ESP-DISK 商品一覧

1973年生まれのドイツ人ギュンター・ハンペルのセカンド・アルバムであり、唯一のESPの作品。1966年12月21日オランダ録音のこの作品はウィレム・ブロイカーとの2管の作品で、圧巻はやはり、22分に及ぶ"ASSENBLAGE"だろう。細かく刻むシンバル、ベースのアルコの前で、二人のリードが荒れ狂い暴れ捲るそのスピード感も圧巻なら、オーネット・コールマンのジャズ来るべきものにおける"ロンリーウーマン"のテーマを想起させてやまない妖艶な美しさが放たれる場面には、鳥肌が立ってしまうこと必至!!この瞬間は、その後アーチー・シェップがコルトレーンを追悼したライブ録音において収録された"いそしぎのテーマ"に匹敵するといって過言ないだろう。時代でいえば、66年12月とは、ドン・チェリーがコンプリート・コミュニオンを録音し、ヨーロッパ・ツアーをした時期と一致する。ヨーロッパに飛び火して加勢してい くフリージャズ・ムーヴメントの勢い溢れる記録!!(新譜案内より)GUNTER HAMPEL(vib, bcl, fl), WILLEM BREUKER(ss, bcl, ts, as, bs, cl), PIET VEENING(b), PIERRE COUBOIS(ds)

70年代に飛び出した、とんでもないパワーを持ったサックス奏者フランク・ロウは、アリス・コルトレーンとの共演、ラシッド・アリとのデュオ・アルバム等、ジョン・コルトレーンからの影響を大きく受けた奏者として、ESP後期に燦然と輝く。73年3 月録音。このESP のアルバムはその彼の原点として、またアート・アンサンブル・オブ・シカゴのジョセフ・ジャーマンとの共演も注目!!オープニングから25分に及ぶ激しい咆哮はとにかく強烈だ。ウィザードとはリロイ・ジェンキンス、とのこと。契約上、名前を変えての参加となったとか。フリー・ジャズ / ロフトジャズの重要な一作!!(新譜案内より)■JOSEPH JARMAN(ss,as) FRANK LOWE(ts) THE WIZARD(vln) WILLIAM PARKER(b) RASHID SINAN(ds)

3枚組、コンプリート音源。*以下はメーカー・インフォになります『Heliocentric Worlds』のオリジナル2部作を生み出した1965年のセッションは、サン・ラのキャリアにおいて最も自由な即興性が追求された時期に行われたものであり、『The Magic City』(Saturn Records)の制作時期とも重なっています。4月に11人編成のバンドで録音された「Vol. 1」は、比較的短い7曲(いずれも8分以内)で構成されています。この作品でサン・ラは、シンセサイザーの導入や、アルケストラ(Arkestra)のメンバーにパーカッションを兼任させるなど、新たな試みを行っています。対照的に、11月に8人編成で録音された「Vol. 2」はより自由度の高い内容となっており、LPの片面を占める大作「The Sun Myth」や15分に及ぶ「Cosmic Chaos」が収録されています。ここではホーン奏者や伝説的なベーシスト、ロニー・ボイキンスらが存分に即興演奏を繰り広げています。「A House of Beauty」は、他の楽曲の合間にあって、比較的叙情的な安らぎを与える5分間の小品です。2005年にESP-Disk'が新作のリリースを再開した際、サン・ラのアーキビストであるマイケル・D・アンダーソンが11月のセッションからさらに5曲を発掘して「Vol. 3」を制作しました。このアルバムには、力強い楽曲「Intercosmosis」も収録されています。DIsc:1. The Heliocentric Worlds Of Sun Ra Volume One1    Heliocentric        2    Outer Nothingness        3    Other Worlds        4    The Cosmos        5    Of Heavenly Things        6    Nebulae        7    Dancing In The SunDIsc:2. The Heliocentric Worlds Of Sun Ra Volume Two  1    The Sun Myth        2    A House Of Beauty        3    Cosmic Chaos Disc:3. The Heliocentric Worlds Of Sun Ra Volume Three  1    Intercosmosis        2    Mythology Metamorphosis        3    Heliocentric Worlds        4    World Worlds        5    Interplanetary Travelers 

*DIGI PACK圧倒的なセンセーションを巻き起こしたデビュー作からたった半年。パティ・ウォータースの66 年、アメリカの5 大学を廻ったツアーの録音。その存在は、アルバムたった一枚で初のメジャー・アヴァンギャルド・ヴォーカリストとして(しかも白人としては極めて異例)、あっという間に、世の中から大きな注目を浴びたが、2 枚目のこの作品は、さらにアヴァン路線が全面的になった作品。ジュゼッピ・ローガン、デイヴ・バレル、バートン・グリーンらをバックに向けて、叫び、激しい声をあげるパティ・ウォータース。のちに、オノ・ヨーコにも大きな影響をえたエピソードもあまりにも有名です。■Giuseppi Logan (fl -1,2,4,6,7)Dave Burrell (p -1,2,4,6,7) Burton Greene (p -3) Ran Blake (p -5) Perry Lind (b -1,2,4,6,7) Steve Tintweiss (b -3) Scobe Stroman (d -1,2,4,6,7) Shelly Rustein (d -3) Patty Waters (vo)

※LPサン・ラのシカゴ時代からの仲間であり、アーケストラの偉大なるベーシストであるロニー・ボイキンスの初リーダー作。録音は74 年。3026番という番号も示すとおり、ESPの中でも遅い録音ですが、ESPが、最初にボイキンスを呼んだのは64年とか。しかし、自身のOKが出たのは、10年の時が経ってのこと。やっと、録音に至った、とのお話らしいです。ここには、美しいアルコのプレイ他、ベーシストとしてのソリッドな演奏が収められているほか、注目すべきは、そのコンポジションや、アレンジ。豪快なサン・ラを支えた才能と、繊細でロマンティシズムが滲む音楽はESPの中でも異色な一枚です。ちなみに、61年にシカゴからニューヨークに出てくるサン・ラを車に乗せた (!?)のもこのボイキンスだったとのエピソード。サン・ラ他総勢7人の運命を乗せた人こそも、この人なのです!!■Ronnie Boykins (bass, sousaphone , bells, shaker) Joe Ferguson (flute, soprano sax, tenor sax, shaker) Art Lewis (percussion, drums, bells, shaker) Jimmy Vass (flute, alto sax, soprano sax, bells, shaker)Monty Waters (alto, soprano, bells, shaker) George Avaloz (conga, bells, shaker) Daoud Haroom (trombone, bells, shaker)

サックス奏者兼作曲家であるアレン・ロウの音楽と、彼のがんとの闘いを追ったドキュメンタリー映画が制作されました。精力的なレコーディング活動を続けるロウは、ワダダ・レオ・スミスやマシュー・シップらを随時フィーチャーした数々のセッションを企画・実施しました。歴史的背景を補足するために過去の重要な録音も一部収録されていますが、この3枚組セットの大半は新録音源で構成されています。「本人の意図とは無関係に、アレン・ロウはジャズ界における典型的な『アウトサイダー・アーティスト』となってしまった。」――フランシス・デイヴィス「私はアレン・ロウの大ファンであり、ミュージシャンとしても研究者としても極めて重要な人物だと考えています。彼は深く誤解されていますが、その理由は彼が自分自身を嫌っていないからなのです。」――アンソニー・ブラクストン-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------がんを克服し、25回の手術を受けたロウは、病気と回復の過程で、マーク・リボット、ワダダ・レオ・スミス、クレステン・オズグッド、ジェッペ・ジーバーグ、マット・シップ、ケン・ペプロウスキー、ルイス・ポーター、レイ・アンダーソン、フランク・レイシーなど多くのアーティストと共に8枚以上のESP DISK用CDを録音し続けています。この期間中にアメリカ音楽に関する3冊の著書も執筆しています。過去数年、ローはジュリアス・ヘンフィル、ロズウェル・ラッド、デヴィッド・マレー、ドック・チーサムと共に一連のプロジェクトを録音しました。ジョナサン・ショウアーが制作し、アレン・ロウが形作ったこのドキュメンタリーは、ロウの作曲と演奏に対する完全に独自のアプローチについて語り、マット・シップ、レイ・アンダーソン、ワダダ・レオ・スミス、マーク・リボー、ウルスラ・オッペンス、そしてデンマークの演奏者イェッペ・ジーバーグとクレステン・オズグッドとのパフォーマンスを収録しています。ローの複雑な手術と回復(2021年に鼻の半分を切除)について語り、彼の顔の手術を行い命を救った医師へのインタビューも含まれています。また、伝説的なアメリカの音楽史家グレイル・マーカスへのインタビューも収録されており、彼は次のように述べています「アレン・ロウはアメリカ文化に重要な貢献をしました。私たちの音楽史を全て見たいすべての人々は彼に感謝しています」------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------■CD 1 1. Staying Dead 3:02.  Rec. 4/10/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums On April 10, 2026, I went into a recording studio to record with two of my favorite musicians, the bassist Colson Jimenez and the drummer Ethan Kogan. We used most of these as visual and aural cues in the documentary. What can I say about these guys? I love them for their support and musical empathy (which is in short supply in these Virtuoso Days, when everyone who picks up an instrument can launch into Donna Lee at the literal  speed of sound). What I want to hear is depth and soul, and, yes, swing (not in the common sense but in the sense of perpetual movement and feel – because if it feels like it swings then it does, even after the band has stopped playing. Really. That’s what I would call a paradox). Colson has a depth and breadth of tone which makes him a logical successor to Wilbur Ware; he is an endless source of feeling; and Ethan is almost indescribably complicated in his musical approach, and yet he swings in the most basic (yet complex) of terms. This, like everything else in this session, was completely improvised. 2. Barry Harris Had a Hit Record and Didn’t Like It 4:15  rec. September  2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet I knew Barry, I loved Barry, and he was probably the last of the truly great bebop piano players. He was the pianist on Lee Morgan’s Sidewinder, which was a hit but which Barry, psychologically at least, disavowed as a commercial aberration in his deeply principled musical life.  Maybe he was right; I don’t know. What I do know is that my close friendship with Barry (in the 1970s and 1980s) was a casualty of my increasing musical independence, though I am glad I saw him only shortly before he died and rekindled our friendship (he never knew that I had started to play and compose, strange as it may sound). 3. Theme for Wadada 7:25  rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass What can I say about Wadada? One of the most beautiful souls who ever walked the planet, whose pure sound on the trumpet is one of the natural glories of jazz expression. Here he is with my regular band (including the amazing pianist Esteban Castro) on a tune I wrote for him, inspired by a few of Wadada’s own compositions. And I repeat, I have never heard a trumpet sound so pure, so closely integrated with the personality of the player, so unmediated and pure. This is Wadada and we are all lucky to be in his presence.  4. East Coast Ghost (Boy Decoded) 4:24 rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet This is how I felt, like a ghost, as I slipped in and out of musical – and, in essence, physical - consciousness in the first years of my sickness (I was in treatment for cancer between 2019 and 2021 and had twenty five surgeries up until about 2026, to remove tumors, slice up grafts, pull out surgical hardware, rebuild my face, adjust my eye, and just generally survive as I sometimes desperately treaded existential water). Add to it all Daniel Bereket, a brilliant trumpeter whose sound and approach are a sign of someone and something musically new and smart.  5. The Harder Blues 6:42  Rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Matthew Shipp, piano Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Matthew Shipp, piano Introducing (for the purpose of these notes) the pianist Matthew Shipp who, of course, needs no introduction. Matthew is another one of those players who, like Wadada, has reached a musical place of such pure expression that there is no distance between what he plays and his personal approach to life. His sound is instantly recognizable. His whole attitude is just….well, it’s Matthew, independent, clear, amazingly expressive, complicated yet easy to understand as long as you realize that his work, like his personality, is completely transparent. What you hear is what he is. This is something of an intended sequel to Julius Hemphill’s various iterations of The Hard Blues. And if you are not familiar with Julius’ work (I had the privilege of working and recording with him) go straight to YouTube and take a tutorial. The blues as Julius heard it was not a musical a ectation but an idea of cultural roots as extracted from dense musical soil. 6. Dexter Wakes Up 3:07  rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet From time to time to time to time to time to time to time to time I get myself in some trouble by complaining about musical icons like Dexter Gordon. I love his 1940s and 1950s work, but by the later years (the1960s and after) his playing, to my ears, su ers froman odd and stoned hesitancy.  To me it’s like a car stalled in the middle of the road blocking tra ic, though I have only found one other musician who agrees with me on this (and I will protect his anonymity so as not to exposed him to the abuse I have, on occasion, received for holding this opinion).  I acknowledge Dexter’s prior greatness, I just wish he didn’t sound, sometimes, like a 45 RPM record playing at 33.  7. Swing and Nothingness. 4:44    rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass From a session with Ethan, Esteban, and Colson, based on a piece by Duke Ellington and philosophically inspired by Sartre and the occasional silly arguments on Facebook about whether or not young musicians still know how to swing. This is a meaningless answer to a pointless question. 8. Where’s Lou Reed?  2:42  Rec. 9/15/06 Allen Lowe, guitar and vocals With bass and drums An oldie that has gotten mixed reaction. I went through a brief punk phase while I was living in Maine (I had literally nothing else to do while I was living in that hellhole so as an alternative to Maine life I started to broaden my musical horizons in sometimes strange ways).  At the time I was also singing and playing guitar. I have very mixed feelings about Reed, who veered from brilliance to the incomprehensible to the shockingly banal in his musical lifetime, no doubt exaggerated by substance abuse, mental health issues (he received electro-shock treatment when it truly was a form of torture) and some sort of personality disorder (for a more detailed discussion read Lester Bangs’ various pieces on Reed). This was a short phase in my career, though I think my guitar playing is not bad. And I certainly sing no worse than someone like Morrissey (at least I don’t whine). 9. Grey Boys 4:14  Rec. 4/10/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums From the session noted above, as recorded for the documentary. This is actually a slow blues, the title taken from Lester Young’s term for white folks (he also used the phrase Bob Crosbys for cops, related to the actual Bob Crosby’s neo-Dixieland big band. Bob Crosby was, incidentally, the brother of Bing); and though this has been used to put down his band, which was, indeed, very white, it is unfair because it happened to be one of the great bands of its time, whose repertoire included music taken from a large swath of Americana, (including, famously, a black vocal quartet). I love the blues, though I think it has been misused, abused, and even mislabeled over the years. It is a specific language in a continuum of black expression, speech, rhythm, etc. and not just a set of intervals or, worse, some symbol of black oppression as highlighted by lefty critics who have no real understanding of music. And it is really more e ect than cause, meaning it was the egg as planted by the chicken (yes, in that order, chicken first), and has been damaged by cliches and white guilt of the musical kind. Here we do it as slowly as we can without losing consciousness; I was thinking of a really slow blues I heard Mingus do at Slugs in 1969 or so, in which the tempo came practically to a halt. This made such an impression on me that I spent the next 60 years trying to replicate that feeling; this is somewhat akin to Henry Miller’s claim in the book Black Spring that we truly experience things only when we experience them for the first time, and that each succeeding experience of same is merely a memory of the initial encounter. 10. Do Not Go Gentle Into that Operating Room 3:15  Rec. 4/10/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Another film cue; I have been put under anesthesia so many times that there are days when I find myself reliving the repeated experience of laying on a gurney for surgical prep; at such times, feeling anxious in the present, I actually miss the relaxing intake of whatever it was that they were shooting into my vein; my fear of the needle was quickly overcome by a brief and fleeting sense of wellness, of a life with no problems or pain. If anyone asks, I am convinced that this is what death, from natural causes, will be like: a slowly realized and then sudden loss of consciousness, a long and endless void, no fear, no pain (which is a good thing). But I am just glad I got back, as even the realization that the transition may not be painful but instead inadvertent makes me fear it even more.  11. End Chimes (for Brian Wilson) 4:04 rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Lewis Porter, piano Colson Jimenez, bass The death of the Beach Boy had me thinking about his unconventional artistry, his uncanny melodicism, and his other-worldly sensibility. And about his song Wind Chimes, one of my favorites. 12. Endgame 4:35 rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass Me and them, again. Endgame is the name of a Beckett play and a colloquialism for any number of strategies for bringing things to a real if sometimes sudden and even unpleasant halt. 13. Ives in Harlem  4:03  Rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Matthew Shipp, piano Charles Ives goes to Harlem and, though he has a deep sense of the American grain (per William Carlos Williams) he finds himself in a foreign land. How does he respond? By retreating into the sound of the American Hymn, recomposed to suggest his own attempts to break away from the expected and predictable optimism of religion; as, all the while, that religion, unlike the Sanctified Church, keeps its true distance, like a parent whose stern discipline seems more like a perpetual warning than it does unconditional love. So Ives flees the scene, but does take with him the gnawing sense that Harlem, like black music, is still, for white folks, a desirable if forbidden fruit. 14. Hallucinations (Up in Bud’s Room) 5:51  rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass From the Wadada session; Bud Powell is a source of perpetual inspiration for me. Every time (or nearly every time) I compose I find myself trying to fill his impossibly large and dominating musical shoes. It’s a futile gesture but not something I can stop myself from doing. Everything about Bud’s playing and composing is a source of poetic allusion – his time, his touch, his rhythmic shifts, his blunt music philosophy. And though I am nowhere near worthy, I continue to seek out the Holy Grail of Bud’s sound and feeling. Wadada clearly got me closer to that goal. 15. Little Jew from Connecticut 2:54  Rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet Mary Lou Williams wrote and recorded Little Joe From Chicago in 1939. I spent twenty years in Maine as a Little Jew from New York, an outcast, a stranger in an even stranger land. This is part of my bid for reparations. 16. Elvis Don’t You Weep 2:25  Rec. 4/10/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Taking our cue from Elvis, with that gospel beat that was played to accompany him every time he jumped on stage  in Vegas. I am tempted to say that I am the only person who really understands Elvis, though I cannot really explain what I mean. It’s just a feeling that I, and 20 million other people, have. 17. Rainy Days of Life (for Jaki Byard) 4:11  Rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Matthew Shipp, piano Jaki, much mourned, wrote a piece called The Falling Rains of Life. This is my referral to his life and work (please note: not a tribute). With Matthew Shipp, a duet. Matthew just surprises me every time we record together. Not that I don’t expect him to come up with something fascinating, but that he is continually fun to listen to – yes, FUN, a word not used very often these days in reference to jazz. But fun is not just the act of enjoying what you are doing but the ability to pass on that enjoyment to anyone who listens. Because pleasure centers of the brain respond not just to simple repeated patterns of entertainment (like TV) but also to things that challenge them with clarity and expression and meaning. And that is why, although Shipp’s playing is anything but simple, its virtues are obvious and continuous.  18. Lennie’s Bennies 3:05 Rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Matthew Shipp, piano Matthew and I in duo mode once again. This is not the first time I have heard and detected the Tristano influence on Shipp’s playing. One of the things I love about his accompaniment is that it leaves me, as an improviser, with so many possibilities. And Tristano et al were among the first in jazz, post-Charlie Parker, to suggest that there were ways around the chord changes that allowed the soloist to escape the tether of tonality while still remaining true (or maybe truer) to the spirit of the music. 19. Alienation E ect (or: The E ects of Alienation) 2:10  Rec. 4/10/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Film cue; back to Brecht, who through both his theoretical brilliance and practical intellect has had nothing but an artistically and radically progressive influence on my own personal creative thinking. But contrary to his reputation, perpetuated by the watchdogs of middle class art, his was anything but a mechanically political intellect trying to fit odd political, proto-Marxist theory into narrow didactic boxes of ideological orthodoxy. To the contrary, his was a sensibility expressive of a deep perception of life as something in which the day-to-day brutality of unforgiving and violent political and social systems was an assault on not just economic survival but on the imagination itself (sound familiar?). To me imaginative paralysis is one clear side e ect of repressive regimes like our current one; which is not to say it cannot be overcome – as Brecht was able to - but that the horror of certain kinds of political actions seems to dwarf the imagination and relegate, in life, it to aesthetic irrelevance. The Nazis had Decadent Art (anything which wasn’t socially utilitarian, or of use to their own authoritarian ways); Stalin had Social Realism (another way of opposing “Decadent Art” and of killing any true creative impulse); the Trump administration has the art of deception; and the arts groups of America (like my local Arts Council), supposedly on the side of The Good and Virtuous, have turned creative work into shallow Social Work, another way of saying social realism, of essentially opposing  anything that might be construed as “Decadent Art,” just because it is done by white folks with the wrong and anti-woke attitude. “Socially Redeeming”  is  the equivalent of a safe word to these arts groups, getting them out of the trouble of having to worry about actual artistic ambivalence, of the kind that challenges their own assumptions about everything and lacks “proper” liberal or progressive attitudes. It is a way of avoiding dangerous ideas of pure aestheticism. True creativity is too unpredictable for these folks, dangerous for the challenge it o ers to their idea of the expressive status quo. The Brechtian “alienation e ect” was a way of trying to direct the audience to abandon bourgeoise notions of both schematic cause-and-e ect and middle class uplift, in favor of dragging them down into the depths of human struggle. This was reality, not the socially-useful, well-made play, just as, theoretically, my compositions and playing are far from settled and “well made;” instead they are in the service of a deeper kind of (jazz and musical) reality than the ordinary and overworked jazz idea of “telling a story.” They are messy and disorganized, a reflection of my own struggle to resist the temptation of the academy and critics’ knee-jerk approval; I am telling a story, but it’s not one meant to mimic “tradition” in a slavish or worshipful way. Like the Alienation E ect it is meant to force a reevaluation of certain jazz ideas, to clear the aural palette and rid it of the same-oldsame-old expectations.  ■CD 2 1. Code Boy. 1:55  Rec. 4/10/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Sorry, I have tried, but I cannot abide the academic idea of “code switching.” Yes, I know what it means, and it has been used in jazz to refer to perceptual changes while listening to music, of hearing songs and lyrics in di erent ways at di erent times. Still, in spite ofmy cynicism, I consider myself to be a Code Boy; the di erence is that nothing changes as I experience these perceptually altered states. One code fits all; anything else is just intellectual obfuscation.  2. I Should Have Stayed Dead 2:42 Rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet When I first tried to make a comeback in the jazz field after a few years of being deathly ill I had some middling success, and I was very appreciative of what was, in certain cases, only temporary access. But I am what I am, and I have come to realize that there are certain unavoidable factors that have kept me, and will continue to keep me, in the professional darkness. So be it; but there were times when I did think that maybe I should have remained down, wallowing in the depths of my own physical and mental self pity. While this is something that still occasional appeals to my more histrionic side, I refuse to bow to industry prejudices (age is a major factor). This is the theme song to the documentary, a ballad of both hope and despair. 3. The Second Assassin 6:15  rec. 12/5/91 Knitting Factory Allen Lowe, tenor sax Julius Hemphill, alto sax Paul Austerlitz, clarinet Robert Rumbolz, trumpet John Rapson, trumpet Je Fuller, bass Ray Kaczynski, drums An oldie but goody, discussed in the documentary and presented here in the full version. It’s not necessary to repeat that Julius Hemphill was an ingenious, historically central, musical power to be reckoned with, but I will say that I am proud of this old composition and the fact that he performed it. As I mention in the film, the very fact that Julius, at our first rehearsal of my music, asked “who wrote these?” and then said how much he liked them, was a major confidence builder for me. I had made the transition from bebop wannabe to New Music hopeful only fairly recently, and I was still toying with the juxtaposition of tonality with freedom, something which I think I have achieved with some originality over the years (and I was happy to hear the historian Larry Gushee exclaim one day “you have reinvented free jazz!”). And this was a major band, all great players, all distinctive players, all totally and conceptually original. Though as far as I can recall we may have worked together, fully intact, only one other time. 4. Last Rites  (for Francis Davis) 2:15  Rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet When I found out that my old friend Francis Davis, who died in 2025, requested, on his death bed, that he be given Last Rites, I was not surprised. As a fellow atheist I was able to identify, from my own near-death experience, with the whole end-stage fear of what, if anything, would follow life. Though I am not a believer I find, in particular, 1920s black gospel music – angry, joyously painful, desperate, hysterical, aesthetic anarchy – the most comforting music there is for its pure emotional energy and abandonment of any fear of the unknown (as a matter of fact that old music seems to welcome the unknown, to embrace it and await it eagerly). But the thing with Francis was not, I think, exactly that. Nor was it a foxhole conversion; it was a way of facing the un-faceable, thinking about the unthinkable (at my worst during the early treatments of my cancer I used a meditation tape, and one thing it demanded I do was “bring the fear forward and center.” I think this was what Francis was doing).  And just as I considered, when I was at my sickest, finding a Synagogue to just sit in, to try to achieve a sense of communal comfort, he was returning to the roots of a faith he may have thought he had already abandoned. I never got there, but I am glad, if it o ered balm, that he did. This piece both celebrates and mourns Francis. 5. Modal Stomp 4:22  rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Matthew Shipp, piano Just as everybody complains about the weather but does nothing about it, everybody in jazz loves to give lip service to “the tradition” but (almost) nobody actually does anything about it. This is partly because jazz musicians rarely know very much about anything “old” other than (maybe) the blues, and usually consider that to be su icient. I don’t think it is, at least not for me. I love the old music, but I won’t perform my own versions of those old forms unless I am allowed to pervert the course of musical justice (I have watched too many British crime shows). This piece is my idea of the old musical stomp, taken literally in the old days from demonstrative expressions of rhythm. Everything in old black music is a drum, including the floor that dancers beat with their feet as they danced (and stomped) on it. I wanted to transfer this whole feeling into a modern context in terms of improvising (though the blues, which this theme is based on, is basically a modal form). We got there; perfect rhythm section, and wonderful Shipp, who has such a quick and intuitive grasp of such a wide range of post-modern approaches to playing music. And I need to mention that I was thinking, the whole time I was composing and playing this, of the great pianist Fank Melrose, dead for many years and a Jelly Roll Morton disciple with more than just a tinge of the barrelhouse. 6. Hi Joe 2:43  rec. July 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Daniel Bereket, trumpet Ray Suhy, guitar Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass Hey Ray! Ray Suhy is the best guitarist in the world and a great guy who can always be counted on to transform anything he plays into a work of art (check out his banjitar playing on my Louis Armstrong project on a piece called Bathing with Doc Walsh).  I have been trying for years, yes, for years, to write a piece based on Hey Joe and performed most memorably by Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s. I finally got it right, though I never had any doubt that Ray could make something amazing out of it (and it is in the documentary twice; over the opening titles and in a full version near the end). 7. Holy Rollin’ 3:02 rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass It’s a long story, but there’s a scene in the film where I have an encounter with an academic who is doing a talk on gospel music, in which I politely tell her something about the history of the Sanctified Church which she then informs me is not true (which is that historically there have always been white Holy Rollers as well as black; she replied “no there haven’t been any white Holy Rollers”). And then, in the documentary we show films of – you guessed it - white Holy Rollers doing what Holy Rollers do, which is gyrate and dance and shake it all about. I love all forms of old time gospel music, white and black, with its crazed intensity, and this is my idea of the way such a gospel song might turn out and be used for contemporary improvisation. Am I the white Holy Roller of my fevered dreams?  The goal is abandon and intensity; a lot of jazz musicians are strangely overqualified in this respect and apparently have trouble reaching so far into those submerged and forbidden parts of their psyches (and yes, this is true of even many “free” players who have little if any sense of the deeper cadences of black music). I seem to be able to do this, somewhat, and it’s probably because I have absorbed so much of the language of those old African American religious chants, the quartets, the singing evangelists, the solo voices, and The Old Regular Baptists (a white sect). Which proves that, as I once read in the New York Times, imagination can and will e ectively substitute for experience.   8. The Hardest Blues 3:15  rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass Going through the changes started by Julius Hemphill, increasing our blues output in musical increments.  More of the blues at the edge of blues egress. 9. I Licked Bird’s Blood 3:46  rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet As I mention in the film, the pianist Joe Albany told me a story many years ago about shooting up with Charlie Parker. Bird pulled the needle out of his arm and Joe grabbed it, licking the blood o of it before putting it into his own arm. “They should call my autobiography ‘I Licked Bird’s Blood’” he told me as we drove down the FDR Drive. Here I employ the changes to a Charlie Parker composition.  And it’s always good to have a catchy title. 10. We’re Lost 4:48   rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass End of session improv with Wadada and the boys. 11. The Gates of Hell Are Always Open 5:11 rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Daniel Bereket, trumpet Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Matthew Shipp, piano I sincerely believe they always are, as I eagerly await the eventual and unhesitating admission of every Republican currently in Washington. This is another from my Gospel Hit Parade, a kind of musical mixed-martial arts display of tonal melody, piano intensity, general abstraction, plus various approaches to free improvisation, and a not-so-subtle display of heavenly demand as filtered through images of the devil’s cauldron. 12. I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Scream 3:54 Rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Daniel Bereket, trumpet Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums OK I won’t mention any names, but there are those who purport to tell us what Buddy Bolden sounded like based on musical mythology, fifth-hand accounts, and just plain made-up ideas that are smoothed over with assurances of “that’s the way it was.”  Nonsense. And there happens to be an old song, “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say,” my favorite version of which was sung and recorded by Jelly Roll Morton near the end of his life. I have some of my own ideas of what Bolden may have sounded like, and (I believe) they are not anywhere near the popular approach to inventing history. The great jazz historian Larry Gushee o ered me some clues based on his own research, and, as I interpret them, they picture Bolden as playing very simple, repeated phrases in which almost all of the soul resides in the core sound of the cornet.  The melody is in a style of vocal-like, simple phrasing, with a narrow range of notes but a wide range of feeling.  Plus I picture Buddy Bolden, back from the dead, hearing all the theories about what he was actually playing, and screaming to the Gods to punish all these musical miscreants and send them into smooth-jazz exile. These are just my thoughts; you are entitled to yours. 13. Blue and Bluer 9:13  rec. 4/19/92 Knitting Factory Allen Lowe, alto sax Doc Cheatham, trumpet Loren Schoenberg, tenor sax David Murray, tenor sax Paul Austerlitz, clarinet John Rapson, trombone Robert Rumbolz, trumpet Je Fuller, bass Ray Kaczynski, drums Back in 1992 I did a Louis Armstrong project (not to be confused with the most recent one) of historic proportions. We recorded it at the Knitting Factory with Doc Cheatham, David Murray, and Loren Schoenberg et al all on stage together. For this particular tune I took a Fats Waller composition and composed a variation which stayed close to the key center and then, after the theme was stated, opened up into the song’s regular chord changes for solos. What a chance this was for me, to meet and play with Doc (who later, in a di erent project, recorded a modal tune in my living room). He was a classic gentleman of kind and solicitous manner, almost out of a Tennessee Williams play, though absent the weird motivations and guilty mystery.  And to hear him talk about playing with Bessie Smith was like going back to experience a time and place where all of this music was new and novel. Was it a point of innocence or really (and more realistically) a world of unimagined racial struggle mitigated by daily bouts of artistic transcendence?  14. Counterintuitive 4:32 rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Daniel Bereket, trumpet Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Matthew Shipp, piano In 1949 Lenny Tristano and company recorded a thing called Intuition, an exercise in, yes, free improvisation and open form. Though they never returned to this idea (well, Tristano did, briefly), it lived on in limited circulation. Almost 80 years later I wrote Counterintuitive, more of an exercise in what they used to call Free Bop than anything else; the trick is (was) to blow like the musical parameters are straight out of bebop, contravened by imaginary chord changes moving in shifting and imprecise directions. I mean, what is free improvisation but just another way of creating a narrative, with freer connections and looser points of tonal intersection? The great thing about contemporary musicians like these is that it is not as though I have to explain the process. All I have to do is give them a theme and let them run with it. 15. Danse Savage 6:13  rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Daniel Bereket, trumpet Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Matthew Shipp, piano I got the idea for this one from the faux exotica of Parisian-American-African American Josephine Baker, who performed, in the 1920s on the Parisian stage, to a song of the same title, and whose rhythms and movements straddle, in the racialist imagination, both the jungle and modernist fantasy (not unlike the thensimultaneous goings on at New York City’s Cotton Club, where the musical habitat wilderness was already in action, on a stage where rich white folks could slum while watching some of the greatest jazz musicians in the world). Once again we perceive imagination as racist fantasy, though the Europeans were said to be nondiscriminatory in their attitudes, attracting a number of black American musical expatriates. While there is no doubt that conditions in Europe were much better for black folks than conditions in the USA, we might have some questions about how seriously white Europeans took this kind of jungle fantasia, and whether or not, challenged by the seriousness of black performers, they retreated into condescending stereotypes as a means of re-enforcing an idea of white selfsuperiority. Did they think Africans (and African Americans) typically comported themselves as naked across a musical stage, with the same cutesy persona projected by the great Baker who, nonetheless, liberated herself in what was probably the best possible way, by just doing what she wanted to do and getting rich while doing it?  16. Other Bodies, Other Souls (Part 1) 6:27  rec. May 1993 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Roswell Rudd, trombone Je Fuller, bass Ray Kaczynski, drums Ah, Roswell Rudd, the great Roswell Rudd. Nicest man you ever met, one of the greatest musicians you probably never met. Brilliant student of world and American music, with the warmest bombastic approach to music, from the blues to free playing to harmonic-based music, that you can imagine. And a WASP to boot! He was to the manor born, whether that manor was in Mississippi, New Orleans, New York, or Paris, where the Europeans of the post-1960s era just ate up his type and style of music (though he never, for complicated reasons, became the star he should have become). Francis Davis introduced us and we made several recordings together, including this one in Verna Gillis’ garage on my old Tascam 8-track openreel machine. It came out great, and Ros even told me that I captured his sound better than it had ever been captured before (I used no compression, which engineers routinely used to control his sonic outbursts, and I just told him to watch his distance from the microphone). I loved the guy and still do (he died in 2017). This was something I wrote (the first of several) based on Body and Soul. Ros had that incredible dynamic range, from a whisper to a shout in under five measures. 17. Beneath The Blues 5:00 rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet Not the blues again! Yes the blues again (I wrote and recorded a blues years ago called I Hate Blues, which is another story). The melody of this is not the blues, though we solo on blues changes. I like this composition, the purpose of which was to imply, bluesly-speaking, more than state the blues directly or outline it harmonically. This kind of composing is a real challenge, to get the feeling without the form. I think we succeeded.  Even if we did not, we still get a participation trophy. ■CD 3 1. Fanfare For Albert  3:09  rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet Albert Ayler is, really, the exception that proves the rule. What’s the rule? That free improvisation is worth little without intense, internalized, compositional discipline. Not that Ayler didn’t have such discipline, in a manner of speaking, but he seemed to revel in not just defying but in destroying expectations, demolishing them like the East Wing of the White House. And that sound – we are all unworthy. Still, I feel like less of a failure now that I have paid my respects to his work and memory. In my case, as a saxophonist, the spirit is willing but the chops are old, tired, and weak. 2. West Virginia Blues 1:58  rec. 10/10/04 Allen Lowe, guitar  With bass and drums More from my brief stint as a guitarist in thrall to old music, particular white country and blue-tinged black song. This came out pretty well, I think, especially because I used analog e ects on the guitar and recorded live, giving it the old time (meaning 1960s) feeling that I still covet for its sense of air and space and moments of true feeling (there are versions of this extant by The Carter Family and BF Shelton). 3. Woyzek’s Death 5:35    Rec. May 1994 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Randy Sandke, trumpet Roswell Rudd, trombone Andy Shapiro, Keyboards Je Fuller, bass Ray Kaczynski, drums Ben Goldberg, clarinet With this piece I finally recorded for a major label; this was my first time (not ESP, which has treated me well) but it was barely released and they ripped me o on my Euro publishing. Oh well; I am still proud of it as a coherent suite of pieces based on the play Woyzek (Buchner), a play which has had a powerful influence on my own artistic work and attitude(s). With some of my favorite musicians; this has me on tenor and wonderful solos by Randy Sandke, one of the truly great trumpeters of the last 50 years, and Roswell Rudd once again. I remember this composition fondly; it just fell into place as few compositions do (though the sad memory is that Julius Hemphill was supposed to be on this session but had gotten sick with the illness that eventually ended his life, and so had to cancel). 4. Maya Deren Dances the Voodoo Around 4:04 rec. April 2025, Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Daniel Bereket, trumpet Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Maya Deren had an anthropological soul, and studied Voodoo at the source (Haiti). She took it around as something with which to engage the natives; I play little music in this style and with this rhythm, as I sometimes feel as though my hands are tied by the tightness of certain clave-derived subdivisions. But this I wrote specifically so I could dance it around it on the horn, as could Daniel Bereket and the kind of rhythm section that sends me into paroxysms of both joy and mild musical insecurity. How to conceptualize something so it sounds unlike any other band? Write the right music and hire the right musicians to play it. 5. Other Bodies Others Souls Part 2 6:05  rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass Another in my quest to bring Body and Soul under my personal control, to tame it and make it mine. As a horn player I love the changes and as a composer I love the changes; the song practically writes itself. All I had to do was catch it in the act, which is the way some compositions just happen; you get the feeling that they were there are all the time, hiding, as they say, in plain sight.  6. Walking on Water Wasn’t Built in a Day 3:02  rec. 4/10/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums From Jack Kerouac’s “famous” line as improvised for the old underground Beat film Pull My Daisy. Another documentary cue. I love working with this trio and feel liberated by their faith in me as an improviser (my rule of thumb as a saxophonist is technical insecurity). Kerouac in all of his non-sequiturial brilliance captured the Beat  zeitgeist with this saying. I,  in the semi-coherent spirit of musical anarchy, almost missed it; it felt like I was on an express train which went past my stop, after which I had to get o at the next, distant, station and walk back (as a form of self flagellation). Yes, as with my writing I make it up as I go along (no surprise for a jazz musician), but what I seek is not so much coherence as a coarse commentary on my own musical limitations (and maybe everything I do musically is in the same spirit of potential failure). 7. Echoes of Europe 6:20  rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass I have been critical in particular of one very misguided and recent attempt to reassemble and reconstruct the work of James Reese Europe’s (black) orchestra, which recorded between 1913 and 1919. That attempt turned it into parlor music and, really, made me recoil in aesthetic disgust, as it became the essence of polite, middle class, drawing room culture. The real orchestra was nothing of the sort. To the contrary it was a wild band of anarchic performers, a crazy quilt of wild drumming, pitch-challenged near-unisons, kitchen sink disorganization of strings and other musical hangers on (mandolins, flutes, clarinets? Maybe it was whomever just happened to show up that day?) Europe ran a black musical organization called The Clef Club, so far ahead of its time as to be almost unimaginable, and I love the idea of certain kinds of musical randomness, though not as we tend to do it today. It feels right when it’s like a sonic lottery, and the element of chance alternates with aesthetic stops at strategic musical locations. Most important is that unlike in its regenerated state of late, it swung like mad, like a wobbly bicycle headed down a steep hill toward railroad tracks, with no brakes and a determined but confused rider of possibly suicidal intent, going against the wind. In other words it was a great and authentic black band playing early black music, the kind of which was completely foreign, in its day, to white musicians.  Though apparently it is completely foreign, in our day, to black musicians, who tried to re-create it just a few years back; instead, that revivalist performance came o like a hot air balloon collapsing on takeo .  So…I guess race isn’t everything (did you hear that Melvin?), and race is not a form of cultural inevitability, a cultural jail sentence. Knowledge and deep musical dedication is a much better place to start, and though I have yet, in several attempts, to capture the essence of Europe’s band in the way I would like to, here I at least have formulated a modern equivalent that has achieved lifto .  8. Mysterious Moon 3:26 rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet In praise of Alec Johnson, and named (sort of) after one of his songs. He was an old and now long-gone black songster (documented a bit, but mostly now historically anonymous in the way of most of that generation of black performers). Johnson recorded, in the 1920s, a series of songs right out of and on the cusp of Black minstrelsy (yes there was such a thing, and it was a serious thing. Black entertainers banded together in the late 1800s and early 1900s to form barnstorming minstrel troupes, who took the country by one or another kind of storm. In their voracious touring they not only carved out a place for all black performers of the future, they completely revolutionized American entertainment and achieved a creative and expressive hegemony that, in essence, remains in place to this day). Johnson had a di erent kind of voice than we now expect to hear from black singers, a minstrel growl I would call it, and you can find his recordings on YouTube.  And, I would venture to say, it is only a hop, skip, and jump from his kind of guttural singing to that of Louis Armstrong, who took this serious yet somewhat comically detached manner of delivery into a new pop dimension of half-comic profundity, a Dada-esque gesture of hilariously edgy seriousness. And yes, that growl, that raspy half-spoken-half-sung thing that Armstrong did was a direct (in my opinion) descendant of this minstrel mannerism, a kind of black sprechstimme (just don’t tell Wynton Marsalis, who informed me that minstrelsy was “all degradation,” or Melvin Gibbs, who insisted dismissively that I was completely deluded about minstrelsy, this). 9. The Hawk Walks  2:24 Rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax  Daniel Bereket, trumpet Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums I’ve always loved Coleman Hawkins, the great pioneer of the tenor saxophone who spent his entire musical career becoming something other than what he already was (strangely enough I identify). Great as he always was, there are several recordings of his which seem to elevate his playing into yet another dimension, with a transcendent, out-of-body authority that tells us (maybe) that the demands of making a living don’t always allow the working musician to show us everything that he or she is. This composition was inspired by one of his later recordings with Max Roach, a Civil-Rights themed work (We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite) which brought out something extra in Hawkins, an aggressive, even more emotionally-charged way of playing that seem to emanate from some previously untapped place in his psyche. I tried, unsuccessfully, to replicate that spirit of defiance here, but I still feel good about this recording. 10.  Lafcadio By The Sea  rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass Lafcadio Hearn may be an obscure figure these days, but, Greek born, he lived in Cincinnati in the early 20th century and, a brilliant thinker and writer, gave us some of the most vivid documentation we have of early black sound, of the singing and movements of black roustabouts who worked the docks in those days. This was more than just a snapshot of black culture, it was a real and complex picture of the way in which black melody, sound, phrasing, and movement was organized and manifested in an early, public sense (Hearn also wrote on a number of other subjects, brilliantly). Find his work if you can; it is indispensable. In this I try to imagine the airborne sound of these unwitting cultural pioneers. 11.  Oi Death (Part 5) 3:37 Rec. February 2026 Tony Ferrizzi, guitar Allen Lowe, tenor sax  How many times am I going to re-do this thing, a variation on Oh Death (sung by old country singers like Doc Boggs and even recorded by a black chorale)? I first recorded it with lyrics, later with a quartet, and now in a duo with the excellent guitarist Tony Ferrizzi. I probably will do it again some time, as it signifies my determination to devise a way in which old (black and white) vernacular and folk forms can be converted into New Music, into Improvisation, into methods of taking that old music, discarding conventional revivalist ideas, and then mining it for its original feeling and meaning. And it really is modal. To paraphrase a wise man, it’s one chord and the truth. 12.  We’re Found 3:11 Rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Matthew Shipp, piano With Matthew Shipp, sudden inspiration in a Brooklyn studio. I try and follow his lead. 13.  Relaxin’ in the O.R.  2:26 Rec. September 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Daniel Bereket, trumpet Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Oi, I had so many operations that I began to think of anesthesia as a sleep aid. “Just relax and take a nap,” one of my early surgeons (not Dr. Shaye) suggested to me just before I went under. I didn’t quite know what to make of that suggestion but I didn’t really have any choice. With the exception (a big exception) of the first horrendously long surgery I had at Yale New Haven Hospital, when I woke up just a little too soon – see the documentary for more detail – I got through them all with my sanity almost intact. 25 times I went under and 25 times I came back, which is something to be grateful for. I was soon a regular at Mass General, where I was fixed and saved after some unfortunate experiences at Yale. With Dr. Shaye running things I was never really worried (though he might have been, as I was really a work-in-progress;  he carefully planned everything step-by-step and not only saved my life, he made sure I had a life after all was said and done. Thank you Dr. Shaye.) 14. Spiritual-Lee 6:23  Rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Matthew Shipp, piano Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums From rhe world of the Modal, whatever that really means, though it refers, I suppose, to improvising on a single chord/mode, and/or revolving it all around only a chord or two (or less). Call it Faux Trane. This was originally titled Spiritual until I got worried about having it confused with Coltrane’s Spiritual. What then to call it? I decided to reach for a non-sequitur; in the 1940s and afterwards the Tristano school, as I seemed to recall, often use the name of Lee Konitz as a titular su ix. I figured, what the hell? Let’s graft it on to this title so future generations can try and figure out what relationship this bears to Lee Konitz. Was Lee my inspiration? My friend and peer? No, definitely no to all of the above, though I loved his playing. This was a musical marriage of convenience. And check out Matthew’s solo, also shown in the documentary. 15. Rhumba Lumumba  4:04 Rec. April 2025 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Daniel Bereket, trumpet Matthew Shipp, piano There was an interesting movie about the overthrow of Congo president Patrice Lumumba which implicated both the CIA and the country of Belgium. The overthrow of a democratic, progressive government by our own people? No shit, what else is new? The CIA is/was a terrorist organization though the way things are looking right now the entire US government is a terrorist organization (too late to put them on the “do not fly” list; they are already here). I love this side of the clave-derived, post-African rhythm (the Diaspora anyone?).  There is something so insinuating about the time sense in this, beautifully conveyed by Ethan and Colson (have I given them enough credit for this whole project and for my feeling that, in their musical presence, I have experienced a creative reawakening?). Pieces like this help me shed what, as an American citizen, feels like guilt-by-association, as we continue to co-sponsor or cause hundreds of thousands of overseas deaths (USAID anyone?). So how do I fight back? Well, by writing a piece named after the assassinated Lumumba. That’ll show ‘em!  16. Crude Thinking 1:31 Rec. 4/10/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums This may well have to be the name of my next book. Brecht used “crude thinking” as a phrase to describe the method he saw as necessary to fight back against the world and its subtle and unsubtle crimes against humanity; resistance to the crudity of violence and repression of the universe requires an equally crude point of view, a view from the bottom, a means of combatting these negative forces by using their own techniques – two negatives equaling a positive?  Was Michelle Obama wrong? Your move. I just write ‘em and play ‘em and am not responsible for any collateral damage. 17. Tony Jackson 3:51 rec. 1/27/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Esteban Castro, piano Ethan Kogan, drums Colson Jimenez, bass Tony Jackson, who never recorded, was an early New Orleans pianist loved by Jelly Roll Morton (who talks about Jackson in his Library of Congress recordings); Jackson wrote the song Pretty Baby. He was obviously some predictor of jazz performance before there was jazz performance, as was Morton, though of course we have plenty of proof of Jelly Roll’s bona fides. But I trust Morton and his memories completely; he was often disliked for boasting (there was bad blood between him and Duke Ellington, among others) but he could back it all up. In Morton’s hands the piano was no longer ragtime or even stride, but a new and essential device in the improviser’s tool box. When he describes Tony Jackson as important, I believe him. So I wrote Tony Jackson to try and evoke what may have been the feeling of Tony Jackson’s new-school old-school piano.  18. Yancey’s Blues 2:3  rec. 6/22/15 Allen Lowe, alto sax  Hamiet Bluiett, baritone sax Ava Mendoza, guitar Kevin Ray, bass Lou Grassi, drums Jake Millett, turntable, electronics I composed for and recorded Hamiet Bluiett’s last session, and he was quite easy to deal with, contrary to his reputation. He had had a number of strokes, and I was told that the meds he was on calmed him down, which was a good thing. This is a sort-of solo duet with rhythm, alto and baritone playing together on a blues I wrote in the style of the pianist Jimmy Yancey, an interesting figure of old-time blue piano who was fond of the classic clave rhythm (one musician on the date described this as a “rock and roll piece,” a correct interpretation of its rhythmic orientation and origins). I played alto on this session; in those days I could still get a real sound out of the instrument (after I had high-intensity radiation on my jaw in 2021 I could never again get the sound I wanted to on the alto but instead lost it to that flu y thing I hate and which many alto players call a sound (small s). I beg to di er). 19. …And His Friends Called Hm Ken 3:51 Rec. 4/10/26 Allen Lowe, tenor sax Colson Jimenez, bass Ethan Kogan, drums Last on this project and one of the saddest things on this collection, for me at least, is this one, dedicated to an old and departed friend. Ken Peplowski was one of the greatest clarinetists who ever lived and one of the nicest people I ever knew, smart, funny, entertaining, a great musical host in the clubs and concerts  in which he continually performed. He had been fighting cancer for about as long as I had when he died last Spring, and we often commiserated about our mutual cancers, though what he had was incurable (mine wasn’t) and he knew it. He never came o of the road and died, I suppose, in the saddle, in the middle of a jazz cruise in which he was performing.  I first met Ken in the 1990s at a conference run by the Jazz Museum in Harlem. He knew my work and said “you know, people think all I can do is Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw tributes but I can play a lot more than that. Call me if you want to record something.” It took a while, but we eventually worked together on maybe three projects, all of which were a pleasure to make, not least due to his wonderful temperament and amazing musical skill; he was right, he could do a lot more, from swing to bebop to Jimmy Giu re-like free playing. If you want to get a taste of that, run out and watch the documentary, in which I include a clip of him soloing beautifully in open form on a tune I wrote called Innuendo in Blue (from my CD In the Dark).  Goodbye Ken, I hope we meet again someday.

NYの即興演奏家Eli Keszler2010年リリースの傑作と名高い一枚。日本人作家Sakiko Moriも参加。*以下はメーカー・インフォになります2010年発表。『Oxtirn』は、フリー・エネルギー、現代音楽的な構成、そして機械仕掛けの音楽が融合した、ジャンルを超越する極めてユニークかつ力強い作品です。これまでに2枚の本格的なフルアルバムや数々の自主制作作品を発表してきたイーライ・ケズラー(Eli Keszler)は、本作『Oxtirn』のリリースにあたりESP-Diskとタッグを組みました。これは彼にとって3作目であり、最も緻密に構成された、かつ最大規模の意欲作となります。『Oxtirn』は、ケズラーとその仲間たちが最も熱狂的かつ激しい演奏を繰り広げる瞬間を捉えています。そこでは、調律された金管楽器の響き、錆びついた金属の軋み、ショートを起こしたコンタクトマイクのノイズなどが突如としてカコフォニー(不協和音の奔流)となって溢れ出します。彼らは、ポスト・インダストリアルな世界の残骸(本来の用途から引き剥がされた金属板、スプリングボード、モーターなど)を拾い上げ、それらを21世紀の「ミュジック・コンクレート・オーケストラ」へと変貌させているのです。アルバムの冒頭曲では、モーターが加工を施された金属板の上を転がり回る中、巧みに配置された弦楽器のボウイング(弓奏)や、まるで幻のブラスバンドのような響き(マルチ・ホーン奏者のアンドリュー・フェンロンと、ケズラーの長年のパートナーであるクラリネット奏者アシュリー・ポールによる演奏)が、ケズラーの精密なパーカッションや制御されたカオスの爆発と超越的な調和を見せています。3曲目では、イーライとサウンド・アーティストの森咲子(Sakiko Mori)が、プリペアド・ピアノやインスタレーションとして設置されたピアノを演奏します。スイッチ操作のモーター、コンタクトマイク、吊り下げられた仕掛けなどを駆使して二人が激しく弦を擦り、揺さぶる中で、ゆっくりと波打つ共鳴のクラスター(音の塊)が底流にある喧騒の上に浮かび上がり、鮮烈なコントラストを生み出しています。ここで聴かれる、ケズラーがボウイングで鳴らすクロテイル(小型シンバル)の不気味な音色は、イタリア未来派のルイジ・ルッソロによる「イントナルモーリ(騒音発生器)」や、ドゥミトレスクの弦楽四重奏曲を彷彿とさせます。Eli Keszler(piano) Ashley Paul (his partner in Aster) on two tracks, plus Andrew Fenlon (trumpet, tuba, French horn, trombone) and Sakkiko Mori (prepared piano)

*digipak仕様シカゴのパワー系サックストリオ「TIGAR HATCHERY 」による1STアルバムがESPよりリリース!シカゴのパワージャズトリオ、タイガー・ハッチェリーは、サックス奏者マイク・フォーブスの演奏からも明らかなように、ESP-Diskのフリージャズの伝統を受け継いでいるが、特にベン・ビリングトンのアグレッシブなドラミングにはノイズロックの要素が加わり、サウンドを現代的に保っている。ベーシストのアンドリュー・スコット・ヤングは、単にベースを叩くだけでなく、彼らの壮大な不協和音の中で対等なメンバーとして存在感を示している。これは、ESP-Diskの50年の歴史の中でも最もパワフルなアルバムの一つであり、これは特筆すべきことだ!ライナーノーツはウルフ・アイズのジョン・オルソンによる。■MIKE FORBES(sax)ANDREW SCOTT(b)BEN BILLINGTON(ds)

NYのSTONEや、バルチモアのFIFTH DIMENTIONなどのギグなど、フリー、アヴァンギャルド、またオルタナ・ロックのシーンで注目を集めるマルチ・リード奏者、ARRINGTON DE DIONYSOらのグループ。アメリカ拠点、ピアニストのTHOLLEM他、メンバーがそれぞれ数々のバンドで活躍中です。(インフォより)■ARRINGTON DE DIONYSO(b-cl,contralto cl), THOLLEM MCDONAS(p), JOHN NIEKRASZ(ds), GREGG SKLOFF(b)

世界はデレク・ベイリーか???コキコキ、ブオーン、あるとき爆走、という筋書きないインプロ・トリオ。ギタリストは、セシル・テイラーや、ミルフォード・グレイブス、またトロンボーンの鬼才デイヴィッド・テイラーなどと共演歴をもち、CIMPなどの作品にレコーディング経験ある、NYのフリー・ネットワーク人脈を持つ若手。2007年8 月ブルックリン録音。ESP新録は、インプロ・ギター・トリオ!亡きマエストロ・デレク・ベイリーを追う!!??Bruce Eisenbell(g), Tom Blancarte(b), Andrew Druru(ds)

アルゼンチン出身の孤高のサックス奏者、ガトー・バルビエリの記念すべき第一作がESPよりリイシュー!ESPと言えばガトーも参加したドン・チェリー・グループのカフェ・モンマルトルでのライヴ発掘音源が話題を呼んでいますが、こちらは67年の録音。ジャズ界に一大旋風を巻き起こしたガトーのブローを堪能できる、パワフルかつアヴァンギャルドな1枚!GATO BARBIERI(sax), CALO SCOTT(cello), NORRIS JONES(b), BOBBY KAPP(ds)

1968年、”チェコ・スロバキアにおいて最も卓抜した存在”とESPのストールマン氏が認めたKAREL VELEBNYの録音。KAREL VELEBNYという人は、一方、SABAに録音した作品がジャイルス・ピーターソンのコンピに収録されたことでも有名ながら、この作品の時代背景にプラハの春の隆盛と挫折があることも無視できない事実。このジャケット写真はVELEBNY自身がストールマン氏に送ったもので、実際に交通事故にあった後の写真。これが”ソビエトによる占領の苦痛を象徴しているようだ”、とストールマン氏はライナーノーツで書いている。演奏はフリーというよりは、ポスト・バップで、圧制に対するパワー、というよりは、東欧の中で当時随一自由であった国に(それゆえ軍事介入を受ける)、フリーと共に当時の最先端の流れであった新主流派の空気が通っていたことを感じさせる。また一方エスニックなムード漂うラストも新鮮。ESPが提供したドイツのスタジオでの録音は、チェコのジャズ史における貴重な記録!(新譜案内より)■JIRI STIVIN(as, fl, recorder), KAREL VELEBNY(ts, bcl, vib), LUDEK SVABENSKY(p), KAREL VEJVODA(b), JOSEF VEJVODA(ds)

2001年にNYニッティング・ファクトリーで行われたライヴ。*以下はメーカー・インフォになりますハンス・タメン、アルフレッド・23・ハルト、クリス・ダールグレン、ジェイ・ローゼンからなるこのカルテットは、実験音楽やアヴァンギャルド・ジャズの分野における数々の著名なアーティストたちと共演してきた豊富な経験を活かし、新作『Expedition』で聴き手をスリリングな体験へと誘います。メンバーはこれまでに、ジョン・ゾーン、ソニー・シャーロック、ジャコ・パストリアス、ピーター・ブロッツマン、デヴィッド・マレイ、フレッド・フリス、ピーター・コワルド、アンソニー・ブラクストン、ロスコー・ミッチェル、キース・ロウ、ギュンター・ミュラー、ポール・リットン、ウィリアム・パーカー、ハーブ・ロバートソンなど、数多くのミュージシャンと共演を重ねてきました。楽器の極限の音域までをも自在に操る彼らは、鋭い感性と絶え間ない集中力、溢れるエネルギー、そして即座に反応する想像力を発揮します。さらに、刻々と変化する音の集積を的確に捉え、グループの進むべき方向性に対して自らの音楽的意図を巧みに織り込んでいく手腕も見事です。――バーナード・ストールマン■HANS TAMMEN(endangered guitar),ALFRED HARTH(ts,bcl),CHRIS DAHLGREN(b,electronics),JAY ROSEN(ds)

エリオット・レヴィン率いる、フィラデルフィアのフリー・ジャズ・シーンで活動するバンド、ニュー・ゴーストの2006年作、「ライヴ・アット・アップステアズ・アット・ニックス」。下記はメーカー・インフォになります本作は1998年のライブ音源で、彼らの風変わりな音楽は、『It's That Passing Gleam』や『C.T.』で見られるような、フリーなアンサンブル主体の演奏において最も躍動感を発揮している。スポークン・ワード(朗読)を取り入れたパートには、アルバート・アイラーがインパルス・レーベルに残した気まぐれな作風のアルバムを彷彿とさせる、やや精彩を欠く場面も見受けられる。しかし全体としては、その情熱的かつ極めて開放的な音楽がリスナーを惹きつけてやまない。3つの楽曲にはパーカッション奏者がゲスト参加しており(『C.T.』では2名が参加)、この刺激的なライブにさらなる熱気を加えている。とりわけサックス奏者のエリオット・レヴィンは、もっと広く知られるべき存在だ。彼らは過去30年余りにわたり、個々として、あるいは様々な組み合わせで、フィラデルフィアを拠点とする数多くの興味深く(かつ革新的な)音楽アンサンブルと共演を重ねてきました。このカルテットのメンバー4人のうち3人は血縁関係にありますが、4人全員をさらに強く結びつけているのは、「時間」「空間」「精神(プシュケ)」、そして「巡り合わせ」といった要素です。これらすべてが長年にわたって融合し、ここに収められた音と言葉が生まれました。それは、フィラデルフィアの「Upstairs at Nick's」で繰り広げられた、彼らならではのライブ・パフォーマンスを捉えたものです。■Elliott Levin(vo,fl,musette,ss,ts)Rick Iannacone(vo,g)Steve Testa(b)John Testa(ds)

フリー系ピアノの一翼を担った名ピアニスト、バートン・グリーンのESPにおけるファーストアルバムに、ESPでの最初のセッション曲「HIS EARLY BAND」、そして貴重なインタビューを7トラックぶん収録したコンプリート盤です!マリオン・ブラウンなどの鬼気迫る演奏に手に汗握る傑作!■BURTON GREENE(p), MARION BROWN(as), HENRY GRIMES(b), DAVE GRANT(perc), FRANK SMITH(ts), TOM PRICE(perc)

67年録音のESP隠れ重要作。マルチな楽器演奏能力を備えたアラン・ソンドハイムによるダークかつサイケデリックな音像に圧倒される稀有な一枚。フリー・ジャズのある種正統的な立ち位置を堅持しつつも、その後のジャズ~実験音楽の行き先を暗示するような名作!■RUTH ANN HUTCHINSON(vo), CHRIS MATTHESON(b), BARRY SUGARMAN(bongo, tabla), J.P.(ds), ROBERT POHOLEK(cornet, tp), ALAN SONDHEIM(xylophone, as, sona, classical, eg, hawaiian guitar, english horn, bansari, koto, cl, suling)

*DVD NTSC / PAL DUAL DISC REGION ALL60年代に端を発するフリー・ジャズ・シーンのドキュメンタリー。今や生き証人といっていい、アート・アンサンブル・オブ・シカゴのファウンダーの一人、ジョセフ・ジャーマンやマリオン・ブラウン、ジョン・チカイ、そして数々の作品の縁の下の力持ちでもあるウィリアム・パーカー、そしてマシュー・シップやスージー・イバーラといったそのシーンを引き継ぐメンツの証言とサン・ラや、ペーター・ブロッツマンを始めとする圧巻のパフォーマンス。アメリカ、特にNYという舞台を中心にいかにシーンが繰り広げられたか・・・What is Sound という問いに始まる注目のドキュメンタリーの登場!!(日本語字幕はありません)Interviews : Marion Brown, Rowell Rudd, John Tchicai, Alan Silva, Burton Green,Josef Jarman, Baikida Carroll, William Perker, Daniel Carter, Matthew Shipp and Susie IbaraFeatured Performers : Denis Charles, Glenn Spearman, Wilber Morris, Joseph Jarman, Peter Brotzmann,John Tchicai, Sun Ra and his Arkestra, In order to Survive(William Parker, Cooper-Moore, Rob Brown,Susie Ibarra), Other Dimensions in Music(Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, Rashid Bakr, William Parker,Matt Ship),Baikida Carroll and Reggie Workman, and MoreBack Music : Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, N.Y. Art Quartet and The Free Form Improvisation Ensemble

ESPが新たに放つ新ユニットYUGANAUT。3人のマルチ器楽奏者がエレクトリックなサウンドも多用しながら、アメーバ的にサウンド・パーツを吸収して不思議な世界を構築していきます。■STEPHEN RUSH(el-p,bells,euphonium,ocarina,harmonica,etc.), TOM ABBS(b,tuba,didjeridoo,etc.), GEOFF MANN(ds,cor,vib,etc.)

『VOL.1』、『VOL.2』が大好評を呼んでいるドン・チェリーの66年カフェ・モンマルトルライヴ音源、早くも第3弾が登場!もちろん今回も完全未発表音源ながら、どうしてこれが未発表だったのか信じられないクオリティ。前作、前々作と大きく異なる点が、今回は長尺の演奏となっている点でしょうか。VOL.1が6曲、VOL.2が7曲入りだったのに対し、今回はなんと2曲!! 後の民俗音楽路線とは大きく異なる、まだまだハード・バップや新主流派の影響を色濃く残したサウンドがダレることなく1曲約25分ずつ繰り広げられていきます。どちらもハイテンションで捨てがたいですが、特にM2が最高にクール!! ドン・チェリーやガトー・バルビエリ、そしてドン=オーネットのカルテットが好きな方にはもちろん、普段その辺を聴かないBN好きの方なんかにもぜひとも聴いていただきたい一枚です!DON CHERRY(tp), GATO BARBIERI(ts), BO STIEF(b), KARL BERGER(vib), ALDO ROMANO(ds)※bassはJ.F.JENNY CLARK説も

後期コルトレーン~アルバート・アイラーの音楽性を継ぐ者として期待のサックス奏者LOUIS BELOGENIS率いるピアノレス・トリオがESP新録作品として登場!近年フリー界隈のシーンで存在感を強めているベーシスト、JOE MORRISの参加にも要注目!LOUIS BELOGEMOS(ts), JOE MORRIS(b), CHARLES DOWN(ds)