Avant Garde 2023

There are moments that are forever imprinted in one’s mind. Feelings and impressions from scenes past from decades before can be recalled instantaneously with the appropriate trigger. These memories shape lives and attitudes, whether recalled impeccably or distorted by time.

Blackity Black Black Is Beautiful is the very first solo record by Fay Victor, whose 30-year-long music career has covered everything from House, New Music, Jazz (Blues) and Free Improvisation. Her deep history with dance music, her genreless output, and her lived experience as a Black woman in the world shaped the brand new process she used to create this prismatic album which touches on all the decades of her life like diary snapshots. It’s a mesmerizing collection of composed work that could only be made by an extraordinary improviser.

Recorded at the Village Vanguard on May 27 and 28th, 2022.

Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother) leads the Irreversible Entanglements quintet on a cool, swaggering 4th album of punk soul-inspired free jazz jams.

Hans Hulbækmo, a driving force in the groups Moskus, Skadedyr, Flukten and Reolo, and a prominent member of bands like Atomic, Hanna Paulsberg Concept, Broen and Hulbækmo & Jacobsen Familieorkester, is now ready with his first solo album - "Tilfeldig Næpe".

Siapiau is Welsh for 'Shapes', as the four members of the band create shapes in the air out of apparently nothing. The beauty of improvisation is that, at its best, it creates something perfectly fitted to the moment it was created in.

Cycles of Formation from John Ritz presents varying degrees of prescribed musical material and open-form elements. Each piece explores the potential interactions between human performance and interactive computer signal processing algorithms within a particular musical context. Featuring jazz pianist Gabe Evens, and classical percussionist Greg Byrne, and Ritz himself as the album’s composer, cellist, and analog synthesizer, this Ravello Records release delivers a stimulating world of electroacoustic sound, a smooth blend of suspense and innovation.

Jowee Omicil, who plays a multitude of wind and brass instruments, is like no other. Originally from Haiti, he was born in Montreal and now lives in Paris. He recorded his first ‘international’ album in the south of France as part of a long-running session during a week when the full moon shone above, alongside a dozen militants of groove. In his total mix music, which speaks to both body and mind and in which melodic storytelling is essential, his Creole roots blend with gospel, soul, hip hop culture and world folklore, while also including nods to his forefathers from Charlie Parker to Ornette Coleman to Wayne Shorter.

Despite both artists enjoying remarkably intensive careers which have seen them collaborate with many of the finest talents operating in free-improvisation, experimental and classical music, Pas de Deux marks the auspicious first ever encounter between Swiss drummer Fritz Hauser and Portuguese marimba maestro Pedro Carneiro.

One of the most engaging team-ups in exploratory jazz celebrates 30 years of simpatico collaboration and creativity with the release of Stay With It, their first outing on the Clean Feed imprint. It finds Phillip Greenlief and Scott Amendola developing the febrile dialogues mapped out on their deliciously bristling 1995 debut, Collect My Thoughts, an absorbing set that saw the pair garner considerable international plaudits, inspiring them to further cultivate their connection through regular touring expeditions.