Philly’s Shot x Shot quartet delivered a striking debut a couple years back with their self-titled disc for High Two. Recorded in a hugely r...

Live in Oxford is the work of four young players: cornettist Taylor Ho Bynum, pianist Alex Hawkins, bassist Dom Lash and Toronto’s own Harri...

The droll pseudo-classical band name (a cheeky homage to the venerable Beaux Arts Trio) conceals a fiery swing-to-free jazz group from Holla...

The jazz piano trio is generally a discreet form, where a fluently beautiful surface is maintained even as the music’s interior shines with...

Free improvisation began as an attempt to discard pre-existing genres and ended up as a genre itself. One of its fascinations though is the...

Corn Meal Dance is the second album by Raining on the Moon, a project helmed by free jazz bassist William Parker that centres on the work of...

Avant-garde music can be hard work, even for the committed (or converted) listener, but there are certain artists with the knack for making...

News that the David S. Ware quartet’s appearance at the 2006 Vision Festival would be their final performance sent shockwaves among the free...

Most albums with dream band line-ups turn out to be unsatisfactory affairs but Hoarded Dreams is an impressive exception. This previously un...

Tongues is the third studio recording by the duet of laptopper/guitarist Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) and veteran drummer Steve Reid, whose...

Two decades after the Microscopic Septet’s heyday, their carnival-esque take on jazz — upside-down Monk and Dixieland Sun Ra, gutbucket R&B...

Trombonist Michael Dessen plays with a warmth and rhythmic bite that recalls Ray Anderson and George Lewis, though he’s less interested in r...

Dave Burrell’s first disc for High Two was Expansion, featuring the Full Blown Trio, his group with William Parker and Andrew Cyrille; the m...

UK quartet Mujician have been going strong for almost two decades; they remain one of the most distinctive and user-friendly of free-jazz gr...

The latest album by AACM trombonist George Lewis is an electro-acoustic project featuring eight players from disparate backgrounds. Four Ame...

The Guelph Jazz Festival is known for its ambitious, avant-garde oriented programming. Suitably enough, the first evening was as far as you...

For the past several decades, Holland has been a major hotspot of non-museum piece jazz and there’s no better primer on what Kevin Whitehead...

Golia’s band is one of the fixtures on the West Coast avant-garde scene, an awesomely large ensemble (35 players in this edition) whose soun...

This unassuming little session — recorded during some leftover studio time after the principals finished work on a Jimmy Ponder album — soun...

The self-titled debut of this Philadelphia quartet (saxophonists Dan Scofield and Bryan Rogers, bassist Matt Engle, drummer Dan Capecchi) is...