Avant Garde 2023

The latest from Pulitzer Prize-winner Henry Threadgill, The Other One, is comprised of a three-movement composition entitled “Of Valence” that was the musical component of a large multimedia work performed and recorded live at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, New York in May, 2022. Written for a 12-piece ensemble – made up of an unusual instrumental combination of three saxophones, violin, viola, two cellos, tuba, percussion, piano and two bassoons – The New York Times described the performance as possessing “a galvanic sense of swing,” and “in lock-step with his every surprise rhythmic feint — producing an obliquely danceable, straightforwardly joyous Threadgillian energy.”

Avenged Sevenfold's 2023 album, Life Is But A Dream is a timeless work of art that blurs genres. Best served as a whole and consumed en masse to truly appreciate it's musical breadth and sonic depth, it marks their boldest statement and most revolutionary work to date.

Cape Town, South Africa-based drummer Asher Gamedze explores relationships of time between music and history on his new album Turbulence and Pulse, out May 5th 2023.

On May 5, 2023, GRAMMY-winning vocal band Roomful of Teeth — a “remarkable” (New York Times) “experimental group that is changing what it means to harmonize” (The New Yorker) and “gleefully dismantling the traditional definition of ensemble singing right before our ears” (NPR) — releases their long-awaited new album, Rough Magic.

Cuban-born, Brooklyn-based pianist, composer and conceptualist Aruán Ortiz celebrates his 50th birthday year with the release of Pastor’s Paradox, his stirring new album drawing on the power and structure of Martin Luther King’s words. Out October 20, 2023 on Clean Feed Records, the album features Ortiz with clarinetist Don Byron, cellists Lester St. Louis and Yves Dhar, drummer Pheeroan akLaff, and spoken word artist Mtume Gant.

Finnish bassist Antti Lötjönen returns in February 2023 with his second Quintet East album on We Jazz Records. With Verneri Pohjola on trumpet, Mikko Innanen and Jussi Kannaste on saxes, and Joonas Riippa on drums, Quintet East is a hard-hitting ensemble of Helsinki scene A-listers. The new release sees the quintet work with Lötjönen’s inspired new music with remarkable spirit, spreading out on a quest for new sounds and ideas, and returning to base with a fresh batch of acoustic creative music, wild to the bone even when sounding completely in control.

„When we walked out on stage it felt like a homecoming,” says Jakob Bro of this texturally spacious and emotionally charged live recording from Copenhagen, on which three of the defining protagonists of improvisation in Denmark, leading musicians from three generations of Danish jazz, come together.

The BASMyT quartet is a new band founded by saxophonist and clarinetist, Jacek Mielcarek. The lineup with Marek Kądziela (guitar), Jakub Mielcarek (double bass) and Łukasz Storzewicz (drums) was formed in July 2022 while working on music inspired by the Gospel according to St. John. As the leader recalls: During that meeting, we were united by a special bond that is difficult to describe. I felt that this personnel arrangement could not be a one-time adventure and I quickly started thinking about the concept of another project that we could implement together. The most important thing for me was that it should not be a typical leader-team arrangement, but rather a collective in which everyone gives something of themselves.

Vilhelm Bromander centers himself in sound, where listening is no less crucial than playing. His relationship to both the notes produced around him and the musicians making them is at the heart of his work. Whether building harmonic structures where he and his colleagues tune in together, constructing a sonic edifice in which sustained tones facilitate deep bonds, or serving as the musical anchor in more rhythmically active settings, playing music with others is about connection, where sound is the medium. This increasingly assured and sophisticated pursuit has reached a new apotheosis with In this forever unfolding moment, a ravishing new set of music created with a large crew of Stockholm improvisers that brings something utterly contemporary to ideas developed back in the 1960s and 1970s by some of Bromander’s biggest heroes: Ornette Coleman, John and Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, and Charlie Haden.

This album is a collection of 20 solo guitar and turntable improvisations performed and recorded by Otomo Yoshihide in his home studio in March 2023. Otomo has released solo guitar and turntable works in various forms in the past, but this is the first time he has recorded an entirely improvised studio performance. This will also be the first time that Otomo himself has illustrated the jacket.