recording apart from one, which felt right for Raskin, who was keen to impart a sense of an ‘of the moment’ atmosphere to ..read more

By Nick Ostrum Damascene Vancouverite Emad Armoush has been at it for almost 25 years, now, bringing Arabic and Iberian oud, ney, guitar and vocal traditions to ears across the globe. When I say “tradition,” however, I do not mean conventional or faithful to some decontextualized, staid practice. Rather, Armoush first came to my ears in Gordan Grdina’s Haram ensemble (reviewed here and here ). The tradition is there, but in new contexts and new forms and necessarily with new meanings. Hence, the title Electritradition, a portmanteau that joins the new and old, the faithful and the divergent ..read more

By Martin Schray Free jazz trios consisting of saxophone, bass and drums have a hard time these days, because - let’s be honest - the paths on which they travel are largely explored: whether it’s classic free jazz like that of Alberts Ayler’s legendary Spiritual Unity Trio, which revolutionized the genre for this line-up, the finely chiseled playing of the Evan Parker Trio, David S. Ware’s trio with William Parker and Warren Smith, which combines tradition with modernity, Peter Brötzmann’s various projects, most of which used an iconoclastic philosophy and influenced newer trios such as The T ..read more

By Don Phipps Complexity is at times its own virtue. And the music on Chad Fowler’s Birdsong certainly is complex. Take its instrumentation – Fowler on sax and bass flute, Shanyse Strickland on French horn, flute and vocals, Sana Nagano on violin, Melanie Dyer on viola – and a standard rhythm section (Ken Filiano on bass and Aders Griffen on drums). French horn is most certainly rare in jazz and combined with the violin and viola lines, the result is a modern but uneasy interweaving of soulful bluesy jazz with abstract modern music. Experimentation is a hallmark of modern free jazz. A wi ..read more

© Beat Streuli, Zürich 2013 What is your greatest joy in improvised music? The greatest joy is that you can move freely musically - without taboos and restrictions that could come from outside. The freedom also becomes greater and greater - it grows with experience. What quality do you most admire in the musicians you perform with? That's her ability, her musicality - her flexibility but also her humanity...we have to understand each other - I don't mean that we think the same or something - but a basic trust has to be there for me...I have to be an accomplice in certain moments ..read more

By Don Phipps A Japanese Zen rock garden is majestic in its own right. The stones, manicured and ordered yet free and flowing, seem to reflect a cosmic calendar where infinite time can be experienced within the confines of bounded space. In the 60s, New York born Paul Horn, a jazz flutist noted for his contribution to the “cool jazz” movement (a movement ushered in by Miles Davis and his album “Birth of the Cool” and which reached its musical apex with the classic and much-beloved Davis album “Kind of Blue”), began to explore transcendental meditation. He was joined in these explorations by t ..read more

By Gary Chapin I feel shallow sometimes about how strongly I react to the timbre of things. Like, forget the ideas or the improvisation or the composition, sometimes just the sound gets me. The first notes on No Tamales on Wednesday are from Craig Taborn’s electric piano and those sounds brought a smile to my face and wave of associations. “Oh, yeah,” I thought, “We’re going to get some of that!” No Tamales on Wednesday is an archival concert recording coming from one of my absolute favorite periods of Berne’s work. Science Friction features Berne, Tom Rainey on drums, Marc Ducret on guitar ..read more