Music > jazz

In this memoir, Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah recounts decades of national and international touring with the Sun Ra Arkestra and charts the rise of New York loft jazz scene, offering a fascinating portrait of advanced music in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan from the 1970s through the 1990s.

In a long conversation about the guitar(s), Philippe Robert and Noël Akchoté sift through the history of the instrument and its practice, from the Renaissance lute to the 12-string, from the Stratocaster to the tabletop guitar surrounded by utensils and effects, from the blues to free improvisation.

An album of lost Derek Bailey sessions recorded with his friend and collaborator Charlie Morrow, that testifies to his art of collective experimentation.

An essay by Guillaume Belhomme on the singularly modern work of the painter Eugène Carrière (1849-1906), accompanied by a piece by Japanese saxophonist Harutaka Mochizuki, inspired by the master's paintings.

Sound American #29 celebrates Art Ensemble of Chicago founder and American iconoclast, Roscoe Mitchell.

An original meeting, powerful and explosive, between Charlemagne Palestine, Eric Thielemans and Oren Ambarchi.

An art book by musician and artist Loren Connors, exploring his pictural practice.

Wesley Brown narrates the day when trumpeter Miles Davis was assaulted by the New York Police Department. A dramatic and humorous story, told from multiple perspectives including that of Frances Taylor, Davis's wife, and the musicians in Davis's bands: a timely meditation on the psychological impact of police brutality, through the lens of a day in the life of Miles Davis.

Actualising the concert of Archie Shepp–Bill Dixon Quartet at the 8th World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki 1962, Free Jazz Communism contextualizes the politics of free jazz music in light of global decolonisation movements, anti-war activism, structures of racial capitalism, and forms of avant-garde music (new augmented edition).

Dark-folk songwriter Chantal Acda and beyond drums-percussion musician extraordinaire Eric Thielemans propose, after Phillip Glass, a new score for Koyaanisqatsi, re-actualising the incredibly beautiful, raw, rhythmic and touching images of this 80-ties cinematographic masterpiece.

Complete facsimile of The Cricket, an important but underknown music magazine edited by poets and writers Amiri Baraka, A. B. Spellman, and Larry Neal in 1968–69—a rare document of the Black Arts Movement.

The height entry in Blank Forms' ongoing series of anthologies is devoted to the Amercian experimental musician/composer/intermedia artist Jerry Hunt.

The French musician, composer and instrument builder returns to Discrepant label and brings an astonishing array of instruments from different cartographies and legacies.

The photographic archives of Roberto Polillo who abundantly documented the concerts of the greatest American jazz musicians in Italy in the years 1960-1970.

A how-to manual for free improvisation music.

A tribute to Cecil Taylor's Akisakila, re-imagined & arranged by Pat Thomas piano & XT: Paul Abbott (drums, synthetic sounds) and Seymour Wright (actual & potential saxophone).

The retrospective of the website and the magazine Le son du grisli (2004-2021): 16 portraits and 38 interviews of musicians, 842 record and concert reviews.

A pair of contemporary music giants re-release a long-lost 2003 live recording, previously available only as a CD-R.

Soundscapes, drones, disruptive aberrations, textures and perplexingly absorbing interactions between French guitarist, graphic and sound artist Xavier Mussat and saxophonist Quentin Rollet, performing live at Instants Chavires, in Montreuil, France, in 2020, for eight diverse and unusual improvisations.

A long form composition of six movements from Maurice Louca, with the Lebanese improvisational group A Trio, featuring Anthea Caddy, Khaled Yassine, and Christina Kazaryan, between Arabic music and psychedelic folk.

A long form composition of six movements from Maurice Louca, with the Lebanese improvisational group A Trio, featuring Anthea Caddy, Khaled Yassine, and Christina Kazaryan, between Arabic music and psychedelic folk.

The first book on the New York painter's eclectic iconography of jazz musicians, boxers, Black American icons and friends.

The seventh entry in an ongoing series of anthologies, this book features rare poems alongside new essays and interviews that engage the artists and themes explored elsewhere in Blank Forms' public programming: Terry Allen, Thulani Davis and Jessica Hagedorn, Sarah Hennies and Judith Hamann, Tashi Wada and Charles Curtis, Milford Graves, Graham Lambkin by Alan Licht, Still House Plants, Angel Bat Dawid...

A "poly-autobiographical" musical combinatory poem inspired by the life stories of a group of musicians whose testimonies Alessandro Bosetti has collected, exploring the shifting and multiple dimension of identities through voice expression, between electro-acoustic research, jazz and experimental opera.

This edition, printed in serigraphy, delivers the reworked transcription of a recorded interview between musicians Jacques Demierre and Louis Schild, in which the notion of surveying and measurement is examined, among other things and in a conversational manner (with a musical transcription and a contribution from the playwright Michèle Pralong).

A polyphonic evocation of the American saxophonist through the testimonies of some forty international musicians.

Archival documents and new writings on the intermedia collaborations of avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry.

Don Cherry’s New Researches featuring Naná Vasconcelos.

Don Cherry's lost Summer House Sessions finally available over fifty years after they were recorded.

A heterophonic musical piece for performative concert, composed by the choreographer Lotus Eddé Khouri.

An off-track, frenetic and exciting improvisation session bringing together musicians who have known each other for many years and are playing together for the first time.

An inspiring album that dissolves the boundary that too often separates live and studio, improvisation and composition.

169 fundamental free jazzrecords recommended in 180 pages by Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Philippe Robert, from must-have classics to indispensable curiosities.

"Night Music" unearthes Sven-Åke Johansson's very first recordings from 1964—made with his Tandberg tape recorder in the Kronenburg Bar, a dive bar in the red-light district in Münster/Westfalen (West Germany). There he performed jazz versions of popular songs and standards with Uwe Wegner (piano) and Gerold Flasse (double bass), sometimes joined by Dutch singer Jenny Gordee. Young Udo Lindenberg was a frequent guest at the Kronenburg Bar

19 poems and 23 chronicles of improvised music concerts (Albert Ayler, Sophie Agnel, Raymond Boni, Hélène Breschand, Steve Dalechinsky, Joëlle Léandre, Seijiro Murayama, Jean-François Pauvros, Barre Phillips, and many others).

Sophisticated Giant presents the life and legacy of tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon (1923–1990), one of the major innovators of modern jazz. In a context of biography, history, and memoir, Maxine Gordon has completed the book that her late husband began, weaving his "solo" turns with her voice and a chorus of voices from past and present.

Compositions and epistolary improvisations, in tribute to the writer François Augiéras.

Quentin Rollet lays his mini tape synthesizer and saxophones on drum tracks recorded by Kim Giani in 2015, that is to say in the world before confinement. A humorous and energetic project, realized in a period of global boredom.

Reissue of a classic example of Masayuki Takayanagi's “non section music” from 1975.

Reissue of a classic example of Masayuki Takayanagi's “non section music” from 1975.

Reissue of a classic example of Masayuki Takayanagi's “non section music” from 1975.