Larry Ochs - tenor and sopranino saxophones
Vladimir Tarasov - drums, percussion
Mark Dresser – basses

“Jones Jones is a funny name for an all-star band. To grant such distinctive musicians so anonymous, Google-proof a moniker is whimsical in the extreme. But, given its members' long and distinguished work in the service of music, this group should not be taken lightly or treated as a lark. There is humor in their work but also gravitas and depth and magic. Larry Ochs says: "The newest...

"Lindha Kallerdahl (grand piano, organ, vocals). Lindha Kallerdahl, born in 1972, studied jazz at the renowned Swedish Jazz-Schools Skurup near Malmö and Birka in Stockholm during 1993-1996. Situated in Stockholm, she early came in touch with free music..

When Last Exit, a supergroup of musical avantists and trouble-makers first appeared in the mid 1980s, I can not begin to explain what a shock they were to the jazz and improvised music scene. Here were three well established jazz and improvisational....

Matt Lavelle (trumpet, flugelhorn, alto clarinet)
Reggie Sylvester (drums)

"New York avant-jazz veterans and longtime cohorts in the Bern Nix Quartet, perform in duo here on Retrograde, their debut on ESP-Disk'. Visiting destinations overlooked on John Coltrane's tour of the solar system, they craft their own space suite of earthier delights. This album was recorded live at Andrea Wolper's WhyNot Experiment? series. Matt and Reggie played two sets; the second set, with Bern Nix in the...

Nisar Ahmad Khan-tenor sax
John Surman-baritone and soprano sax (making his recording debut!)
Peter Lemer-piano
Tony Reeves-bass
Jon Hiseman-drums

This 1966 recording by one of the founding members of the Little Theatre Club (thereby one of the founding members of the English free jazz movement) is considered one of the first recordings of UK free jazz.
Even more wonderfully, on February 20, 2018, ALL the musicians who appear on this album appeared at a show to celebrate t

Frank London, trumpet
Marilyn Lerner, piano
Hilliard Greene, bass
Newman Taylor Baker, drums
Greg Wall, sax

"Spirit Stronger Than Blood pays homage to some of the recordings that shaped my musical-spiritual aesthetic: Charles Mingus's Changes 1&2, Booker Little's Strength and Sanity, Pharaoh Sanders's Peace and Love, Clifford Thornton's Gardens of Harlem, Alice Coltrane's Ptah, The El Daoud. Each of these artists, as different as they are from each other, shared a commonality of

"America: The Rough Cut is my statement not only on American music and American song, but also my commentary on the way American musicians of all styles handle that old-time music and those old song forms . . . The old things -- not just the blues, but gospel music and pre-blues shouts and language, plus hillbilly/minstrel song and medicine show irony -- reflect a disinterest in the polite trappings of (primarily but not only white) society, an implicit rejection of basic tonal, sonic, and harmonic....

“One might think that an album titled Louis Armstrong's America is a tribute to the famed trumpeter, and certainly he's a focus here, but a normal tribute would feature compositions by him, or at least associated with him. Allen Lowe doesn't operate in the realm of the predictable, though; instead, the concept -- powered entirely by Lowe compositions -- takes in not just Armstrong's influence but also the evolution of jazz starting with influences (not all jazz) on Armstrong and continuing to the end of...

"This historical session, recorded in 1973 for ESP-Disk, was tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe's debut as leader and is one of his most electrifying earlier efforts. Black Beings features all original Lowe material, with Joseph Jarman on alto and soprano...

Michael Marcus - soprano sax, tenor sax, alto tarogato, G clarinet, bass flute, gong
Frank Lacy - French horn
Tarus Mateen - Marcoustico acoustic bass
Jay Rosen - drums and percussion

"Michael Marcus comes out of Coltrane, Kirk, and Dolphy but has his own sound."-Thomas Conrad, Downbeat

After paying his dues with bluesmen Albert King and Bobby "Blue" Bland and jazzman Jaki Byard, Michael Marcus had his first album released in 1991, when he was 39. He's been much more prolif

William Parker – bass
Nels Cline - electric guitar/effects
Thollem McDonas - piano

“Gowanus Session II was seven years in the planning. Thollem McDonas, Nels Cline, and William Parker convened at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn on January 3rd, 2012 and recorded two complete albums. The first was Gowanus Session I, released by Porter Records in April of 2012. GS II was put aside to eventually complete the five-album palindromic cycle of trio albums Nels and Thollem ambitiously set out to...

"The great improvising guitarist, Joe Morris, returns with Luther Gray on drums and adds the masterful string section of Katt Hernandez on violin and Junko Fujiwara Simons on cello for his follow up to 2009's Colorfield. Drawing inspiration from the

"Classic and important '66 release from the innovative drummer Sunny Murray in a quintet session, remastered and with bonus interview track between Murray and ESP label founder Bernard Stollman."...

Alon Nechushtan: keyboards
Roy Campbell: flute, trumpet
Daniel Carter: saxophones, clarinet
Sabir Mateen: saxophones, clarinet
William Parker: bass
Federico Ughi: drums
Live at Zebulon, Brooklyn NY, March 5, 2006

“Look at those players Alon Nechushtan brought together for this gig! The late, great Roy Campbell; reed masters Daniel Carter and Sabir Mateen; mayor of the NYC avant-jazz scene William Parker; versatile drummer Federico Ughi. Then listen: they all liv

Larry Ochs – saxophones
Donald Robinson – drums

“Ochs is a founding member of the great ROVA Saxophone Quartet, one of the Bay Area's avant-garde treasures since 1978. Robinson -- "a percussive dervish", according to Coda -- was the drummer of choice for ROVA's revivification of John Coltrane's Ascension. The East Bay Express has said of the saxophonist's sound, "Ochs' full-bodied tenor is out of the John Coltrane/Albert Ayler 'free' tradition: forceful, passionate," while the Chicago Reader..

“Normal Street is another salvo in ESP-Disk's drive to revive weird rock! Writer/musician/film maker Chris Shields says: "Near the DIY venue, cooperative, and punk/freak haven, The Firehouse, in Worcester, Mass, there's a street ironically named 'Normal St.' I was lucky enough to be playing a gig with Painted Faces there a few years back. Driving up the steep, labyrinthine roads we spotted the green sign, had a laugh owing to some solid riffing by all present, and then, moved on. The gig was good, the...

Ivo Perelman - tenor saxophone
Matthew Shipp – piano
William Parker – bass
Bobby Kapp – drums

"Kapp is an excellent choice as Perelman's assessment is on the mark... 'he's very sensitive to time and space. He is dancing at the drum kit...' And while the frontline rolls along with the improvisational game-plan, Kapp's buoyant timekeeping faculties add a poetic quality to the rhythmic foundation along with Parker's resonating lines and fluid attack. The artists do what they do best by.

All of the radio broadcasts by Bud from the Royal Roost in 1953. Quite good sound for what it is and manna for boppers!

"Bud Powell ranks as one of the most vital and influential pianists in jazz history. Captured here at his peak and recorded...

“There are some jazz musicians long known by cognoscenti for a mere handful of recordings: Dupree Bolton, Earl Anderza, Hasaan Ibn-Ali, Alan Shorter, Dewey Johnson. Add saxophonist Mark Reboul to that list. Before the release of this album, his discography consisted of four tracks on three albums on which he was a sideman. On Higher Primates' Environmental Impressions (GM, 1987), he plays sax on two of the percussion-heavy album's five tracks: a fragmentary track, and a sixteen-and-a-half-minute...

“It has become clear that Matthew Shipp is the most interesting and important jazz pianist of his generation, the most continually evolving and pushing forward. Now that he's in his sixties and something of an elder statesman of the art form, he's overdue for a retrospective look at his catalog, and to help make that happen, ESP-Disk' will be reissuing some of his great early work that's gone out of print.
The 1990 trio recording Circular Temple (originally self-released on Quinton, then reissued...

Matthew Shipp - piano
Michael Bisio - bass
Newman Taylor Baker - drums

“This group evolves in leaps and bounds. You've never heard a jazz piano trio sound like this album -- not even this band on its previous album, the much-praised World Construct. That said, there is a through line from the first Matthew Shipp Trio album, 1990's Circular Temple to New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz.

Says Shipp, "Yes, we went there with that type of title this time. To anyone who thought the...

Matthew Shipp - piano
Mat Walerian - alto saxophone, bass clarinet, clarinet
Michael Bisio - bass
Whit Dickey - drums

"After a duo album and two trio albums by Matthew Shipp and Mat Walerian, all for ESP-Disk', they offer a quartet album that continues their strategy of working with different musicians each time out. Michael Bisio and Whit Dickey are long-time collaborators with Shipp, but the addition of Walerian's Zen style changes the dynamics of their interactions. Walerian and..

Matthew Shipp – piano
Michael Bisio – bass
Newman Taylor Baker - drums

“Matthew Shipp's new album is titled World Construct. It's a fitting title, for in his career of over three decades, he has constructed his own world of jazz. This press release could be entirely built from the raves of critics. "As Matthew Shipp's catalog expands, so does our understanding of the depth and breadth of his genius." "A gateway to higher improvisation that is practically without parallel. Matthew Shipp...

Recorded August 30, 1966. Simmons play alto sax and this was his debut as a leader. It's a good, free-with-themes 1966 style adventurous ESP album and he's good a good band here: Barbara Donald-trumpet, John...

"Sondheim is the first artist from ESP-Disk's 1964-75 heyday to return, since it was revived in 2005, to issue an album of new material on the fabled label. Sondheim joined the roster with a 1967 session, Ritual-All-7-70, then followed up with 1968's...