Wadada

"I recorded 'Live Without Fear' on May 31 1979 with some of my friends. We drove up into Evanston from Chicago in 3 cars on a day that smelled good and spoke all day sunshine… to 'Live Without Fear' means to live in material reality with faith… Peace on you!" - Soji Ade' 2018

Jimi Tenor and Kalle Kalima have made music together for about 10 years and now they are breaking ground in a trio format with Joonas Riippa on drums. The music is dark and jazzy but danceable and suddenly you hear a hounting ballad. Moments later it could be inspired by Sun Ra meeting Kraftwerk.

Smith’s new album, Laugh Ash, is perhaps his most startling and remarkable to date, a breathtakingly original set of music whose touchstones are myriad but ultimately meaningless in the face of an inventive and stunningly unfamiliar expression. Due out February 2, 2024 via Pyroclastic Records, the album makes thrilling use of disorientation and juxtaposition: starkly beautiful chamber melodies coexist with synthetic rhythms, explosive bursts of improvisation with elusive song forms, austere ambience with thundering complexity. Eclectic, undoubtedly, but in a paradoxical way that is defiantly cohesive while never losing sight of the fact that none of it should be.

TAO Forms is rather stoked to present this astonishing new work from the fertile creative mind of tenor saxophonist–composer James Brandon Lewis. Performed by the Red Lily Quintet, an exceptional & singular inter-generational ensemble, this album speaks to the forever-evolving continuum of the jazz tradition.

In celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday, acclaimed German percussionist Günter Baby Sommer paired with trumpeter Till Brönner for this adventurous and surprisingly cohesive duo album, 2018's Baby's Party. At face value, Sommer and Brönner may seem like an odd match. A longtime exponent of creative avant-garde jazz and free improvisation, Sommer has played with such highly regarded luminaries as Wadada Leo Smith, Peter Brötzmann, and Cecil Taylor. Conversely, Brönner is one of the most recognizable German instrumentalists, whose albums often straddle the line between straight-ahead, and smooth jazz.

This impossibility is propelled as an subterranean homage to trumpet players of the caliber of Don Cherry, Bill Dixon, Miles Davis, Lester Bowie, Tomasz Stanko, Wadada Leo Smith, Jaimie Branch and Chet Baker, all of them sublime atmosphere creators who observe the universe as a unit.

Mutations is Vijay Iyer's first album as a leader for ECM, and a recording that will widen perceptions of the pianist-composer's work. At its centre is "Mutations I-X", a composition scored for string quartet, piano, and electronics. A major piece built out of cells and fragments, it veers through many atmospheres, from moment to moment propulsive, enveloping, lyrical, luminescent, and strangely beautiful.