Torino Jazz Festival 2026

By Ferruccio Martinotti

TJF 2026 (Aprile 25th-May 2nd)

April 25th, Liberation Day, is a national holiday particularly felt in Turin, a city that was the heart of the partisan resistance to Nazi-Fascism. In these times of right-wing resurgence infecting our lives almost everywhere, it is even more meaningful to celebrate it. For the jazz addicted, the date coincides with the start of the Torino Jazz Festival, now in its 14th edition: in addition to the concerts’ schedule, lectures and films celebrate the centenary of the births of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Below is a synopsis of what we saw.

Photo: Acid Rain Production

Interviews excerpts: La Stampa

FABRIZIO BOSSO “ABOUT TEN” - April 25 (Teatro Colosseo)

The great trumpet virtuoso pays homage to Ellington and Gillespie with his group (Julian Oliver Mazzariello on piano, Jacopo Ferrazza on double bass, and Nicola Angelucci on drums) expanded to include six young talents (Stefano Bergamaschi, Andrea Priola on trumpets, Didier Yon on trombone, Lorenzo Simoni on alto saxophone, Sophia Tomelleri on tenor saxophone, and Andrea Iurianello on baritone saxophone) for refined and swinging arrangements that bring a fresh take on the great classics and an intriguing interpretation of his own songs. Our main courses in the Festival’s menu are different, but it's gonna be a marathon, better to start off calmly and then, as Ken Vandermark teaches us, it's a good and healthy habit to take a dose of Duke whenever we can.

MARC RIBOT HURRY RED TELEPHONE - April 26 (Hiroshima Mon Amour) 

After last fall's intimate concert at the Folk Club in support of Map of a Blue City, Marc Ribot returns to the city with his new group/project Hurry Red Telephone and, as expected, the sold-out venue is hit by a magnitude 9 tsunami. If it was well known that Chad Taylor is one of the drummers writing the history of nowadays drumming, less predictable and totally jaw-dropping was the metronomic, telluric fury of double bassist Sebastian Steinberg (anyone here remember Soul Coughing?). Orderly and precise, even too entangled in the score, Briggan Krauss's alto contribution alternates in a crazy, hyper-noise-saturated piece with the second guitar, reminiscent of the most ferocious Bill Orcutt. Marc described the group to us like this: “It was a trio with Chad Taylor and Henry Grimes that has created some of the best improvisations I’ve ever been involved in. I’ve wanted to continue collaborating with Chad ever since Henry passed away. And with this band, I’ve finally found the right lineup. Sebastian Steinberg was my favorite in the late ’80s and early ’90s, before he moved to Los Angeles. He and Chad make a truly exceptional rhythm section, the two most intuitive musicians I’ve ever known and Briggan Krauss is an extraordinary alto saxophonist.” What Ribot brings out, however, hunched over his old amplified acoustic guitar, is always astonishing: whether it’s picking or strumming, noisy no-punk or mellow calypso arpeggios, his signature asserts itself, whatever the declination, in a peculiar way, never predictable or self-indulgent, as only top notch players can offer. A double encore loudly demanded by the roaring audience and a final "loving" tribute to Donald with "Aliens in the White House" send us off to bed happily.

FYI, in the same interview, Marc assured us that the stop in Berlin before leaving for Japan with the Cubanos will be used to record their debut album. To say we can't wait to hear it is an understatement...

MORGENBARN - April 27 (Teatro Juvarra) 

A recently formed Italian-Estonian-German trio, characterized by the compositional and performing flair of its members, Matteo Poggi (trombone, electronics), Maria Faust (alto sax, electronics), and Tilo Weber (drums, percussion, vibraphone). Formed after a chance meeting at the 2024 Sudtirol Jazzfestival and an impromptu concert, they sparked an explosive chemistry. Their performance exudes naturalness, freedom and curiosity, resulting in a captivating and courageous sound that respects no boundaries: Weber's vibraphone and drumming set the stage for Faust's explosive sax, while Poggi, alternating between trombone and electronics, enriches the mix phenomenally. We weren't familiar with them and they were really a pleasant surprise.

FUNK OFF + VOX ARTIFICIOSA “THIS IS NOT AN ORCHESTRA” - April 27 (Teatro Alfieri)

Take Funkoff, a historic large Italian ensemble founded 28 years ago by Dario Cecchini and composed of three trumpets (Paolo Bini, Nicola Cellai, Emiliano Bassi), two baritone saxophones (Giacomo Bassi, Nicola Cipriani), two alto saxophones (Sergio Santelli, Tiziano Panchetti), two tenor saxophones (Andrea Pasi, Claudio Giovagnoli), a sousaphone (Giordano Gerini), a snare drum (Francesco Bassi), a bass drum (Alessandro Suggelli), cymbals (Luca Bassani) and percussion (Daniele Bassi); add to that the group Vox Artificiosa led by Cristina Zavalloni, one of the most incredible voices on the international scene, accompanied by Rise Beatbox (vocal beatboxer), Mario Marzi (soprano, alto, baritone sax) and Achille Succi (alto sax, bass clarinet) and how high could be the risk of an indigestible music meal, such as pineapple on the pizza? High, of course, very high. Instead, contrary to all expectations, the two worlds merge, collide, dialogue and break down in smaller groups, then they recompose themselves into a "Not Orchestra" that unleashes thermonuclear energy, imposing a new language that erases the original elements. The arrangements of the two leaders, Dario Cecchini and Achille Succi, allow Cristina's stratospheric baroque "bel canto" to intertwine admirably with the wind instruments, the vocal beat of Rise, the percussive street dance and the jazzy cavalcades of the orchestral reeds. "James Brown and Handel dance arm in arm," their press release reads, and believe us, they really did.

SLIDERS - April 28 (Teatro Juvarra)

As modest jazz chroniclers, we always willingly rely on the Great Academics who write on the Free Jazz Collective, ensuring that this forum is "The only forum that matters," to quote The Clash. So, should the Professors be aware of any group, other than this one we're writing about, consisting solely of three trombones, please tell us, they know where to find us. As far as we know, the Sliders (Federico Vignato, Federico Pierantoni, and Lorenzo Manfredini) represent a unique ensemble, capable of demonstrating the unique versatility of this instrument, exploring its infinite timbral possibilities in a way that's never boring or repetitive. Brave and courageous guys.

FYI, their self-titled album, released in the fall of 2024 by Hora Records, features original compositions alongside reinterpretations of John Coltrane, Egberto Gismonti, Carla Bley and Duke Ellington.

NORMA WINSTONE & GLAUCO VENIER - April 28 (Teatro Monterosa) 

Seen a few months ago as a trio, again with Venier on piano, one of the legends of British jazz returns to the city. Throughout her long and extraordinary career, she has helped redefine the role of the voice and its relationship to sound in contemporary jazz. The duo, formed in 1999, continues the journey Norma embarked on with Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, Steve Swallow and her historic ECM recordings, which testify to her unique vocal work, thanks to which she remains an essential figure in vocal jazz. The timbre, verve, and stage presence, despite her age, remain dazzling.

GIORGIO LI CALZI & SIMONE SIMS LONGO “THEATRUM ANATOMICUM” - April 29 (Palazzo degli Istituti Anatomici) 

Call it “site specific”: anatomical analysis of sound, disintegrated and recomposed into new forms, a musical autopsy report made of noise and silence, light and darkness, with the audience, in the semicircular University hall, focused and engaged in the unveiling of the sonic sphere and visual perception offered by the great Li Calzi (trumpet, analog, digital and electromechanical instruments) and Sims Longo (electroacoustic computer music, visual score). The intermedial performance, featuring synthetic textures, manipulated samples and ever-changing sensory environments, is fully functional and the location (the University's Anatomy Institute) adds further impact.

FRANCO D’ANDREA TRIO “SOMETHING BLUESY AND MORE” - April 29 (Teatro Monterosa) 

It's impossible not to pay homage to the great Maestro, creator of some of the most extraordinary piano works known (for those who haven't already, listen to the recordings with the Modern Art Trio featuring Franco Tonani and Bruno Tommaso). Here, he blends his distinctive rhythmic and intervallic inventions with early blues and the scores of Ellington and Coltrane, accompanied by the amazing Roberto Gatto on drums (a collaborator with George Coleman, Enrico Pieranunzi, Chet Baker, John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Billy Cobham, Richard Galliano, Joe Zawinul, and Pat Metheny, among others) and the young Gabriele Evangelista on double bass, offering a free and communicative performance, in which D’Andrea's marvelous centrifugal thrusts are held in orbit by the gravity of the Blues Planet. A moving, well deserved, final ovation from the sold-out theater greets D’Andrea and his pards.

ITALIAN INSTABILE ORCHESTRA “PLAYS ELLINGTON” - April 30 (Casa Teatro Ragazzi e Giovani) 

It’s Duke time again. After years of hiatus, the legendary Orchestra, founded in 1990 (which has hosted giants such as Giorgio Gaslini and Mario Schiano during its career) is back. Today, the band features Gianluigi Trovesi (alto saxophone, alto clarinet), Daniele Cavallanti (tenor saxophone), Roberto Ottaviano (soprano saxophone), Carlo Actis Dato (baritone saxophone, bass clarinet), Pino Minafra (didjeridoo, megaphone), Alberto Mandarini, Fulvio Sigurtà, Flavio Davanzo (trumpets), Giampiero Malfatto, Sebi Tramontana, Lauro Rossi (trombones), Emanuele Parrini (violin), Paolo Damiani (cello), Giovanni Maier (double bass), Fabrizio Puglisi (piano), Tiziano Tononi (drums), Vincenzo Mazzone (percussion), and is conducted and arranged by Giancarlo Schiaffini. The absolute caliber of the musicians, the stylistic signature of the large unity, at the service of Ellington's scores, ensure that the equation is perfectly resolved after the very first notes.

FRANCESCA TANDOI + JAZZ ACOUSTIC STRINGS QUARTET - April 30 (Teatro Monterosa)

With over 20 recordings under her belt (three as pianist for Scott Hamilton's quartet) and significant international critical acclaim for her album "Bop Wep," the captivating Francesca Tandoi is now one of the most prominent figures in contemporary European jazz. This concert brings to the stage the project linked to her latest album, "Hope," in which her trio (Stefano Senni on piano and Pasquale Fiore on drums) dialogues with a string quartet (Cesare Carretta, Silvia Maffeis on violins, Monica Vetrini on viola and Enrico Guerzoni on cello, Cristiano Arcelli on arrangements), blending piano virtuosity, orchestral writing and contemporary sensibility. Class and charme galore.

LISA ULLEN “TRANSPOSING SUN” - May 1 (Teatro Juvarra)

No one better than the Seoul-born, Stockholm-based pianist can describe what we heard: “explorations of life through sound, using rhythmic and melodic fragments, seeking to create music with multiple layers where different textures and rhythms can intertwine.” The concert centers on the song “After Sun,” from the 2024 album “Heirloom” (The Wire album of the year) in which, with the assistance of composer and sound engineer John Chantler, Lisa explores the possibilities of the piano and the unique sonority of the hall, enveloping the audience in a peculiar soundscape. Yet another confirmation of the terrific power of women in free music.

BILL FRISELL & EYVIND KANG “THE GREAT FLOOD” - May 1 (Lingotto Auditorium) 

The film The Great Food is the result of a collaboration between director Bill Morrison (Oscar-nominated for “Incident” and author of Decasia, the first film of the third millennium to be included in the US Library of Congress) and Bill Frisell. The film was inspired by the catastrophic Mississippi flood of 1927, the largest in American history; an event of immense proportions that affected thousands of people, especially African Americans, who were forced to emigrate to the North. The catastrophe also changed music, starting with the blues and its protagonists, some of whom had witnessed the flood and recounted it in their songs: electric blues was beginning to blossom. In 2012, Morrison found and assembled the filmed testimonies of that catastrophe in unparalleled evocative forms and Frisell created a visionary musical narrative, presented here in a previously unreleased duo version with violinist Eyvind Kang. Frisell told us: “Morrison and I have often collaborated, but he would simply take pieces of mine and superimpose them on his images, but here we worked side by side. We went first to Memphis, then to New Orleans and finally up the Mississippi: almost a century has passed since then, but it's as if history were repeating itself, amidst political mistakes, ecological disasters and corruption. At first, the other musicians looked at the score, trying to learn it, then, over time, the images and music became a unified whole that took on a life of their own.” The film is amazing, as is the perfectly calibrated and coherent soundtrack, while some around us were disappointed that Frisell hadn't played any blues pieces (!), finding the concert boring (!!).

IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS - May 1st (Hiroshima mon Amour)

Three years later, here they are back in town for an event we'd marked in our calendar with indelible ink and the extraordinary concert that brings the Festival towards its end, not only doesn't disappoint, but exceeds the expectations, shattering them. With two long suites centered around their recently released album, "Future Present Past” and a final percussive sabbath, Irreversible Entanglements take no prisoners: the rhythm section of Luke Stewart and Tcheser Holmes is an unstoppable driving force, same as the locomotive in the film "Runaway Train", Keir Neuringer tirelessly alternates between sax, keyboards, gong and triangle, Aquiles Navarro, as he puts down his trumpet, plays percussions, melodica, bone horn and even a large conch shell! And then, of course, there's Moor Mother, the Voice (or better, the Scream) of Black Awareness, whose presence and magnetic charisma (unmatched on the planet today) captivate an ecstatic audience: from hip-hop or call-and-response modes to the voodoo-like trance of a blood sacrifice in the Haitian Heart of Darkness, Camae Ayewa, with metal rattles in the hands, enchants and envelops us in her sonic tentacles. Musically, the group demonstrates that they have broadened their scope, without distorting it, avoiding, as the excellent "Open the Gates" hinted, the risk of repetitiveness and predictability. Tinges of Miles off Keir’s Rhodes piano and shadows of Mingus (as Martin so aptly noted, reviewing their last album) are there to demonstrate that we are dealing with Irreversible Entanglements 2.0. A group like the Art Ensemble of Chicago will never exist again but our guys would be the most eligible to carry on their legacy. File under: Indispensable Presence.

JOHN SCOFIELD & GERALD CLAYTON - May 2 (Teatro Colosseo) 

Warm-up and chillout: the training rules also apply to the Festival. We started off relaxed a week ago and so we close with the last concert of TJF 26, a tribute to another Old Lion of this edition. As we all know, from his early days with George Duke and Billy Cobham, to Miles' court and then on to his solo career, John Scofield has shaken up bebop, blues, funk, soul and much more, and the concert we're seeing is a kind of compendium of it all. Alongside the guitarist is the extraordinary pianist Gerald Clayton (collaborator of Bill Frisell, Roy Hargrove, Dianne Reeves, Charles Lloyd, Joel Ross, Kendrick Scott and Kassa Overall), described by Scofield as "one of the best pianists I've ever worked with", the perfect companion for an evening filled with virtuosity, obvious references to the electric Davis and a beautiful, greasy, sweaty blues to close.

Curtain down, see ya next year.

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Goal Weight (Maggie Cox and Jennifer Gersten) - Keep Telling Yourself That (Relative Pitch, 2026)

By Hrayr Attarian

The absorbing Keep Telling Yourself That is a series of stimulating improvised dialogues between bassist Maggie Cox and violinist Jennifer Gersten. Together, the New York-based Cox and Gersten go by the name Goal Weight. This is the duo’s debut recording, though there is nothing freshman about it, as it demonstrates both creative maturity and impeccable camaraderie.

The opening “Candy Doll Bluff” has a martial rhythm with hints of whimsy. Cox’s percussive chords set the mood with their exacting rhythms. Gersten’s twangy pizzicatto bounces off the bassist’s taut refrains at unexpected times, and with theatrical flair endowing the piece with a humorous undercurrent.

“Brian 1” that follows matches Cox’s energetic bowing with Gersten’s tolling strings. The conversation grows from delightfully dissonant and fiery to serene and melancholic. Cox’s darkly expectant melodies hint at the baroque. Gersten’s crisp and angular lines contribute to the dramatic ambiance. As the tune progresses, the violinist plays a wistful song that the bassist mirrors. The collective refrains enhance the anticipatory mood and lead to the solemn conclusion.

Western classical influences appear frequently throughout the album as both musicians are trained and skilled in both experimental and traditional musical styles. This is most pronounced on the title track. A wistful and pastoral duet on which Cox and Gerster mirror one another in their mellifluous musings. There is a sublime balance between unbridled spontaneity and warm, emotive expression.

Meanwhile, “Your New Uncle” opens with sparse groans and chimes that slowly coalesce into an intriguing, cinematic performance. It sounds like the soundtrack to an experimental film. Cox’s muscular phrases are like an approaching storm, while Gersten’s plucked and strummed notes have a mix of zen-like serenity and an undercurrent of angst. The flow of intertwined improvisations is both seamless and quite adventurous.

This imaginative and thought-provoking album is a demonstration of virtuosity and brilliance. Above all, it is Cox and Gersten’s bold, synergistic explorations brimming with lyricism that make this a work to savor.

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Anthony Braxton – 2 Comp (2023) (Schott Music, 2025)

By Don Phipps

There’s always a cutting edge feel to the music of Anthony Braxton, and 2 Comp (2023) released last year is no exception. What is most engaging in Braxton’s efforts here are the dense and dissonant chords that overflow with subtle but edgy excitement.

Take 'Composition 445', the album’s first track. Braxton explores a kind of counterpoint in his bass lines as sax and trombones race along. The result is a feeling one might experience on a train going through a tunnel – an almost aural red shift effect. The piece, however, is not hot. For the most part it is a subdued kind of jumble – like a morning at the office where everyone is just starting their workday. Like recent projects, Braxton continues his use of vocals. Here they sound almost Ligeti-like and produce an escalator-like effect in tandem with the instruments – a movement of up and down. The music bubbles and rumbles, contrasting starkly with the rapid tonguing technique used by some members of the orchestra.

Braxton is not shy about using tried and true techniques like “call and response.” On 'Composition 445', the saxophones respond to trumpet blatts with short squeak bursts. And, like traffic in a city – the orchestra at times roars, and its proximity jars the senses. Braxton also employs strange combinations of instruments, for example – trombones interacting with a bassoon. The piece stretches like a rubber band – as if one were nearing an event horizon of a black hole. Trombones and bassoon, accordion interludes, woodwind notes that bounce like basketballs – it’s Braxtonian jumbled cubist creativity at its best.

The musicians on 'Composition 445' are: Accordion – Andreas Borregaard; Alto Saxophone – Anthony Braxton; Alto Saxophone, Sopranino Saxophone – James Fei; Bassoon – Katherine Young; Double Bass – Carl Testa, George Cremaschi; Trombone – Reut Regev, Roland Dahinden; Trumpet – William Forman; Voice – Andreas Halling, Anne Rhodes, Fabienne Seveillac, Juliet Fraser, Lisa Willems, Nick Hallett, Stepan Janousek.

'Composition No. 446 (Combination Music)' is equally engaging if not more intense. There’s a nightmarish feel to the odd harmonics and dissonance. Like ocean waves, the ensemble surges and then backs off; dynamic contrasts or other-worldly effects are followed by silence. It feels like pointillism in art - the elements of the number (tone, rhythm, color, techniques) singular, yet when combined, create a holistic effect. Abstractions seem to float in the air – through turbulence to slight breezes, and everything in between. The work dances and swirls about but at times feels uneasy – a kind of menace just beneath the surface.

As on more recent albums, Braxton’s prefers sonics that clash – take the electric guitar in an orchestra-ish setting. A piano line evokes impressionism while the polyrhythmic nature of the work give rise to dits and dots, slipping and sliding arcs, trilling, and exhortations from the vocalists. Braxton’s unusual gift for dissonant tone clusters is also on full display. The music moves sideways, up, down, and then sideways again – a kind of circular rotation that provokes and intrigues and keeps things very unsettled.

The musicians on 'Composition No. 446' are: Clarinet – Dafni Mengou, Rebecca Minten, Tadashi Lewis; Conductor – Anthony Braxton, Katherine Young, Kobe Van Cauwenberghe; Double Bass – Pablo Jimenez (7); Electric Bass – Paul Steinbeck; Flute – Luciana Perc, Maral Yerbol, Marianne Sihvonen, Seraina Ramseier; Guitar – Alec Goldfarb, Aleksey Potapov, Leonardo Melchionda, Orestis Tsekouras; Oboe – Aleksandra Panasik; Percussion – Aditya Ryan Bhat, Orson Abram; Piano – Jennifer Mong (2), Qi Qu; Trombone – Kalun Leung, Vasily Ratmansky; Trumpet – Émilie Fortin; Viola – Alison Eom, Aruzhan Abilseit, Christoven Tan; Violin – Ana Luisa Diaz de Cossio, Mac Waters, Paolo Vuono; Violoncello – Audreanne Filion, Clara Dietze, Jun Sian Chee, Laurence Gaudreau, Tord Bremnes; Voice – Elizabeth Gartman, Maria Morfeo.

With 2 Comp (2023), Braxton has once more provided another stellar illustration of his “creative” music. His expert ability to juxtapose instrumental voicings to create elaborate structures is in full evidence. Those who open this door, will find a path leading to the subconscious, the heavens, and the elemental. Enjoy!

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Making Space: The Work of Access in Experimental Music

David Byrne. Photo by Cora Wagoner*

By Jeff Arnal 

Making Space: The Work of Access in Experimental Music  
Reflections from Big Ears on Democracy and the Avant-Garde 

Across multiple traditions of creative practice in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there is a recurring commitment to autonomy, resourcefulness, and collective invention that transcends style and genre. In the punk world, Michael Azerrad’s 2001 book Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981–1991 chronicled a generation of American underground bands that survived and thrived outside mainstream structures by building their own circuits of support: booking tours, releasing records on their own terms, and forging direct relationships with audiences without corporate mediation. The book’s title comes from a line in the Minutemen’s song “History Lesson Part Two”: “Our band could be your life,” an invitation to listeners to see themselves in the creative process and a declaration that meaningful art does not depend on institutional sanction or approval. The Minutemen’s “jam econo” philosophy carried this even further, a way of working that stripped everything down to what was necessary, touring constantly, moving light, sharing gear, and keeping production lean so the music stayed close to lived experience. It fused punk urgency with a kind of jazz openness, a disciplined but flexible approach to making and surviving on the road, where interdependence and adaptability were not abstract values but daily practice.

This punk DIY ethos connects backward and outward into other experimental milieus. In 1970s New York, the loft jazz movement saw musicians transform abandoned industrial settings into venues, rehearsal rooms, and recording environments when commercial support was absent. Jazz artists such as Rashied Ali, Ornette Coleman, John Fischer, Sam Rivers, and others built performance opportunities with and for their communities. Earlier, the Judson Church collective in downtown Manhattan brought together dancers, composers, visual artists, and improvisers in a context that resisted institutional hierarchy, privileging openness, chance, and intermedia collaboration. In the 1960s, the Fluxus collective, with figures like George Maciunas and Nam June Paik, enacted gestures that foregrounded event scores, indeterminacy, and audience participation, making participation itself part of the work. These moments, punk, free improvisation, and interdisciplinary performance art, are not isolated facts but shared methods. They emphasize resourcefulness, collective forms of support, boundary-crossing practice, and the formation of contexts where participation is not pre-defined but discovered in practice. Each tradition demonstrates that creative practice does not wait for permission; it invents its own platforms, its own audiences, and its own ways of circulating ideas. 

Before going further, it is worth saying that there is not a single term that holds all of this. Creative music, contemporary classical , noise, DIY, jazz, free jazz, improvised music , electronic music, avant-garde: each name points to something real and each falls short. These labels carry histories, communities, and also the weight of institutions and markets that shaped them. I do not mind the term experimental music, and for the sake of this piece I am using it as a kind of shorthand, knowing it has its own baggage, its own history, its own residue. It feels less like a fixed category than like a moving one, a way of pointing toward practices that question form, resist easy definition, and stay open to change. 

Mary Halvorson with Tomas Fujiwara, Henry Fraser, and Dave Adewumi. 
Photo by Cora Wagoner

The Audience Is Already Onstage

In experimental music, the audience is rarely an external body waiting to be reached. It is already embedded in the work. The same people circulate through multiple roles as performer, listener, organizer, label operator, archivist, critic. These roles are not fixed. They rotate, overlap, and collapse into one another, and in doing so they blur the line between maker and receiver.

This is not unique in an absolute sense. From the work and ideas of Marcel Duchamp onward, modern and contemporary art already unsettles the idea of a passive viewer: Meaning is completed through perception and participation rather than simple looking. But in experimental music the overlap becomes more continuous and more social. It is not only that meaning is activated in interpretation. It is that the same small networks are involved across the full cycle of the work, from making and performing to documenting, distributing, and sustaining it over time.

What emerges is less a separation between audience and artist than a shared field of participation. The work is carried by the same relationships that receive it. 

At venues like Roulette, a Brooklyn nonprofit performance organization that grew out of the late 1970s downtown loft scene, and Issue Project Room, a Brooklyn-based venue for experimental and durational performance, this overlap is not incidental. Rhizome DC, a Washington, DC experimental and community arts venue known for presenting improvisation, electronic music, and interdisciplinary performance in an intimate, artist-run setting, operates less like a venue and more like a switching station. Downtown Music Gallery, a long-running New York record store and informal hub for experimental and improvised music, functions as a living archive, a place where circulation and memory coexist. The audience is not something to be developed or expanded in the abstract. It is already present, already participating, already shaping what the work becomes.

This condition has historical precedent. The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago in the 1960s, free improvisation circles in London, the 1970s New York loft scene, and punk basements in California all formed around informal, self-made settings where music existed outside institutional permission. These were not separate audiences so much as overlapping communities of players, listeners, and documenters, often the same people moving fluidly between roles. What appears from the outside as a limited audience is, from within, a dense and active network of participation, a self resonating circuit in which production and reception continuously fold back into one another. 

Tyshawn Sorey. Photo by Ryan Clackner

A Turning Point in Listening

Any attempt to understand this field passes through John Cage and his 4’33” , a work shaped as much by Zen Buddhism as by the radical propositions of Duchamp. Cage did not simply expand music; he removed its center. Sound was no longer something organized solely by the composer. It was already present, already happening, already available to anyone willing to listen.

What Cage opened was aesthetic and conceptual but also social. By removing hierarchy from sound, he destabilized authority over who gets to make music and how it is received. Pauline Oliveros extended this into what she termed Deep Listening, grounding it in attention, embodiment, and collective practice. Julius Eastman insisted on presence, naming, and identity within experimental composition, making clear that sound is never separate from the conditions of power, visibility, and survival that shape it. 

David Tudor collapsed performance and composition into generative live systems, shaping environments in which sound was emergent and collective. Laurie Spiegel used early computer music to expand access and participation, anticipating the distributed, system-driven approaches that are now commonplace. Alvin Lucier made listening itself a material, revealing space, resonance, and time as active forces in perception. Artists like Daphne Oram, Wendy Carlos, Maryanne Amacher, and Laurie Anderson helped define early electronic and multimedia approaches, building tools and conceptual frameworks that reshaped expectations about sound, audience engagement, and temporal experience.

Time-based, transmedia, and durational practices also exemplify this openness. Works that unfold over hours or across extended processes, like Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room, where repeated playback allows architectural acoustics to gradually replace spoken language with resonance, or Maryanne Amacher’s City-Links and mini-sound series , where psychoacoustic tones are composed to be completed by the listener’s nervous system and the acoustics of specific sites, treat sound not as fixed material but as something activated through time, perception, and environment. Pauline Oliveros’s multi-channel sound environments extend this further, grounding listening in attention, embodiment, and collective presence. These works demand sustained attention and situational awareness. They challenge conventional performance boundaries, blurring distinctions between composer, performer, audience, and environment itself. 

Isaiah Collier plays Coltrane with Dave Whitfield, Conway Campbell, and Tim Regis. 
Photo by Andy Feliu

Earbuds, Art Centers, and the Concert Hall

The geography is now fractured. Music and other sounds circulate through overlapping systems that no longer align neatly with older distinctions between underground and institutional contexts. A track can move from Bandcamp to independent radio to a performance in another country within days. Distribution is now widely available. Tools that once required studios, labels, promotional channels, and of course the financial resources that sustained them are increasingly shared.

At the same time, listening has become stratified. Earbuds create intensely private encounters with sound. Art centers frame work through curatorial context. Concert halls place it within historical lineage and institutional authority. These contexts overlap constantly. A work can move among them without changing form, only context. Small, locally rooted communities continue to invent their own practices and spaces, becoming microcosms of experimentation that circulate back into broader networks.  

Entry is no longer the central barrier, and this shift is visible in how certain works and practices now travel across these overlapping systems. For example, albums released independently on platforms like Bandcamp often circulate first through artist-run or listener-run channels before moving into independent radio ecosystems such as WFMU or NTS, and from there into live performance contexts that include both DIY venues and major international festivals. Live coding and algorithmic performance practices, as developed in communities like Algorave, similarly move between informal club spaces, academic research contexts, and large-scale festival environments, with the same core work shifting meaning depending on framing rather than changing materially. Likewise, sound-based installations by artists working in both gallery and performance contexts, such as Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s walking audio works, circulate between museum presentation, headphone-based individual listening, and site-specific public activation, depending on where and how they are encountered.

What emerges across these examples is not a single unified system, but a set of porous circuits where production, distribution, and reception no longer align in stable ways. The same work can be private and collective, informal and institutional, local and transnational, often within the span of its own circulation.

The question is how to maintain meaning in an environment of near-infinite production. 

Experimental music doesn’t wait for permission to take shape. It builds its own systems and its own audiences through the structures it creates and the people who gather around it. The audiences who show up for events like Big Ears reflect this. Big Ears draws tens of thousands of visitors each year, with a substantial portion of its attendees coming from outside Tennessee and from across the country and beyond. Many visitors commit multiple days to listening, dialogue, workshops, talks, and community programming, seeking connection, discovery, and deep engagement rather than passive entertainment. Some attendees are cultural professionals, curators, programmers, and label representatives whose presence signals that this field operates across overlapping scales, at once local, translocal, and networked. This expanding and engaged audience underscores that participation in the field is shaped by curiosity, commitment, and intentional cultivation, not solely by commercial logic or passive consumption.

Maria Chavez, Greg Saunier, Shahzad Ismaily. Photo by Jess Maples

Democracy Without Filters

When experimental music is described as democratic, it is not a claim that sits in one place. It moves through the field itself, through artists describing how they work, through presenters and curators trying to account for forms that do not fit institutional expectations, and through critics and listeners trying to find language for practices that are already happening before they are named.

What it tends to point toward is not equal representation in any simple sense, but something closer to distributed authority inside the work. Equal representation suggests balance in who is present or visible. Distributed authority describes how decisions actually happen in real time, how form is shaped through response, interruption, listening, and adjustment among performers, and sometimes listeners and organizers as well. It is not that everyone has the same role, but that no single role fully determines the outcome in performance.

In improvised music, and especially in lineages connected to the AACM, this becomes a lived practice rather than an idea. Structure emerges through interaction rather than being delivered from above. A piece is not executed so much as negotiated in time. Roscoe Mitchell’s ensemble work, or the intergenerational networks around artists like Tyshawn Sorey or Tomeka Reid, make this visible as a sustained practice of listening and recalibration rather than a fixed model of participation.

Across the broader field, including at events like Big Ears, this produces something closer to interdependence than symmetry. Artists move between roles as performers, composers, and organizers. Audiences are often deeply embedded in the field itself, sometimes including other musicians whose presence is part of what supports the work. Attention circulates across these roles rather than resting in a single center.

Value does not disappear in this system. It stops being universal and instead forms through repetition, proximity, and sustained engagement within specific communities of practice. What counts is not fixed in advance but built over time through shared listening, shared risk, and continued return to the work.

This form of democracy exists in tension with the world around it. At a moment when broader systems feel fragile, exclusionary, or in some cases actively regressive, experimental music offers another model. Not utopian, not pure, but functional. Small, interdependent communities form around sound. People organize their own platforms, define their own values, and maintain practices collectively over time.

At the same time, it is not clear that these formations are simply democratic in any straightforward sense. They operate more as situated or practiced forms of democracy, where participation is real but shaped by access, knowledge, proximity, and time. What can feel open from the inside often looks quite different from the outside, where the same formation may appear specialized, coded, or difficult to enter without prior context or connection.

The history of the AACM makes this tension legible. It emerged as a response to exclusion from dominant cultural and economic systems, creating a space where Black experimental musicians could define their own artistic and organizational terms. That autonomy required building its own structure, its own set of expectations, and its own forms of accountability. The aim was self-determination, but self-determination also meant drawing boundaries in order to sustain a shared practice over time.

What emerges is not a contradiction so much as a condition the field lives with. These communities are democratic in the sense that authority is distributed and participation matters, and they are also selective in the sense that they depend on sustained engagement, shared language, and forms of labor that are not equally available to everyone. They are built through relationships that deepen over time, and that depth itself naturally produces thresholds.

In that sense, the question is not whether these spaces are democratic or exclusive. They are both, and they have to be. Their openness is real, but it is not abstract. It is shaped through practice, maintained through participation, and continually negotiated in real time.

Engagement in this practice is not a solution to isolation, fragmentation, or exclusion within the field or outside it. It does not resolve the uneven access that shapes who gets to participate, who has the time and resources to stay engaged, or who is able to move through these networks with any consistency. Those conditions remain in place, and in some cases they are reproduced inside the very structures that are trying to work differently.

What these small communities do instead is something more limited and more specific. They create working methods inside those conditions. They build situations where people can actually show up for each other, listen, collaborate, and take shared risk over time. They make room for forms of relation that are harder to maintain elsewhere, but they do not remove the larger structures they are operating within.

In that sense, music in this context is not a fix. It is closer to a practice of rehearsal. A way of testing how people might organize together under real constraints, without assuming those constraints disappear. It is infrastructural in a quiet way. It builds relationships that can hold, sometimes loosely and sometimes tightly, but always under pressure from the conditions around them.

Seen this way, the value is not in resolution. It is in continuity. In the ability to keep making and listening together, even when nothing about the broader situation is settled. 

Caroline Shaw. Photo by Cora Wagoner

A Music That Builds Its Own World

A consistent thread across these practices is the way experimental music builds its own systems of relation, rather than relying on existing ones.

The AACM emerged in Chicago in the mid-1960s as a self-organized collective that created its own concerts, education programs, and distribution networks out of necessity. The model of self-determination it developed has been extensively documented by the musician and scholar George Lewis, who has written and composed deeply on improvisation, technology, and Black experimental practice. Within this tradition, the bassist and composer William Parker understands music as inseparable from daily life, a continuous practice of listening, responsibility, and community. The saxophonist Charles Gayle speaks openly about the difficulty of sustaining that life, maintaining artistic commitment and material survival in conditions that are often unstable or indifferent. The drummer, visionary artist, and polymath Milford Graves approached improvisation as ritual and healing, a way of aligning body, rhythm, and spirit through sound as lived process rather than performance. Cecil Taylor, pianist, composer, and free jazz pioneer, treated music as energy in motion, a system of forces rather than fixed forms, framing each performance as something alive in the moment, never repeatable in the same way twice.

Miles Davis insisted on transformation, urging musicians: “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there,” a directive that emphasized invention over replication and placed responsibility on the performer to imagine new possibilities in real time. Herbie Hancock framed creativity as inseparable from life itself, and contemporary artists like Caroline Shaw and Tyshawn Sorey continue this line, moving fluidly across forms, genres, and ensembles, demonstrating that commitment and attention, not labels, define experimental practice.

In practice, these ideas are not abstract. They are enacted through the music itself. In works like George Lewis’s Voyager, a computer system improvises alongside human performers, creating a shifting sonic environment in which no single agent controls the outcome. Authority is distributed, and listening becomes an ethical act. Each participant must respond, adapt, and make space for others in real time. Similarly, the broader AACM approach treats composition and improvisation as collective problem solving, a way of modeling social interaction through sound. Early AACM statements made this explicit, asserting that musicians could determine their own strategies for political and economic freedom through collective organization and creative practice.

Throughout these examples, one sees a consistent thread. The work is not simply musical. It is infrastructural, social, and ethical. It creates spaces in which community, improvisation, risk, and care coexist. Each artist reminds us that experimental music is sustained as much by belief, practice, and labor as by sound itself.

The DIY ethos of the late twentieth century required building infrastructure from scratch. Bands created their own circuits, economies, and audiences.

Now much of that infrastructure is readily available. Anyone can record, release, and distribute music. What once depended on studios, labels, and the logistical weight of physical circulation now exists in more immediate, dispersed forms, often built from tools that are widely shared and relatively easy to access. This shift lowers the barrier to entry, but it also changes the conditions of attention. The question is no longer only how to make work visible, but how to sustain it in a field where everything is already moving.

This changes independence. It lowers the barrier to entry while raising the difficulty of sustaining attention. The challenge is no longer access but continuity, how to keep going, build relationships, and make work that persists over time. What looks like freedom in this context is never separate from the conditions that hold it up. It is made in the ongoing work of rehearsal, organization, care, and return. Freedom is tied to labor, not as constraint but as the steady practice through which anything shared or lasting is actually made.

Despite fragmentation, certain traditions remain active as methods.

In Europe, Stockhausen and Xenakis expanded composition into systems and architecture, shifting musical thought toward structure, spatial form, and process. Roscoe Mitchell treats ensemble practice as ritual, where form emerges through sustained collective attention. Anthony Braxton extends composition into language and philosophy, building frameworks that move between sound, notation, and conceptual structure. George Lewis integrates improvisation, history, and computation, connecting experimental practice to technological systems and shifting histories of agency.

Other currents move through spirituality and transcendence, from John Coltrane to Alice Coltrane, reappearing in contemporary practices that merge sound with devotion and expanded states of listening. The downtown continuum extends through artists like Laurie Anderson, where performance, media, and narrative fold into one another, while diasporic and global traditions reshape the field through ongoing exchange, translation, and return.

These are not fixed inheritances. They remain in motion, carried forward through practice rather than preservation. 

Wild Up: Arthur Russell's 24 to 24 up. Photo by Taryn Ferro

A Living Cross Section: Big Ears 2026 and Other Festivals

What this looks like in practice can be felt in the density of Big Ears 2026. Not as a lineup, but as a temporary ecosystem where histories, communities, and practices intersect.

The presence at the festival of John Zorn and the Masada projects connects decades of composer-performer networks to artists like Ikue Mori, Ches Smith, and Brian Marsella, who move fluidly across improvisation, composition, and electronics. The AACM lineage continues through Roscoe Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, and collaborations with Tyshawn Sorey and Jeff Parker, extending the AACM’s foundational commitment to collective self-determination, original composition, and the integration of improvisation with structured and experimental systems. Emerging from Chicago in the 1960s, AACM artists not only redefined approaches to timbre, form, and instrumentation, but also built their own institutions, performance spaces, and educational models in response to structural exclusion. That legacy persists as both sound and method: a practice grounded in artist-run infrastructure, interdisciplinary experimentation, and the understanding of creative music as a social and cultural force. Another cluster forms around artists connecting Chicago, Los Angeles, and global scenes through figures like Carlos Niño, Nate Mercereau, Josh Johnson, and Isaiah Collier. Their work intersects with artists like Sam Gendel and Shabaka, linking spiritual jazz, ambient practice, and contemporary improvisation.

Composer-performer ensembles sit alongside artist-driven projects where composition and improvisation are inseparable. Artists move between configurations across the festival, appearing in multiple contexts. This is the network made visible, built through ongoing collaboration rather than isolated work.

Global traditions are integral to this context. Carnatic and Hindustani music, Ethiopian jazz, Gnawa, and cross-cultural collaborations unfold alongside experimental pop, folk, noise, and large-scale multimedia work. Artists like Laurie Anderson and David Byrne extend the field outward by translating experimental practices into more widely accessible forms, connecting them to broader audiences and cultural contexts without fully abandoning their underlying complexity. Their work operates as a bridge, making experimental approaches legible across disciplines and publics, while other performers remain committed to more intimate, durational, or deeply situated practices. Electronic and computer music legacies from the likes of Laurie Spiegel, David Tudor, and Alvin Lucier continue to inform new generations.

Underlying all this are shared support systems. Labels, independent radio, critics, archivists, venues, and informal networks. What emerges is not diversity as a surface condition but interconnection as a lived reality. Different histories and identities are not parallel. They are entangled.

The scale of the gathering reveals a dense layering of infrastructures that support the work. Labels function as archives and distribution networks. Radio creates continuity across generations. Writers and critics trace lineages and create context. The same names appear across projects not as repetition but as evidence of relationship.

Festivals make this visible. They compress what is usually dispersed.

The Vision Festival nurtures a long-term community. Founded in 1996 and held annually in New York City, typically in June, the Vision Festival brings together multiple generations of improvisers, dancers, poets, and visual artists within a self-organized, artist-run framework. Big Ears creates a temporary environment of openness, particularly in a region where that openness is not guaranteed. In Tennessee, where cultural policy has moved to restrict forms of expression, including attempts to ban drag performances, the presence and success of this kind of gathering is not neutral.

From a southern perspective, this carries a particular weight. In places like Western North Carolina, and in the longer shadow of the Deep South I grew up in, cultural life has often been shaped by distance from major institutional centers, by uneven access, and by the way communities build meaning without relying on sustained formal infrastructure. In that context, gatherings like this do not simply add another cultural option. They briefly reorganize what public life can feel like.

Audiences move between radically different forms within a shared environment, not as isolated encounters but as a kind of collective attention that is not always available in everyday life. What matters is not contrast for its own sake, but the experience of proximity itself, of being in a place where different histories, practices, and ways of listening can sit beside one another in real time, and where that co-presence becomes a kind of temporary commons.

What emerges is not a single narrative but a field of relations. Aesthetic questions remain open. What matters, what lasts, what holds attention over time, these are not settled questions. But the scale of activity itself is significant. The number of artists, practices, and connections forms something like a laboratory, a testing ground where ideas about sound, community, and value are constantly being proposed and revised. It is uneven, sometimes overwhelming, but it is alive.

What holds this field together is not agreement, but participation. Artists become audiences. Audiences become organizers. Organizers become archivists. Agents, curators, and promoters facilitate movement across contexts. The system does not stabilize into a single structure. It circulates across contexts, practices, and communities. Experimental music is not defined by a fixed audience. It is defined by those who choose to engage with it, to carry it forward, and to listen deeply enough for it to matter.

Despite its density, what is described here is only a partial record of a wider field that is always in motion. There are informal settings that never get documented, scenes that flare up and dissolve, small labels that circulate quietly, artists who step away and others who continue under difficult conditions. There are also networks of relation that shift depending on where you stand, and forms of labor that remain largely unmarked even as they hold everything else in place. Attention is never evenly distributed. Participation is always shaped by geography, by access, by race, gender, class, and ability in ways that no single account can resolve.

None of this completes the picture. It simply returns it to the conditions in which it is already unfolding. What holds is not resolution but continuity, the ongoing fact of the work as it moves through different registers, across places, through different hands. The field is not something to be finished or fully seen, but something partial, contingent, and in process. It is entered partway, listened to from within, and left while the motion continues. 

--- 

Jeff Arnal (b. 1971) is a percussionist, curator, and arts organizer based in Asheville, North Carolina. His work moves across performance, writing, publishing, and organizational practice within experimental music, shaped by long engagement with artist-built infrastructures. Since the 1990s he has performed internationally, including duos with Charles Gayle and appearances at venues and festivals such as Big Ears Festival, Blurred Edges Festival, the Vision Festival, Issue Project Room, and Roulette.

He currently works in projects including Chrononox with Camila Nebbia, Dietrich Eichmann, and John Hughes; a trio with Bonnie Han Jones and Ken Vandermark; and Drum Major Instinct with Curt Cloninger. Since 2016 he has served as Executive Director of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, where he has expanded exhibitions, performance, publishing, residencies, and research in dialogue with contemporary artists and scholars. He studied with Stuart Saunders Smith and Milford Graves, and holds degrees from the University of Maryland and Bennington College. 

*All Photos courtesy of Big Ear

 

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Camila Nebbia, Gonçalo Almeida, Sylvain Darrifourcq - Hypnomaniac (Defkaz, 2025)

By Stef Gijssels

Argentinian saxophonist Camila Nebbia has steadily become one of the favourites of this blog, with reviews of "Noche U Niebla", "Presencia", "A Reflection Distorts Over Water", "Exhaust", with various ensembles, yet all from the past year, and this even without mentioning concert reviews, videos and end-of-year lists on which she featured. 

On "Hypnomaniac", we find her in the company of Portuguese inventive double bassist Gonçalo Almeida and French percussion wizard Sylvain Darrifourq, and the result is ... well ... hypnotic. What begins as a free-jazz sax trio, with all three musicians tentatively probing the terrain, gradually transforms into a mesmerising sonic experience in which the instruments dissolve into a dense, drone-like wall of noise. The dual rhythm section of Almeida and Darrifourq develops into a bizarre and overwhelming mass of sound, while Nebbia’s hoarse saxophone flutters above and through the murky sonic miasma. The piece sustains this intensity for the full "19:45" suggested by its title.

The massive sound subsides and is replaced on the second track by cautious subdued rhythmic sounds over which Nebbia's sax hovers close to a tonal center, subtle and fragile. This approach is kept in the third piece, called "8:59". The three instruments basically merge into one coherent soundscape, with the occasional variation and escaping from the collective sound. It's fascinating. 

Only on the final track do the individual instruments regain their distinct voices, though the bass remains electronically warped. The result is jittery, frantic, intense, and gloriously unhinged. It feels as though the sustained tension built across the earlier tracks suddenly erupts without restraint, propelled by Darrifourq’s machine-gun soloing and Nebbia’s wild, untethered improvisation, driving everything toward a deafening, full-throttle finale, welcomed and applauded by an enthusiastic audience. 

Nebbia, Almeida and Darrifourq are highly inventive musicians with distinct musical identities and sonic approaches, yet remarkably they succeed in making their visions converge without sacrificing the individuality of their own voices.

The performance was recorded live on March 15th, 2025 at Thessaloniki-Greece during the ''Take 2'' festival organised by Defkaz records and the Mikri Skini venue.

PS - it seems to be a fashion to print titles upside down, as Han-Earl Park did on ‘uᴉɐƃ∀ ʍǝN sI plO sI ʇɐɥM’". For reasons of clarity, I kept the normal way of writing in the title, but for purists: here is the title of this album: "Ɔɐɯᴉlɐ Nǝqqᴉɐ' פouçɐlo ∀lɯǝᴉpɐ' Sʎlʌɐᴉu pɐɹɹᴉɟonɹɔb - Hʎduoɯɐuᴉɐɔ". 

Ǝuɾoʎ¡ 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

... and their concert schedule in Europe this year: 

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Luis Nacht & Camila Nebbia - Noche Y Niebla (ears&eyes Records, 2026)

By Ferruccio Martinotti

While all around us certainties crumble one after another, one remains intact: the creative streak of the Berlin-based, Argentine-born, ace musician Camila Nebbia shows no signs of drying up. After an incredible run of albums in 2025, so high-quality that it's almost impossible to rank them (don't even try, just get them), Nebbia doesn't let our turntables cool down and returns with the album "Noche y Niebla," an equal partnership with Luis Nacht on tenor and soprano saxophone, supported by the rhythm section of Jeronimo Carmona (double bass) and Fermin Merlo (drums), while she on tenor, as a rule. 

Born in Buenos Aires in 1959, Luis began his formative journey studying the flute in Mexico City, taking his first steps as a professional musician touring Central America and Europe as a flutist and singer with the latin music band Grupo Sur. He later moved to New York and began playing saxophone, taking lessons from George Coleman and Richie Beirach. His collaborations include, among others, Actis Dato, Iannacone, Giunta, Otero, Hoogland, Hecht, Verdinelli, and Perez, and a series of prestigious awards earned at home and in Europe contribute to defining his stature as a musician. Jeronimo Carmona is a double bassist with a solid trajectory in foundational Argentine jazz ensembles and collaborator of Luis Nacht for over two decades. Fermin Merlo stands out for his rhythmic creativity and deep understanding of interaction in free improvisation, having worked alongside Nacht for more than ten years. 

After many encounters on stage and in the student/teacher dynamics, Luis and Camila meet again in a Buenos Aires studio, attempting, through aesthetically and generationally diverse perspectives, to define sonic paths that unravel in the nocturnal mists of the amazing cover picture and perhaps also of their names, which translated as Night and Fog. We don't know if this is a joke or an induced suggestion, but what is certain is that the final result fully achieves the intended goal, offering us a labyrinth that challenges the listener, not by imprisoning him in tangles of sounds he can't unravel, but, on the contrary, by showing him the way out, or rather, multiple ways out, according to different everyone’s sensibilities, provided he follows the directions simply hinted at by the musicians. 

A distinctive feature of the album is the working method used, establishing, before recording, the titles of the pieces, which serve as narrative coordinates within which to let the improvisation flow, unfolding between stories, intrigue and mystery, without ever drying up into sterile conceptualism and thus losing the emotional intensity expressed in dramatic and dreamlike plots that constitute the album's hallmark. The interplay and the resulting play of references among Nacht and Nebbia is wonderful, perfectly met by the powerhouse of Merlo and Carmona and, as always, it's interesting to hear what the protagonists have to say about. Nebbia: “Improvisation in ‘Noche y Niebla’ is a radical commitment to the present moment. We are not only searching for melody but for the expression of sound in its most solid and stripped-down state. It is a sound that is found and shaped in the fog, right at the moment of execution.” Nacht: "This album is the continuation of many years of work, taken to a new conceptual limit. My lyricism collides with Camila's sonic purity and that tension becomes the true composition of the record. Having Merlo and Carmona, musicians with whom I share more than years of history, gives this freedom an essential rhythmic anchor". As in every great free album, the architecture is very solid and only the excellent skills of the musicians are able to make it invisible to the listener: Noche y Niebla is a paradigmatic example, don’t miss it. 

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Tyshawn Sorey – Members…Don’t! (Pi Recordings, 2026)

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Coming out during the turbulent 1968, Max Roach’s Members, Don’t Git Weary was an album of its time. Political (continuing Roach’s musical statements that started with We Insist!), vocal and aggressive in its own right. The acclaimed –and a favorite of mine- drummer Tyshawn Sorey offers us here not a cover album, not even new interpretations of the songs, but, I dare say, a brand new reimagining of the old material.

Recorded live at New York’s Jazz Gallery with a great band -consisting of Adam o’ Farrill on trumpet, Mark Shim on tenor saxophone, Lex Korten on piano, Tyrone Allen on double bass and Fay Victor on vocals- Sorey and his comrades achieve something that only the quartet of [Ahmed] is doing right now: taking musing of the past, through a current perspective, and making it a product of the present. Really great Black music. Ancient to the future indeed.

Sorey as, somewhat, a leader is a musician that even a listener, like me, who prefers music as a means of collective expression, can trust. I use the word trust as he seems eager to channel the Black tradition that he so clearly has absorbed into a new entity that belong to the group of people that are behind all the sounds.

Joining the dots, very fast and ecstatically, between the jazz tradition, free jazz and the journey of transcendence that jazz, those days, offered to everybody (as did Roach’s music too), the music on this release, over ninety minutes long, is a joyous affair and a signature recording for a year, our current situation, that sees the planet going towards chaos, imperialism and fascism.

Music has no boundaries and sets free powers that can heal or, at least, bring solace. Even for brief moments. I commented before about Sorey’s leadership and that, obviously, brings in mind the solo players in jazz history. But Sorey here –continuing my previous line of thoughts- assures that this is a collective effort with the focus on how to act and react (the interplay between the musicians) using the material as a basis to comment on our dire situation right now. As did Max Roach’s music back then. This is an urgent listening for sure .

Listen here:

@koultouranafigo

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Han-earl Park uᴉɐƃ∀ ʍǝN sI plO sI ʇɐɥM (Buster & Friends, 2026)

By Sammy Stein

Berlin-based Korean American guitarist and improviser Han-earl Park has released ‘uᴉɐƃ∀ ʍǝN sI plO sI ʇɐɥM’ (What is Old Is New Again), a collection of twenty-one solo miniatures recorded between January 2024 and February 2026. Most are first-take improvisations with minimal editing and production.

Park is associated with numerous projects, including, but not limited to, ensembles and duos Juno 3 with Lara Jones and Pat Thomas, and Gonggong 225088 with Yorgos Dimitriadis and Camila Nebbia, Richard Barrett, Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Dunmall, Pauline Oliveros, Charles Hayward, Mark Sanders, Lol Coxhill, Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen, Evan Parker, Ingrid Laubrock, Josh Sinton , and Franziska Schroeder, and a shedload more.

While the tracks are miniatures (as described by Park), they vary in length, some running for several minutes and others being shorter. What they have in common is Park’s touch of the bizarre, the explorative and various mechanizations of the guitar body and strings to create different soundscapes and atmospheres. The contrast between the numbers is impressive, and Park manages to find twenty-one slightly different ways to present an instrument. From the quirky, slightly thunky explorative open-fretted opener ‘All The Wrong Notes’ to the warpy, atmospheric ‘Drift After’ or the beautifully evocative ‘Bees on a Summer Day’ where the listener might conceivably feel as if they are inundated with little furry visitors of the apiaran kind in a grist, but not quite a swarm, as the notes plink and flip.

There are many highlights on this recording, from the overlapping melodies of ‘Footwork’ to the explorative ‘On The Way Out’ with its unexpected final phrases, and the wonderfully worked ‘The Zen of FWIW, Frustration,’ a retake of an earlier one-take work by Park (the FWIW is for What It’s Worth.)

‘Trash Fumble’ is wonderfully spooky and dark, with a frenetic ending, while tracks like ‘Scratch ‘n’ Sniff’ and ‘Coefficient of Friction/(Breathe, Just Breathe)’ contain contrasting rhythms, shaped phrases,, and in the latter track, Park uses the fourteen minutes of music to explore many facets of the guitar.

Of the title, Park says, “I don’t really want to be too explicit about the meaning—it’s probably my most didactic piece, which I don’t feel 100% comfortable about. It was recorded a few days after the ‘military action’ in Venezuela, and on January 6, the anniversary of the attempted self-coup in D.C., and the Star Spangled Banner runs both pro and retrograde through that piece. But do you think there’s a way -not- to spell that all out explicitly? None of it’s particularly hidden—or a secret—but I’d like listeners to come across it themselves.

The title came from a videographic piece recorded by Park for YouTube.

Over the eclectic mix of tracks, Park uses his music to convey a range of meanings, and the impact is varied, from the dark shades of ‘Grade Separation’ to ‘All You Zombies/Salvo and Echo’, where two guitar lines are interwoven to create chord-like essences.

There is the quietness of ‘Don’t Overthink It’ and the Latin elements that creep into ‘Envelope/Duo Minus-One’. The title track is beautiful, while the gloriously loud and gloopy ‘Oatmeal Again’ is crazily wonderful.

Park manages to give the track appropriate titles, as his artistry extends from the music through to the visual effects the sounds can have.

This is an album to listen to with intent and perhaps in parts because the intricacy and content need time to digest and imbibe. Listening to the entire recording feels like you might be glimpsing the relationship between Park and his guitar, one that is still developing and becoming ever more intricate and complex – a bit like the music.

Preorder available today on Bandcamp.



Original track from uᴉɐƃ∀ ʍǝN sI plO sI ʇɐɥM:

 

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