Jazz /
Music For Violin Alone
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Music for Violin Alone is the debut date as leader for virtuoso violinist Mark Feldman, who has performed as a sideman with countless musicians, in genres ranging from country to avant-garde jazz. Here he performs original, classically styled pieces that exude high drama. The violin arcs over small measures of time, plummets into hurt, soars back up into the air, then lands lightly spinning. Feldman bows out grit and texture with ribbed vibratos, and achieve…
50th Birthday Celebration Volume 1
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* September 2003 marked the 50th birthday of John Zorn, and to celebrate, Tonic hosted a month-long celebration of Zorn's various musical groups and projects. The shows were recorded, and the best of them are being released as a new series on Zorn's "Tzadik" label.
The first offering is the entire early set by the Masada String Trio, recorded on September 4, 2003, with Zorn conducting Mark Feldman on violin, Erik Friedlander on cello, and Greg Cohen, on ba…
Gently Unfamiliar
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* One of the most versatile and active proponents of creative music, Karl Berger is a living legend who has been expanding the Jazz language since the mid-'60s. A pianist, vibraphonist, composer, arranger, conductor and educator of astounding energy and creativity, Karl has worked with many of the greatest names in New Music: Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Anthony Braxton, Bill Laswell and countless others. Following up on his gorgeous 2010 releas…
Mediumistic Methodology
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 200 copies.* Alto sax player Devin Brahja Waldman lives in New York and leads his own group Brahja and is a member of Heroes Are Gang Leaders and Land of Kush. He also helps run the label Fast Speaking Music with his aunt, celebrated poet Anne Waldman. Master drummer Hamid Drake needs no introduction.
Waldman and Drake’s duo was recorded live at Elastic Arts in Chicago in December 2019. The title of the album, "Mediumistic Methodology", relates to a se…
In The Swarm
*In process of stocking.* Few bands in improvised music seem to generate more palpable sonic friction than Brandon Seabrook’s trio with Cooper-Moore and Gerald Cleaver. The group produces a seriously tactile, almost psychedelic sound: the gut-punch of drums, the rumbling twang of diddley-bow, and the slashing, brittle crunch of electric guitar. On Exulations, the trio’s 2020 debut album on Astral Spirits, these sounds coalesced into gritty, propulsive improvisations possessed of an almost three-…
The End and The Beginning
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 500 copies.* The debut LP from RedGreenBlue posits a mesmeric, minimalist extension of Chicago's groove-based improvised music tradition. Over the course of two introverted, side-long pieces, the band patiently crafts hypnotic—yet still dynamic—sonic spaces using languid pulsations, careful shifts in colour, and occasional bursts of virtuosic urgency. It's music that hovers between worlds, unfurling a foundation of almost-ambient weightlessness that's …
These Things Happen
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* A group here that features some key members from the American avant scene, but whose standout member might well be pianist Oscar Jan Hoogland – who contributed two originals to the set, and whose work on the keys seems to really direct the energy of this session that features fresh interpretations of tunes by Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk! The setting is quite a different one for saxophonist Keefe Jackson, but he's superb throughout – blowing tenor and sopra…
Numerology of Birdsong
*2022 stock* Numerology of Birdsong is the second album by Somersaults, following on from their 2015 eponymous debut on Two Rivers. Olie Brice and Mark Sanders have been heard as a bass/drum unit with the likes of Paul Dunmall, Evan Parker, Mikolaj Trzaska, Rachel Musson and Ken Vandermark. Chatting about their very favourite saxophonists and what their ideal trio combination would be, they both agreed that they’d love to do something with Toby Delius, best known as a member of the legendary Dut…
Palindromes
*2022 stock. In process of stocking.* This is an outstanding hour or so of improvised music that beggars belief that this was only the second performance by this particular line up. The first was on 02/02/2020, and the first palindrome, and this concert 2 days later at Cafe OTO, with the second palindrome, and hence the title of this wonderful set. What is quite amazing is how such a rapport between four musicians can be created and cemented so quickly. Each free to add, comment or step up to le…
Reflections 1952
In 1952, Thelonious Monk, joined by Bassist Gary Mapp, Drummer Art Blakey and Drummer Max Roach, drove to an early iteration of pioneering Sound Engineer Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey, and entered a small and tightly-managed room that Van Gelder had strict technical rules for. In those recording sessions, and again in 1954, despite Van Gelder's tight management and an out-of-tune piano with tinny fidelity, Monk produced some of the most glorious music of his entire recording career and …
Anime Mundi
If life is about how we react to what is thrown at us, Sana Nagano chose wisely in the summer of 2020. After nearly half a year of anguished isolation, the violinist made an album of honest, graceful free improvisations with two of her mentors. Anime Mundi, out October 28th on 577 Records, pairs her with pianist/vibraphonist Karl Berger and drummer Billy Martin, veteran players at home in the unknown. And though recorded during the stressful first year of Covid, there is joy and curiosity in the…
This Is Always - Live at Ferrara Jazz Club
Following the releases of Kepos (2014 El Gallo Rojo Records) and Elpis (2020 Skirl Records), the trio featuring Zeno De Rossi on drums, Francesco Bigoni on tenor sax and clarinet and Giorgio Pacorig on piano is ready to release its third album This Is Always, out on April 22nd, 2022 on Hora Records.
Recorded live at the legendary Jazz Club Ferrara (aka Torrione), the trio renews a 10-year long fellowship. It literally becomes a collective; the fact should not be surprising, given the equal natur…
Welcome To Love
Pharoah ‘Farrell’ Sanders (born 1940) is a leading figure in the world of jazz and one of the last living legends with connections to players like Sun Ra and John Coltrane. His tenor saxophone playing has earned him royal status amongst free jazz players, critics and collectors.
Originally Sanders was interested in urban blues music, but his high school teacher exposed him to jazz and this took Farrell in an entirely new direction. Once completing high school Sanders quickly packed his belongin…
Around Again
*2022 stock* Around Again - The Music of Carla Bley presents a collection of composer and pianist Carla Bley´s compositions in new interpretations by pianist Iro Haarla, bassist Ulf Krokfors and drummer Barry Altschul. While the recording continues the longstanding collaborations of Iro Haarla and Ulf Krokfors, it also introduces in the mix Barry Altschul, who originally recorded many of the featured compositions with pianist Paul Bley´s trio more than 50 years ago.
Golden Hearts Remembrance
Tip! *2022 stock* 'Recorded in 1997, Wadada Leo Smith's N'da Kulture has created a music that transcends all forms by integrating many of them into an amorphous yet deeply moving whole. This sextet, which uses Eastern and Western instruments, authors into being a kind of folk music for the emerging century, one that relies deeply on poetry, improvisation, subtleties in tone, timbre, and rhythm. The six pieces here reflect Smith's ongoing concern with marrying the vanguard jazz tradition he comes…
Sequence
Following his trio debut ‘Triptych’ last year, trumpeter Matthias Lindermayr presents his duo record ‘Sequence’ with long-time companion and ECM Recording Artist Matthieu Bordenave on tenor saxophone. In contrast to its technical title, ‘Sequence’ is a very lyrical record, sacral at times. Like two figure skaters, the voices gracefully glide along and whirl around in perfect synch, always sensing where the other one is going. A fitting comparison also, as the recording session was equally exhaus…
Smashing Humans
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* The Brooklyn-based noise-jazz violinist Sana Nagano often finds herself at the center of the storm. As other instruments crash and careen around her, her assuredly melodic violin works to ground and stabilize the overall sound. And nowhere is this better heard than on Smashing Humans, her new quintet album coming March 19th on 577 Records. Featuring Peter Apfelbaum on sax, Keisuke Matsuno on guitar, Ken Filiano on bass, and Joe Hertenstein on drums, it’s an L…
Sweet Nothings (for Milford Graves)
*In process of stocking.* Two masters of wind instruments blowing in from the Windy City. In 2003, as part of the seventh annual Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music, Joe McPhee and Evan Parker squared off for a round of intimate dialogues. The resulting recording is just the second time they had played as a duet, the previous also being in Chicago, at a studio in 1998, where the limited their instrumentarium to tenor saxophones, resulting in the Okka Disc classic Chicago Tenor Duets…
Cloud 10
Saxophonist, flautist Chip Wickham takes us to Cloud 10 with his most soulful and lyrical album to date Chip Wickham is a jazz musician and producer who divides his time between Spain, UK and the Middle-East and who has made a name for himself with a series of beautifully crafted solo albums that draw equally on the hard swinging spiritual jazz of Roland Kirk, Yusef Lateef and Sahih Shihab, alongside the music of British jazz legends such as Tubby Hayes and Harold McNair and the more contemporar…
To Live And Breathe...
*In process of stocking* An international trio (USA/FR/IT) recorded live in Italy during their 2017 European tour.