B:A:N:S Band (Sophie Agnel/John Butcher/Pascal Niggenkemper/Ståle Liavik Solberg) - foams & mesh (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2026)

By Martin Schray

Of the many things that make albums featuring John Butcher unique, I believe the most outstanding characteristic is not that he likes to play at unusual venues (caves, water reservoirs, oil tanks…), but rather the fact that every ensemble he plays with is so diverse and incomparable that it allows the listener to hear many different facets of his playing. In an interview with Brad Rose, Butcher said that when improvising, he likes to hear the musician behind the instrument, though it’s not important to him to hear the musicians putting themselves in the spotlight - on the contrary, he tends to seek subtlety. In general, he looks for musicians who have already developed a personal musical style and their own way of playing - something that truly feels like their own. It is therefore almost inevitable that the various ensembles he selects based on these criteria will possess a unique dynamic and sonic world.

One of last year’s best albums was RARE, John Butcher’s duo with French pianist Sophie Agnel, with whom he had been playing quite frequently over the last few years. I especially liked their improvisational rigor and the relaxed, varied, and aleatoric moments. On RARE, I considered the pauses in the music to be the central element; on foams & mesh, it’s different, mainly due to Pascal Niggenkemper (bass) and Ståle Liavik Solberg (drums), because the two of them fill those gaps. Solberg, with whom Butcher has played since 2015 in many kinds of combinations, permeates the improvisation with his bone-dry and at times almost esoteric style, for example when he uses extended materials (especially in the quiet passages of the first track). This is complemented by Agnel’s trills, which she plays from inside the piano. Butcher contributes very delicate bird calls here, while Niggenkemper subtly saws at the very low strings of his bass. It feels as though one is listening to the goings-on in the courtyard of a Tibetan monastery. This can be heard around the 20-mark of the first, significantly longer improvisation on foam & mesh. Such passages contrast with highly expressive moments, in which the rhythm section performs in a demanding and driving manner, but Butcher remains unflappable and employs his entire repertoire - guttural sounds, chirps, tremolos, circular breathing, serial/repetitive patterns, etc. - with casual ease. Only at the end of the track Agnel’s clusters and crescendos, Niggenkemper’s alienated drones and Solberg’s accentuated interceptions tempt him into vibrato-heavy phrases.

The album was recorded at the artacts festival in St. Johann/Austria in 2024 and in the first part of the encore the musicians showcase extended playing techniques, with Niggenkemper and Agnel holding the improvisation together by a somber drone. Then the bass and piano shift imperceptibly into their normal registers, and the piece grows denser, builds in intensity, becoming louder and more concentrated - like a tornado - before dissolving perfectly.

foam & mesh is an extraordinary album, the band is a superb match. They have played only three concerts so far and I think I’m not the only one who hopes that there will be more to come.

foam & mesh is available as a CD and as a download.

You can buy and listen to the album on the label’s website: https://sluchaj.bandcamp.com/album/foam-mesh

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Laurie Anderson with SexMob - Let X=X (Live) (Nonesuch Records, 2026)

By Richard Blute 

“When you meet a man who is broken, pick him up and carry him. When you meet a woman who’s broken, put her all into your arms. Cause we don’t know where we come from … we don’t know where we are.”

-Laurie Anderson

Back in college in the early 80’s, my musical tastes careened wildly between the unchecked rage of Dead Kennedys and Black Flag and the deep melancholy of The Cure and Joy Division. (There was an occasional detour to the land of the Talking Heads.) Then my friends and I discovered Laurie Anderson’s Big Science . And everything changed. I think I was the one that found it and that was only because there was a song called Let X=X, which appealed to my math brain. Our first reaction was bewilderment. “What?? She no longer loves the color of my sweaters??!!? Huh??” But we quickly realized this was something new that we needed to absorb. It showed us that we could respond to all the grotesque absurdity of the world with something other than anger or sadness, that it could be met with surrealism and a sense of humor and that we could retain our humanity.

We thought about some of the lyrics. On the title track, there’s a lyric:

“I think we should put some mountains here.

Otherwise what are the characters going to fall off of?”

The song is all about how the oligarchs and huge corporations are reshaping the world to their will. They’re building shopping malls and freeways and new sports centres and drive-in banks. They’re reshaping everything for their own self-aggrandisement to the extent that we’re no more than characters in their play, and they even get to decide how we die. We realized this was the same sentiment that Jello Biafra was expressing in so many Dead Kennedys lyrics, just from an entirely different approach.

The music was unlike anything we had ever heard before, full of violins, saxophones, marimbas and organs. And was that a wolf? It was beautiful and then jarring at a moment’s notice. Laurie’s voice could sound quite soothing or, when she uses voice processing, terrifying.

A few years later, I discovered jazz, especially free jazz and it became an obsession which has lasted to this day. It eventually led me to The Free Jazz Collective. So when I discovered that Laurie was releasing a live album with a jazz band and an excellent one at that, I was extremely excited. The band is Sexmob, consisting of Steven Bernstein and Briggan Krauss on brass, Kenny Wollesen on drums, Douglas Wieselman on winds and guitar, and Tony Scherr on bass. They have an extensive discography which is well worth checking out. They like covering pop songs, and giving them an avant-garde jazz twist. I especially love Kenny Wolleson who I’ve seen perform many times, frequently in John Zorn projects.

The album, called Let X=X (Live), is full of the classics that every Laurie Anderson fan knows note for note and lyric for lyric, From The Air, O Superman, Let X=X, It Tango, Gravity’s Angel, Only An Expert , and on and on. But there’s new music to be found here as well. Church of Panic begins with a commentary on sadness and suicide and then turns on a dime and is funky as hell. There are lovely instrumental pieces like Looking At The Mo on. There’s an extremely funny (and at the same time sad) audience participation moment on Teachers which I won’t spoil. Junior Dad , from Lou Reed’s collaboration with Metallica, features Reed’s vocals with beautiful violin from Laurie.

There is quite a bit of sadness on this album at the state of the world and at all of the personal loss so many have suffered lately, but there is also an ember of hope to be found. It’s a hope that humanity might someday soon rediscover its compassion and decency.

It’s a sky-blue sky. 

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Jazzwerkstatt Peitz 2026: A New Day on the Karpfenteich

By Paul Acquaro

 

August 14 - 16, 2026, Peitz, Germany

 

Up a creaky set of wooden stairs to the lofts of the 1810 Huettenwerk of the historic Ironworks and Fishery Museum of Peitz, an imposing building full of old heavy tools for the iron foundry and fishing works in the surrounding carp ponds, is an exhibition on Free Jazz in the German Democratic Republic (former East Germany). It’s a traveling show, having accompanied Jazzwerkstatt concerts and festivals over the years. The first time I encountered it, at a Globe Unity Orchestra concert in Potsdam in 2014, it prompted me to dig for all of the Amiga Jazz records that I could find, leading to likely the most complete collection of East German jazz in New Jersey. 

Every year for the past ten years or so that I’ve been to the festival, I find myself drawn to the exhibition, like a pilgrim to worship. Each station of the exhibit offers a glimpse into this well documented but still mythical past, with a final station showcasing the Peitz Festival. Created in 1973 by two young free-thinking music fans, Uli Blobel and Peter “Jimi” Metag, both from the small East German town of Peitz, the festival drew other like minded youth to hear both East German musicians like Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and Conny Bauer as well as West German musicians like Alexander von Schlippenbach and other musicians from the other side of the Iron Curtain such as Barry Guy and Wadada Leo Smith. 

The names are many and the history can be read in the “Woodstock am Karpfenteich’ books as well as experienced here, and the story is a good one. Lasting until shut down by the government in 1982 and restarted by Blobel in 2011 under much different conditions, the Jazzwerkstatt Peitz festival of 2026 still draws some of those who trekked by train and Trabi to the original, but is also working to draw in a new audience whose connection to the past is being built by heading to upper floors via creaky wooden stairs.

Starting in 2024, Marie Blobel, the daughter of Uli Blobel, took over. Some of the changes Marie Blobel made included moving the festival from the center of Peitz to the grounds of the fishing museum amidst the carp ponds and injecting a festive flair into the weekend long event. With a packed schedule of concerts and a two kilometer hike to the Doener restaurant, festival goers are oriented to the wurst stand, the home cooked vegetarian dishes at the beer tent and the biergarten around the corner. Kids have the chance to make their own music with an imaginative looping station and everyone can climb aboard the “Karpfenbummler,” an electric miniature train that will take you in style from the festival to town to the train station. Coming into its own it the new form, Jazzwerkstatt Peitz was awarded the Deutsche Jazzpreis this past year.

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Gebhard Ullman’s Hemisphere 4 PLUS (biergarten stage)

The concerts began on Friday evening with the folk-meets-modern-jazz sounds of Trio Ivoire. In the trio's music, Hans Lüdemann’s piano and electronics and Christian Thomé's percussion and electronics are met with the organic tones of Aly Keïta’s balafon, an African instrument described as a “a gourd-resonated xylophone.” The music is upbeat and highly syncopated and thus quickly had some of the at-capacity audience on their feet swaying to their rhythms. As soon as the set ended, the audience began shuffling off, around the museum and cycler hostel (the Gurkenradweg - yes, the Pickle Bikepath - passes by the festival grounds), to a biergarten, where a stage has been set up under a lush copse of trees. Woodwindist Gebhard Ullman’s newest formation, Hemisphere 4 PLUS, featuring a mix of his current electric and acoustic groups, began with a chamber-jazz like combination of Anna Viechtl’s harp and Taiko Saito’s vibraphone. Disrupted by a crash of percussion, the group tumbled into a pulsating groove. Describing the music as “sculptures,” Ullmann led the group through an alluring mix of the delicate (add Silke Lange accordion to the chamber jazz components), hard-hitting (with Eric Schaefer on drums and Oliver Potratz on bass) and other-worldly (Liz Kosack’s keyboard and synthesizer).

 

OM (main stage)

A short shuffle back to the main stage where OM, the legendary avant-jazz-rock group, were ready to go. The original group members, saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, guitarist Christy Doran and bassist Bobby Burri were joined by drummer’s Gerry Hemingway and Tony Buck who have replaced the late Fredy Studer, as they did on the recent Intakt release Suedpol. After a short freely improvised intro from Leimgruber, a blast of rock energy from Doran gave root to a swirling squall of tones and the music slowly evolved into a groove led by the two percussionists. Moments of electric Miles colored the rich panoply of sound which ranged from deeply experimental to outright rock. An excellent set. 

Closing out the main stage for the evening was the quartet Selvhenter from Copenhagen. Saxophonist Sonja LaBianca and trombonist Maria Bertel and drummers Anja Jacobsen and Jaleh Negari crafted a dark, throbbing techno-jazz designed to get festival goers on their feet. It was quite late by the time the quartet’s final notes faded, but the show wasn’t over … yet, as drummer Willi Kellers and organizer Wolfgang ‘Assi’ Gloede were hosting a jam session in the cozy workshop building behind the main stage. Amongst painted fish sculptures and some serious looking tools, saxophonist Lotte Anker, keyboardist Liz Kosack and bassist Reza Askari joined Kellers in free-jazz improvisation that began with electronic percolations and slowly crescendoing notes that eventually balled into an exciting and thorny tumbleweed of sound. Following the opener, Gloede curated combinations of professional and hobbyist musicians who improvised into the wee hours.

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Wanja Slavin (sitting far right) (church)

Saturday’s full schedule began in the town church where saxophonist and festival Improviser-in-Residence Wanja Slavin, last year’s winner of the Brandenburg Jazzpreis - an award developed by Jazzwerkstatt and the state of Brandenburg - debuted a new composition with a band comprised of Peter Evans on trumpet, Leonard Huhn on bass clarinet, Almut Kühne with vocals and Kaja Draksler on piano. The rich 45-minute piece moved seamlessly between moods and approaches as darker moments were balanced by more hopeful passages. Repetitive arpeggios and prominent electronics formed a consistent tonal base accentuated by the dissonant church organ and several outstanding solos. 

 

A short while later back at the festival grounds, percussionist and singer Mariá Portugal’s EROSÃO septet took the stage in the rapidly heating up early afternoon. The music began with a brass fanfare as the group walked-on the stage and transitioned to Portugal singing over polyrhythmic accompaniment. Concentrated on a repertoire of songs that drew heavily on her Brazilian background, Portugal’s vocals took center stage, while the high-powered group of saxophonists Lotte Anker and Angelika Niescier, trombonists Matthias Müller and Moritz Wesp, tubist Carl Ludwig Hübsch and bassist Reza Askari provided solid support. Afterwards in the Huettenwerk building, the duo of Mohammad Mostafa Heydarian and Valentin Portron, performing on the traditional Iranian tanbur and bendir - a stringed instrument and hand drum - continued the expansion of the festival’s musical purview.

 

Impro-Concert: Tony Buck, Matthias Mueller, Taito Saito (workshop)

Two improvisation sessions, tucked away in the workshop building, injected a bit of the unexpected into the afternoon. The first introduced the British woodwindist Tamar Osborn with the American bassist Nick Dunston and drummer Gerry Hemingway. This first meeting proved fruitful. Clicking quickly, Osborn leaned into the deeper registers of her baritone sax, while Hemingway contributed a lithe, but full, pulse and Dunston provided a melodically swinging bridge between the two. The later improvisation session joined three Berlin based improvisors who have been in each other’s orbits but never played together before. Vibraphonist Taiko Saito, trombonist Matthias Müller and drummer Tony Buck played a set ranging from contemplative to combustive. 

Aki Takase, Robert Landfermann, Christian Lillinger. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

The mid-afternoon offered both unforgiving sun and an excellent set from pianist Aki Takase who was performing her upbeat, complex, and often humor-laced music with drummer Christian Lillinger and bassist Robert Landfermann on the main stage. The trio’s music is impressive, Lillinger, with his agitated, driving approach is a perfect rhythmic partner for Takase’s own intensity, and Landfermann’s rhythmic and melodic playing adds a nicely fitting layer. Nearing the end of the set, a dramatic moment ensured when Takase suddenly collapsed from the heat. Fortunately, it was reported that the pianist was already on the move to the next concert in Austria that evening. 

 

Darius Jones & Otomo Yoshihide Quartet. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

A little later the shows were back in the biergarten, where the trees provided some relief from the 100 degree heat, and the Czech quartet Edemit added a jolt of avant-rock to the day while Neiscer and Portugal picked up in a duo form the earlier set. As the day began to cool, the action moved back on the main stage where Darius Jones and Otomo Yoshihide (alto saxophone and guitar, respectively) augmented by bassist Nick Dunston and drummers Gerald Cleaver and Yasuhiro Yoshigaki provided an electric set. Following a rousing Coltrane-like introduction, the rhythm section gave Jones a rumbling foundation for his soaring melody to which Yoshihide responded with a feedback-laden solo, pushing the music to an early peak. The music ebbed and flowed, from dark atmospheric wanderings to high-energy free-jazz explosions over pulsating rhythms. Afterwards, the UK-based Ill Considered featuring Tamar Osborn (Idris Rahman on saxophone, Liran Donin on bass, Emre Ramazanoglu on drums and Osborn with various woodwinds) closed out the night with a set heavy on beats and Middle Eastern-tinged scales. The set ended with about half the remaining audience dancing in front of the stage.

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Perhaps in normal times, it would have been a disappointment but after the previous day’s oven-like disposition, the cool, rain-soaked grey morning greeting festival goers on Sunday was welcome. A church service in the Huettenwerk started the day for the faithful while out on the festival yard, the others were huddling under the drink stand tents sipping coffee while the bratwurst man started up his grill.  

First musical act, Richard Koch’s Ray of Light was the only one to be seen under the steadily raining sky. They began with the trumpeter playing a regal anthem and launching into a cheery, melodic tune filled with the folkish sounds of Fabiana Striffler’s violin and Valentin Butt’s accordion along with the rhythm support of Andreas Lang’s bass and Nora Thiele’s frame drums. The “gute laune” (good mood) music with its blend of up-tempo jazz, classical and folk elements provided a lighthearted start to another long day of music. Their timing was perfect too, as Ray of Light reached the end of their set, the first beams of sun reached the festival grounds. 

 

Have You Ever Been Experienced. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

The opening set was followed by Brandenburg Jazzpreis. Prize winner, guitarist Andreas Willers, who was to present his Hendrix inspired group Have You Ever Been Experienced, featuring a top-notch group of Berlin based musicians: Amy Green on vocals, Rieko Okuda on piano, Jan Roder on bass and Christian Marien on drums, was unfortunately too ill to attend. Despite this, the group, still gave a rousing performance, taking well-worn Hendrix themes and spinning them anew. Okuda took over the guitar solos with a distorted synthesizer, while Roder and Marien made sure the foundations were securely fortified. Most revelatory were Green’s vocals, which retained enough of the melody for song-recognition and enough improvisational liberty to free them from nostalgic interpretation -- for example, an updated interpretation of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl set to a free-jazz take of ‘If 6 was 9.’

The final two sets of the festival moved back into town to the church. The first was the Polish duo of vocalist Maniucha Bikont and bassist Ksawery Wójciński performing a set of haunting folksongs. Discovered through Bikont’s musicology research, the songs came from a disappearing tribe in the Ukraine, with themes that touched on the universal: suffering, responsibility and expecting better manners from the dead. Performed solely with voice and bass, the music filled the church mesmerizingly.

Konradism. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

The closing set to the festival may have also been one of the most anticipated. Connecting the festival’s eras, trombonist and archetype of the original Peitz festival and East German free-jazz in general, trombonist Conny Bauer presented the large group Konradisms with an extended composition of “chamber big-band” that mixed generous improvisation and dramatic riffs. Joining Bauer was a cross section of a younger generation of German-based musicians: Nils Wogram on trombone, Maxine Troglauer also on bass trombone, Gerhard Gschlössl on tuba, Claudio Puntin on bass clarinet, Maria Reich on violin, Emily Wittbrodt on cello, Matthias Bauer on bass, Dag Magnus Narvesen on drums and Rieko Okuda on piano. Often breaking into small combos - trombone and piano, tuba and violin - the solos would grow intense and eventually congeal around common themes. A stand out was Puntin whose bass clarinet playing ranged from the sound of a flute to deep, woody resonance.

After an intense two and half days of music, the two last concerts were a satisfying and full-circle-moment ending to the festival. Overall, one could sense a tilt towards the new - nights that ended with experimental but danceable music, a series of risky but successful workshop concerts with musicians meeting for the first time, an infusion of world-music elements, and a loosening, but not denying, deference to the past, showing a way forward.

 

More about the Peitz festival:

• Review of the 50th Anniversary Peitz Festival 
• Review of the Jazzwerkstatt Peitz Boxset
• Jazzwerkstatt Peitz website.

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Henry Threadgill / Vijay Iyer / Dafnis Prieto - Fifteen (Nonesuch, 2026)

By Martin Schray

Of course, this trio is a supergroup, like so many of pianist Vijay Iyer’s latest ensembles.

Percussionist Dafnis Prieto may be less well-known, but the now 82-year-old saxophonist and flutist Henry Threadgill is all the more so. Despite his age, he has been more productive and acclaimed than ever. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his most important work of the past 15 years, In for a Penny, In for a Pound (Zooid; 2015). It’s possibly the most consistent realization of Threadgill’s compositional system, in which he works with predetermined interval sequences that provide the musicians with a harmonic and melodic framework within which they are also expected to improvise - that is, improvisation itself becomes part of a highly complex composition. What’s fascinating about this is that the music initially seems almost chaotic, but is in fact organized with extraordinary precision. As intellectually fascinating as this music is on the one hand, it has also faced criticism on the other hand, that the whole thing is too contrived and too lifeless, too close to new classical avant-garde music. That kind of criticism can certainly not applied to “Fifteen”.

The album title refers to the number of years that have passed since this trio first came together at a benefit event for the New York Jazz Gallery. Here, all three compose and improvise; recurring melodic patterns are readily - even eagerly - embraced, bringing the music closer to mainstream jazz than to free jazz. This is primarily due to Dafnis Prieto’s Cuban influences and his light, elastic groove, which remains free and almost impossible to count. This is perhaps most clearly evident in “I Want a Map”, which comes across more like a rock song, with Threadgill’s saxophone initially taking up the melody, which is developed by the piano and built up relatively straightforwardly by the drums to a crescendo. Rarely has Threadgill sounded so accessible; he uses a fair amount of growl, and his clear sound from the Air years is barely recognizable. But he wouldn’t be Henry Threadgill if he didn’t gradually incorporate small atonal elements and offbeat shifts that disrupt the piece’s static structure.

Things get significantly wilder on “Fire City“, then. Prieto plays less to the beat. Here, he actually acts more like a free jazz drummer. Iyer, too, plays fewer tonal harmonies, and Threadgill’s sound is indeed clearer and more abstract on this track. The piece is denser, less airy than others on the album, but perhaps that’s precisely what makes it the most exciting, as it gallops off in different directions several times without ever losing its way.

The most unusual track is the album’s finale, “On the Way”. Here, the different compositional and improvisational logics stand in direct contrast to one another: Henry Threadgill’s carefully balanced vocabulary meets the rhythmic power and temporal sophistication of Iyer and Prieto, opening up spaces for dense ensemble polyrhythms and incisive solo passages. At times, you can literally tap your foot along - you almost feel like dancing. Who would ever have expected that from an album featuring Henry Threadgill?

This is definitely one of the albums that will appear on many year-end charts.

Fifteen is available on vinyl, as a CD and as a download. You can listen to it and buy it on Vijay Iyer’s bandcamp site:

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Harri Sjöström and Guilherme Rodrigues - Treasures Within

On Sundays, we like to take the opportunity to share something aside from an album review, like interviews we've conducted or videos that we have found and enjoyed, and sometimes, something entirely different, like liner notes. The following notes, written by Paul  Acquaro, accompany the adventurous duo release Treasures Within by Harri Sjöström and Guilherme Rodrigues. 

This album is the second document of the duo following The Treasures Are. The Treasures Within is comprised of three encounters in the studio and live starting in 2019 at Munich's Artoxin Gallery followed by the Berlin locations Toolbox Gallery in 2021 and Berlin Room in 2022.   

By Paul Acquaro 

What makes musical chemistry? What is it that make some combinations simply work? While there are many examples like Paul and John, Bennink and Brotzmann, and Parker and Drake to draw on, it also seems that saxophonist Harri Sjöström and cellist Guilherme Rodrigues have some insights into this phenomenon as well.

Here, it begins with creaky bow strokes on the cello to which squeaky tones from a soprano saxophone are carefully inserted. It lasts only a minute before a reset, the next track and a new route chosen, but in those previous few seconds one could hear a lot about a musical relationship. There is no hesitancy, no time needed to discuss and calibrate, it is a meeting of mutually sympathetic musical minds. Rodrigues explains, "for me the way Harri approaches the saxophone gets pretty close, imagination wise, to my imaginarium. And because of that, we play well together intuitively."

The next track begins with a rather classical sounding approach and then quickly becomes an intertwining of melodic strands that are in some ways hard to differentiate, but thrive on an inherent contrast. Rodrigues continues, "both instruments have colors that naturally match and therefore, taken together, the result of our music becomes treasured!"

Indeed, by the time we are at track 3, which happens quickly with these miniatures, the melodic ideas have taken a different turn. Sjöström is bouncing around a delicate melodic idea while Rodrigues provides textural accents. Suddenly, we are at track 4 and now the cello is responsible for the melodic twists while the saxophone finds the perfect points to interject.

Sjöström also gives some hints as to why this pairing works so well, "I think we both share a strong melodic instinct, even within freely improvised music. There is a constant dialogue between us, and I always feel Guilherme is incredibly alert to every subtle change in the music."

So, what is it about these subtle changes that are so powerful? Well, for one, the conversation is always diverting course. Like on track 5, which suddenly turns inwards, darker hues and longer tones fill the space. Sjöström simply says, "we also enjoy strong contrasts and often abrupt changes and aren't afraid to move between intimacy and intensity." 

< Please see Bandcamp to read the rest of the notes and listen to the music >  

 

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Greg Kelley and Yoona Kim - Distractions for Trumpet and Ajaeng (Relative Pitch, 2026)

By Brian Earley

 

The “distractions” of Greg Kelley’s trumpet and Yoona Kim’s ajaeng on this new album for Relative Pitch are hardly simple diversions for the listener, as one often thinks about the term. Actually, I find the music on this lovely duet recording to be at various times quieting, disruptive, disturbing, and even a challenge. Listeners familiar with Greg Kelley’s recorded output will not be shocked by what they hear, and at times this album reminds me a great deal of the trumpet player’s provocative, whisper-improvising duo Nmperign. Actually, the other half of that duo, Bhob Rainey, mixed and mastered Distractions.

 

Kelley performs wonderfully and utilizes a reticence that nearly always prevents him from easily erupting into high energy bursts. His patience and discipline are admirable. The unexplored story here, however, is ajaeng player Yoona Kim. I was not familiar with Kim’s instrument of choice, and this reality is part of what first drew me to this recording. An ajaeng is a Korean zither-like instrument–think a bendier, more temperamental cello laid on its back. It can be plucked, but is often bowed with a stick or a more standard Western bow of horsehair.

 

Kim is a polymath of musical styles and performs at least seven distinct genres, according to her website. Free improvisation and jazz are two of these, as are contemporary and traditional Korean music. The others are more surprising: Delta Blues, Klezmer, and Appalachian Old-Time Music. Despite an extensive set of online live performances, Kim is still relatively young and has only three recordings as a leader to her name. Distractions is one of these, and the other two, Deltat Dokkaebi and Modern Gagok, are all but impossible to find. A strong outing with pianist Anthony Coleman can be viewed here . This dazzling performance has a mere 25 views and 2 likes as of this writing. Free Jazz Blog readers, you know what to do.

 

With all this being said, Yoona Kim is particularly challenging to define, though she has performed in some of the revered free jazz spaces (The Stone, for a week-long residence in July of 2026) and studied or played with many names readers of the FJC are quite familiar with: Tom Rainey, Chris Corsano, Joe Morris, and Linda May Han Oh. And of course, Greg Kelley.

 

Distractions for Trumpet and Ajaeng is a wonderful album, full of quiet restraint and unsettling surprises. While the opening track, “Display,” starts with insistent blowing and bending, the first minute and a half is about as busy as the album gets. Kim bows and pulls the strings of her ajaeng while Greg Kelley flutters a raspy, metallic horn down into registers so low and frequencies so wobbly I had to stop the music to see if something was wrong with my speakers.

 

The aesthetic largely, however, is quiet. To be more precise, silence that alternates with tiny eruptions of activity. Listen to the second track, the lovely “Dispute,” for this as Yoona Kim rips and bows urgently just before the one minute mark, at which point the recording falls into total silence. When the musicians return, Greg Kelley is more active and works his way into an exploration of one wavering note. This interplay builds as the two play an eerie high-harmony fit for hungry ghosts that largely bends and vibrates as it squeals and scrapes.

 

While the dynamics never really reach the loudest of volumes, all of this silence makes certain mid-level insertions of noise jarring. For example, on my favorite piece on the album, the closer “Disappear,” Kelley forces air through his horn with such subtle power, and balances a series of soft notes so sinister, that my dog ran out of the room when I first played it.

 

This, of course, is the power of understatement, and the album as a whole serves as a wonderful reminder that so often in music, as in our day-to-day laboring, what produces joy or excitement, as well as heaviness, sorrow, or surprise is how the moments fall together. Distractions is a delight of quiet echoes and disquieting interruptions that is well worth the listen.

 

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FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS VOL. 1-3 (We Jazz Records, 2026)

By Ferruccio Martinotti 

From Finland with love. A couple of glasses of kossu, a book of Arto Paasilinna, a record of the hardcore punk legends Kaaos, and then a movie (Calamari Union, yes) of Aki Kaurismaki, our true Homeric hero, have always been more than enough to attest to our fascination with that wonderful country. But there's more: a record label that, with the icastic name "We Jazz," helps illuminate our music like a sonic aurora borealis. The operational branches are “We Jazz Records”, established in 2016 to present "cutting-edge music on the jazz continuum in various formats, with vinyl being the primary format," and its younger sibling, “Other Power,” "a platform of all great music that doesn't logically fall under the scope of We Jazz." Both labels are curated and designed by Matti Nives. Should it be not enough satisfactory, then know that a quarterly magazine (actually a real glossy volume with color photographs) guarantees you the best editorial coverage of jazz/free/impro music available out there. For those not yet familiar with Helsinki’s alleys, we'd like to map the area with three, red marked, albums from the catalog: Mike Reed, "The Separatist Party"; Cosmic Ear, "Traces"; and Pat Thomas & XT, "Strata, Act." Completely different records with an enormous musical profile as a common factor, they represent an artistic asset value able to guarantee immortality to any label. 

We Jazz's new initiative includes the digital release of 5 tracks per month by bands not part of its roster, for the benefit of Bandcamp subscribers, and the kick-off is provided by this compilation which, with volumes 1-3, covers the period from January through March. We are dealing with such a cornucopia of music that it's worth a quick overview of all the musicians involved. UUSI AIKA (Sammaltuka). Strings, harp, wind instruments, drive the listener towards Finnish woodland mythology, Indian raga-inspired colors and Asian minimalism. HENRIETTE EILERTSEN TRIO (Fly Ikaros). Flautist's new band delivers a captivating composition with balanced interactions that at the same time manages to be intimate and almost limitlessly expansive. LAU NAU (Kosmospyorat). Synth drones mesh with the sound of a living garden, bees buzzing along beneath singing birds while simple chords carry dreams on oscillating waves. FELIX ALEXANDER LYBECK (Slapat Allting Hem). The magic of a Nordic forest, strange, weird folk notes intertwined with indie intimacy, creating music that feels both grounded and unearthly. JYVASKYLA WORKSHOP BAND 1970 (Nadaswaram). A previously unissued post-bop gem, this concert captures a set of groovy, adventurous and exotic compositions that firmly placed Finland on the global jazz map. LINNEA TALP (She came out of the white fog). The pipe organ is pushed in an unusual manner that allows the instrument's character to be revealed, gently, patiently, as though being teased out of hiding. ALAN BRAUFMAN (Angels). Alto sax and flute, among the actors of the 70s "loft" scene in New York, he returns after a long hiatus to lead an all star team (Patricia Brennan, Luke Stewart and Chad Taylor) between post-bop and oriental influences. FYSIIKKA & KEMIA (Luontokokemuksia). “Rural psych-jazz improvisations by Finnish bastard sons of Arbete & Fritid". Or, free music beyond the threshold where Swedish prog and Finnish weirdness collide. PIETU ARVOLA (Kummallinen ilmestys). Experimental tools like the daxophone and a dual looper called Coquantus are used to process textures combined with modular synths. MARK HARWOOD (The Course of a Year). Australian born, Berlin based, he runs a platform that works at the intersection of experimental music, performance, literature and visual art. GARD NILSSEN ACOUSTIC UNITY (Acoustic Unity). The sound of the sublime trio wrapped in the brutalist architecture and the magnetic audience of Barbican Centre, London 2018, delivers sheer, top notch, jazz aesthetic. HATKA (Peace Piece). Free, electro-acoustic textures and raw impro for an intense and playful outcome by a Transatlantic ensemble of three seasoned improvisers. KADI VIJA (Hands). A vocal instrumentalist who treats the human voice as a horn or a rhythm machine, here accompanied by piano, synth, vibraphone and percussions. PHARDAH (Village of Skulls). Featuring veterans of the Finnish experimental music and free jazz scene, along with a younger generation drummer, to unleash a vigorous bass riff, eventually accelerating into a wild collective gallop.

If you're looking for a way (one of a zillion…) to epitomize in 1 hour what “Free” in music means, this compilation could be the perfect spot to pitch your tent. For our part, we already put in the collimator Vol. 2, sure thing. 

Check it out on Bandcamp. 

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SML - Spontaneous Music Live (International Anthem, 2026)

By Martin Schray

A few years ago, the International Anthem label was pretty much the hottest shit in the improvised music genre. Irreversible Entanglements, the late Jaimie Branch, Ben LaMar Gay, Angel Bat Dawid, Makaya McCraven, Jeff Parker, Damon Locks - they had them all. Lately, though, the focus seemed to have shifted more towards world music and alternative stuff. That’s where SML’s new album comes in at just the right time to set the record straight a bit.

SML is an International Anthem in-house supergroup consisting of Josh Johnson (saxophones), Gregory Uhlmann (guitar), Jeremiah Chiu (synthesizer, electronics), Anna Butterss (bass) and Booker Stardrum (drums), which has released two studio albums to date - Small Medium Large (2024) (which could also be read as a moniker for SML) and How You Been (2025). The hallmarks of their music can already be found on these two albums: repetitive structures, subtle shifts in the architecture of the pieces, and an affinity for deliberate monotony and world music. However, the term “studio album” isn’t entirely accurate, since How You Been, for example, consists of performances from the Empty Bottle in Chicago, the Tractor Tavern in Seattle, and the Zebulon in Los Angeles, which were condensed into three- and four-minute highlights. What might sound somewhat dismissive here are, in fact, moments of immense concentration and intensity, distilled from a continuous stream of consciousness and an almost magical band chemistry. The reason is simple: SML are a live band. And the references to their musical influences are obvious: 1970s Miles Davis, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Neu!, King Crimson and Can.

You can really feel this in the way the band tries to make the pull of their music physically palpable during live performances. They create a form of ecstatic minimalism by stretching individual motifs to the point of trance. Spontaneous Music Livewas once again recorded in front of a live audience at Zebulon in Los Angeles. What sets it apart from its predecessors is the immediacy of the recording and the near-total absence of post-production. The album consists of two long tracks, each over twenty minutes in length, and demonstrates what SML is capable of when their music isn’t forced into the confines of a standard song length. The result of these session-style improvisations reveals great discipline, dynamics, and a distinct artistic vision. Take “Roundabouts (Live)”, for example, the B-side of the LP. It starts with a delicate saxophone melody, metronome-like drumming and a concise synthesizer riff, which eventually spiral completely out of control. What Spontaneous Music Livesucceeds in doing - unlike its two predecessor albums - is to bring the psychedelic nature of the music into sharp focus.

It’s easy to imagine the band playing at the big festivals of the late 1960s - the hippies would have loved their style and sound. Actually, it’s music to “turn on, tune in, and drop out“, except that you don’t need drugs to enjoy it - the music itself is the drug. SML are trippy in the best possible way.

Spontaneous Music Live is available on vinyl, cassette and as a download.

You can listen to it and buy it here: 

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Pascal Niggenkemper, Sakina Adbou, Liz Kosack, Gerald Cleaver - The Ocean Within Us (Subran, 2026)

By Stuart Broomer

In recent years, bassist/composer Pascal Niggenkemper’s music has been increasingly preoccupied with issues of global survival, from the project 'le 7ème continent', named for the vast expanse of garbage assembling in the Pacific Ocean, to the recent Tuvalu, an expansive suite dedicated to the coming erasure by the sea of a Pacific island. The interest in the environment is an expanding concern in Niggenkemper’s work, but it has been evident since the early years of his career. His first release as a band leader, with a trio completed by Simon Nabatov and Gerald Cleaver, was entitled Upcoming Hurricane, with each collective improvisation named for an aspect of the wind. Those concerns for the state of the environment aren’t simply tacked on to his work: they’re occasions for purposeful reflection and fuel a creative drive to make his messages genuinely impactful.

The Ocean Within Usis genuinely alive with both creative invention and a sense of urgency. Beyond their instruments – Niggenkemper’s bass,

voice and motors; Sakina Abdou’s tenor saxophone and recorder; Liz Kosack’s keys; and Gerald Cleaver’s drums and electronics – each musician’s voice is wholly engaged, whether it’s as singer, speaker or subject for electronic transformation. Everything from Abdou’s raw-edged tenor to Cleaver’s extensive electronic arsenal contributes to the effect here, to the point that the bubbling electronics and muffled, echoing voices can suggest that we are already immersed.

While several brief tracks contribute to the cumulative effect, it’s the longer, generally looser works – “diatomées”, “mami wata” (a near relative of calypso) and “lungs of the world” (distant hiphop), each around ten minutes, each sometimes layering multiple genres, calling up compound moods and responses – that most strongly evoke a nagging awareness of our complex relationships to multiple cultures, environments, terrains, economies and seas. Thanks, Pascal, for reminding us, and with such palatable music.

Tellingly, one cannot separate the subject from the effect, testimony to Niggenkemper’s art and the multiple contributions of his stellar partners here. Essential listening and subject of reflection.

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Leo Genovese / Takashi Sugawa / Alfred Vogel - Unleashed (Boomslang, 2026)

 

By Eyal Hareuveni

In April 2025, Argentinian, Brooklyn-based pianist Leo Genovese just finished a concert with The Mars Volta at Madison Square Garden and had ninety free minutes before the tour bus would move on. He called his friends - Japanese, Tokyo-based double bass player (and cellist) Takeshi Sugawa, one of the busiest musicians in the Japanese scene, leader of his Banksia trio, who hosted Genovese in his debut album as bandleader (Outgrowing, 2018, with drummer Tom Rainey), who was in New York as part of the Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio North American tour, and Austrian drummer Alfred Vogel, of How Noisy Are the Rooms? And Vanish trios, the founder of Boomslang Records and the Bezau Beatz festival, who was visiting New York and had previously recorded with Genovese (Eyes to the Sun, Boomslang, 2024, with fellow Argentinian sax player Camila Nebbia).

Sugawa and Vogel did not know each other, and the ad hoc trio met for dinner in a small restaurant and immediately felt the need to play together.  Genovese, Sugawa, and Vogel promised each other that they had to repeat this experience. It did not take long. In May 2025, Genovese played in Berlin with Esperanza Spalding, Sugawa was touring in Europe, and Vogel booked the Bonello Studio in Berlin for an all-night, free-improvised recording session that produced Unleashed.

The music is quite spacious and understated, sketching its movement with delicate, skeletal strokes, without a plan and with no aim of reaching cohesive structures or grooves, as if asking the listener to be an active part of its creation and imagine where it can land. Genovese, Sugawa, and Vogel are attuned to every sound and gesture, as each one opens more sonic threads, but without attaching themselves to any of them. Melodic veins rise and dissolve organically, but the deep listening, deeply poetic, spontaneous, primal, and collective, egalitarian process is the essence of this trio. The trio distills its dynamics on the poetic, 13-minute “A World of One Colour”. Letting go and just being in the moment when everything opens, or, as Sugawa puts it, “A spirit that wanders, that lives across times and places.”

Hopefully, Genovese, Sugawa, and Vogel would find time in their busy schedules to take this trio on the road, letting it blossom even more on a tight tour.

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