Free Jazz Group Wiesbaden | Frictions | Frictions Now | No Business Records

Today if one thinks back to the beginnings of European or more exactly (West) German Free Jazz, the names of Manfred Schoof, von Schlippenbach, Brotzmann, Globe Unity, or Gunter Hampel immediately come to mind. Much less known is the existence of two more remarkable groups which set out to play and record the then-new music called -Free Jazz- at the end of the 1960s. The “Free Jazz Group Wiesbaden” (FJGW) was one of those ensembles which today, undeserv-edly, are almost forgotten. — Ernst Nebhuth Continue reading

John Carter | Echoes from Rudolph’s | No Business Records

Echoes from Rudolph’s has topped my list of Albums Most in Need of Reissuing for the longest time. Not only is it one of clarinetist-composer John Carter’s greatest performances on record, it is also the only documentation of a critical period in the evolution of his art. It is the only album he made as a leader or co-leader between Secrets in 1972 and Variations in 1979. And it comes from the period in which he decided to discard his other horns and to focus exclusively on the clarinet. — Ed Hazell Continue reading

Rodrigo Amado | Joe McPhee | Kent Kessler | Chris Corsano | This Is Our Language | Not Two Records

Ornette Coleman released This Is Our Music in 1960, that title an assertion of achievement in making what was in many ways a much maligned music, the almost private practice of an excluded sub-group – free jazz musicians – within the already marginalized world of jazz. Perhaps above all, it was an assertion of rights to an original voice and musical speech. Declaring “This Is Our Language,” Rodrigo Amado marks both his kinship to Coleman and the rich tradition that has developed in free jazz since then, the intense sense of a still close-knit discourse community that has somehow expanded around the world. — Stuart Broomer Continue reading