Horace Tapscott
Horace Elva Tapscott (1934 - 1999) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He was something of a moral leader for California's free-jazz community. In 1959 he established the multimedia Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, with the aim of preserving, developing and performing African-American music. As his vision grew, this became just one part of a larger organization in 1963, the Underground Musicians Association and led the ensemble through the 1990s.
Horace Elva Tapscott (1934 - 1999) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He was something of a moral leader for California's free-jazz community. In 1959 he established the multimedia Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, with the aim of preserving, developing and performing African-American music. As his vision grew, this became just one part of a larger organization in 1963, the Underground Musicians Association and led the ensemble through the 1990s.
Flight 17
** 2022 Repress ** Outernational Sounds presents a cornerstone document from the Los Angeles jazz underground, Flight 17 -- the first appearance on record of the legendary Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, led by their founder and mastermind, Horace Tapscott.
Available on vinyl for the first time in 40 years. The Arkestra would allow the creativity in the community to come together, would allow people to recognize each other as one people. Horace Tapscott's Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (P.A.P.A.) wa…
The Call
** 20220 ** Available on vinyl for the first time in 40 years, Outernational Sounds is proud to present a masterpiece from the Los Angeles jazz underground – Horace Tapscott’s burning, spiritualised 1978 set, The Call. One of the unsung giants of jazz music, the composer, bandleader, arranger, pianist and community activist Horace Tapscott was the undisputed keystone in the grassroots Los Angeles jazz scene. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his radical community arts and music formations the UGMA…
Tapscott and Winds / Sharps and Flats (2LP in bundle)
Super Tip! This bundle includes the newest Nimbus West archival releases by Horace Tapscott and Jesse Sharps:Horace Tapscott "Tapscott and Winds" (1983, LP)Jesse Sharps "Sharps and Flats" (1986, LP)Horace Tapscott "Tapscott and Winds" (1983, LP)Originally recorded in 1983. A never before released Studio album featuring Horace Tapscott with flautist Aubrey Hart and saxophonist Kafi Roberts. Direct From the 1/4” Master Tapes (All Analog Cut), Tip-On Sleeve Insert with Liner Notes by Mark Weber.Jes…
Tapscott and Winds (LP)
Super Tip! * Originally recorded in 1983. A never before released Studio album featuring Horace Tapscott with flautist Aubrey Hart and saxophonist Kafi Roberts. Direct From the 1/4” Master Tapes (All Analog Cut), Tip-On Sleeve Insert with Liner Notes by Mark Weber *
Live at Lobero Vol 2
This is a reissue of a now out-of-print album from live trio date by the legendary LA-based pianist, composer and multi-bandleader, Horace Tapscott. Pianist Horace Tapscott is always at his best when he is leading a trio. Born in 1934 in Houston, Texas, Horace came from a musical family centered around his mother, Mary Malone Tapscott, who worked professionally as a singer and pianist. When Horace was nine, the family moved to Los Angeles. As a teenager in the late 1940's, Horace was surrounded …
Live at Century City Playhouse 9/9/79
Finally available after long pressing delays, comes a never before issued recording of Horace Tapscott leading his legendary Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, "Live at Century City Playhouse 9/9/79", documenting the entirety of a 2 hours performance that sprawls across glorious 3 LPs. Easily one of the most beautiful, striking, and historically important records of the year, it’s a joyous explosion of sound, seeded by social, political, and community-based action, at the juncture of spiritual and fr…
Dial ‘B’ For Barbra
The best of pianist Horace Tapscott's recordings for the tiny Nimbus label is this 1981 LP which features him in a sextet with trumpeter Reggie Bullen, altoist Gary Bias, tenor saxophonist Sabir Matteen, bassist Roberto Miranda and drummer Everett Brown, Jr. The group stretches out on a couple of Tapscott's originals plus a 19½-minute version of Linda Hill's "Dem Folks." Although the music could be called avant-garde, its use of rhythms and repetition keep the results from being forbidding and t…
Live at Bing Theatre - Los Angeles, 1985
CD Version. The only time that Bradford, Carter, Newton and Horace Tapscott have all played on stage together, along with Robert Miranda! Roberto Miranda's Home Music Ensemble Live at Bing Theatre: Los Angeles, 1985, personnel: Roberto Miranda (bass, congas), Bobby Bradford (cornet, tpt), John Carter (cl), James Newton (fl), Horace Tapscott (p), Thom D. Mason (a and t sax, b cl.), Louis R. Miranda Sr. (voc, perc), Louis R. Miranda, Jr. (drs), David Bottenbley (guitar, elec bass, perc, voc), Elia…
I Want Some Water
**Edition of 500** Born in Mississippi in 1937 and beginning to play the saxophone at 14, Billie Harris relocated to Los Angeles in 1965 after a 4 year stint in the Air Force, becoming one of the great, unsung forces of underground jazz in the city for many years (he later relocated to the Mojave Desert, where, at last record, he still plays in a church band). A Venice Beach street musician and longtime member of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra - you can hear him playing on Live at I.U.C.C. and…
At The Crossroads
**Original, still sealed copies of this rare album! Few available** Likely one of the most underrated Nimbus albums. Horace Tapscott & Everett Brown Jr.'s piano and drums avant-guard jazz outing 'At The Crossroads'. Piano and Drums : raw, uncut, brilliant
The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 1 - 7
Last copies. Sealed dead-stock original copy of the Horace Tapscott's 'The Tapscott Sessions' solo piano series, released on Nimbus West Records from 1982 to 1984. Horace Tapscott has been one of the top "unknown" jazz pianists in the Los Angeles area since the 1960s, recording far too few sessions which has led to him being continually overlooked by jazz fans from outside L.A. During 1982-84 he recorded seven solo piano albums for the tiny Nimbus label, playing unaccompanied solos, his improvi…
Live in Avignon, France 1989
On October 14th 1989, Horace Tapscott, founder of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, performed alongside his close friend and musical partner Michael Session at the Théâtre du Chêne Noir in Avignon, France. This was during a tour in which they traveled across Europe. The duo presented compositions by Leimert Park musicians Jesse Sharps, Nate Morgan and Tapscott himself.
The stark instrumentation of this concert led to minimal arrangements of compositions typically performed by much larger ensembl…
Songs Of The Unsung
Distinguished Los Angeles-based jazz pianist Horace Tapscott is probably best-known as the founder of the Pan-Afrikan People’s Orchestra of PAPA, also known as The Ark, though he began his career as a trombonist, working with Lionel Hampton and others during the late 1950s. The 1978 solo album, Songs Of The Unsung, released in small number on pianist Toshiya Taenaka’s Interplay label, features Tapscott alone on piano, delivering a superb set of freely interpreted jazz tunes, including an unfette…
Why Don't You Listen? - Live at LACMA, 1998
CD Version. This previously unreleased concert recording by the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra of pianist-composer-bandleader Horace Tapscott and a chorus under the direction of vocalist Dwight Trible is a wonderful example of how Tapscott channeled the political and cultural aspirations of a community into music of deep beauty and lasting value.
The album opens with a big band version of “aiee! The Phantom,” a Tapscott original propelled by a vamp that spurs Michael Sessions into a melodic tenor…
Ancestral Echoes - The Covina Sessions 1976
Dark Tree Records is very pleased to announce you the release, under exclusive license from the Horace Tapscott family, of this previously unpublished studio recording. In January 1976, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra recorded at Audiotronics Recording Studio in Covina, east of Los Angeles. Musicians assumed these tapes were lost, but they survived in Horace’s archive and a copy of some tracks in that of Nimbus West. Four pieces appear on this CD: Ancestral Echoes, the Eternal Egypt Suite, Sket…
The Music Finds a Way
In the post World War II era, dozens of young African Americans in South Central Los Angeles found their way to careers in music. In a community facing challenging social conditions and with little to no outside support, they would become artists, supported by the best that their community and culture had to offer, from neighborhood and family to schools and churches, private teachers, formal and informal spaces and institutions, and more than a few unsung heroes.
“The neighborhood was tough, b…
Live at Lobero
"This is a reissue of a now out-of-print album from live trio date by the legendary LA-based pianist, composer and multi-bandleader, Horace Tapscott. Pianist Horace Tapscott is always at his best when he is leading a trio. Sketches of Drunken Mary features some sparkling piano revolving around a most lyrical bass part that is absolutely touching. The piece ends with a long, monstrous drum solo has to be heard to be believed. I recall hearing/seeing the mighty Sonship with John McLaughlin's One T…
Flight 17 - The Call - Live At Iucc
Bundle special offer: Flight 17 (2LP) Live at Iucc (3LP) and Thw cal (LP) by the legendary Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, led by their founder and mastermind, Horace Tapscott. Jazz, with its many iterations and forms, has always been a music on the move - its own changes and evolutions mirroring a flux in the perception of what is and was. This is all too evident when addressing its avant-garde realisations, particularly those rising across the 1960s and 70s - free and spiritual - musics which we…