55 Years of Nurturing Avant-Garde and Outsider Music: ESP-Disk's Perpetual Revolution

This is a lecture I gave at the 2018 OCT-LOFT festival in Shenzhen, China. It included PowerPoint slides and musical examples.

ESP-Disk’ came about because founder Bernard Stollman was passionate about justice. As a young lawyer, he often worked for jazz musicians for free. He acutely felt that African-American musicians worked at an unfair disadvantage, and he wanted to do what he could to correct this. His involvement moved out of the legal realm after he was urged by Granville Lee, a Cleveland musician visiting Mr. Stollman, to go hear Albert Ayler at a club in Harlem, the Baby Grand Café. Though the other musicians stopped playing when Ayler stepped on the bandstand, leaving the saxophonist to play solo, Mr. Stollman was nonetheless impressed. Somebody once said that Ayler should have been a later development following Ornette Coleman’s also controversial music, but he’d come along earlier than musical evolution would seem to dictate.

Ayler disrupted expectations for every major axis on the jazz performance graph: rhythm, harmony, and melody. In Ekkehard Jost’s seminal 1974 study Free Jazz, the author states of Ayler’s 1964 recordings, “In no group at this time is so little heard of a steady beat, as in the trio and quartet recordings of the Ayler group. The absolute rhythmic freedom frequently leads to action on three independent rhythmic planes: Ayler improvises in long drawn-out sound spans; Peacock hints at chains of impulses, irregular and yet swinging in a remote sense; Murray plays on cymbals with a very live resonance, creating colour rather than accentuation.”Regarding rhythm, it is worth noting that even Coleman’s most radical album to that point, 1961’s Free Jazz, was full of regular pulses from both drums and bass.

Compare this to Ayler’s famous theme “Ghosts,” performed twice on Spiritual Unity.

Ayler practically ignored harmony; there are no chord progressions per se on Spiritual Unity. There are tonal centers, of course – all music but 12-tone composition has a tonal center or a shifting series of tonal centers – but they are not determinative of the development of the piece. Bassist Gary Peacock understood this on a profound level; on the “heads,” he plays a counterpoint in roughly the same tonal center, diverging gradually, and then in the improvised sections plays intricately serpentine contrasting melodies.

Melody was the basis of Ayler’s compositions, and he certainly didn’t eliminate it, but he radically revised how melody was delivered. He famously declared, “It’s not just about notes anymore!” Though this is a rather gnomic utterance if one attempts to parse it literally, anyone who has heard him play knows exactly what he meant by that. Rather than playing notes with clean timbre, he distorts and fractures notes. His notes blare, squawk, and scream. His solos quickly move away from his themes but, with no harmony, relate to nothing but his feelings in the moment.

To summarize, Albert Ayler’s approach was different from not just the jazz norm of the time, but from even other avant-gardists. This meant that the world wasn’t quite ready for it yet. Here was a new problem for Bernard Stollman to solve: a musician whose music was so radical that other musicians refused to play with him. Nor, of course, were record labels rushing to issue this challenging music. Yet there was something in the sounds that fascinated Bernard and spoke to him in a way no music had before.

It happened that Stollman was a lifelong devotee of Esperanto and issued an LP of familiar songs sung in Esperanto, titled Ni Kantu en Esperanto (Let’s Sing in Esperanto). Thus he named the label he created to put it out ESPERANTO-Disk, then shortened the name to “ESP-Disk’.” Having a label emboldened him to proclaim to Ayler that he would issue the daring saxophonist’s music himself. But Bernard’s one experience with recording did not really prepare him for all the factors he would be dealing with. He had done pro bono legal work for the Folkways label, and therefore used the same studio they used, Variety Arts Studio, near Times Square. Immediately he had trouble with his first jazz recording session: he didn’t specify to the engineer that he wanted a stereo recording. As a result, Spiritual Unity is in mono. But as he was fond of saying, “nobody ever complained about that.”

In another noteworthy mistake, the first vinyl pressing of Spiritual Unity accidentally substituted a different track for “Spirits.” The one that is on all the CDs and the vast majority of vinyl editions is the same tune as what is titled “Saints” on Witches & Devils (also known as  Spirits), recorded on February 24, 1964. The anomalous substitution, which does sound somewhat similar, is the same tune known as “Vibrations” on the album Vibrations (also known as Ghosts). Mr. Stollman had no memory of how this happened, but it was subsequently corrected and became a rarity known only to Ayler completists and dedicated ESP collectors. Martin Davidson (owner of Emanem, another indie label responsible for many groundbreaking jazz releases) suggested we include this mysterious rarity, and supplied the digital file, for which we are grateful. The session’s 50th anniversary in 2014 seemed like the perfect excuse to finally release this rare take officially.

Mr. Stollman had figured one thing out: releasing Spiritual Unity immediately, by itself, was not a good strategy. A label with just one or two releases was not taken seriously. And he was finding other avant-garde jazz musicians whose music was also worth releasing. He stockpiled a dozen albums and then released them simultaneously in September 1965, over a year after recording Spiritual Unity in July 1964. A second Ayler album, Bells, was rushed into this first batch of releases: a twenty-minute concert recording released on one side of 12” vinyl with no music on side two – because that’s all ESP had. But Stollman claimed it was because the music was so intense that more of it would be dangerous for listeners. Later he said, “I wanted to make a point, that music is not a commodity and that a record's length has nothing to do with its artistic merit.”

These first ESP-Disk’ albums are legendary. The debut album by Pharoah Sanders, recorded the year before playing with John Coltrane brought him notoriety. Another debut, by The New York Art Quartet, the influential grouping of saxophonist John Tchicai, trombonist Roswell Rudd, drummer Milford Graves, and bassist Lewis Worrell, controversially augmented on one track by the fire-breathing poetry of Amiri Baraka. The Byron Allen Trio, led by a saxophonist recommended to Bernard by Ornette Coleman, to whom Bernard was giving unpaid legal advice. An album by Coleman himself, given to ESP-Disk’ to compensate Bernard for his work after it resulted in Coleman being signed by the most prestigious jazz label, Blue Note. The debut of eccentric multi-instrumentalist Giuseppi Logan, whose prime was only documented by his two ESP-Disk’ albums. It’s also worth noting that the Logan LP was also the recorded debut of pianist Don Pullen. Let’s listen to them play some of “Bleeker Partita.”

Some artists were encountered by Bernard at the historic October Revolution in Jazz festival in 1964. From that meeting came Paul Bley’s Barrage, a quintet release which includes Sun Ra saxophonist Marshall Allen and trumpeter Dewey Johnson, the latter only documented on Barrage, his appearance a year later on Coltrane’s Ascension, and a 1982 session led by drummer Paul Murphy. William Parker is one of the players on the scene who has heralded Johnson’s importance. You can hear Johnson especially prominently on “And Now the Queen,” and Marshall Allen as well. Let’s listen.

This is a recurring theme of early ESP-Disk’ releases: legendary figures of the early free-jazz scene recorded for the first time and rarely, if ever, afterwards. A prime example is cult favorite Lowell Davidson’s only album. Davidson was a distinctive pianist whose main profession ended up being biochemistry (which he studied at Harvard). His trio album, his only studio recording, teams him with Peacock and drummer Milford Graves, the latter a frequent presence in the early ESP discography. Davidson later switched to bass; he died at age 50 after a laboratory accident. If Coleman had not recommended him to Stollman, his music might never have been documented. Now we will listen to Davidson’s “Dunce.”

But not every ESP-Disk’ artist was fated to cult status. Pianist Bob James’s experimental album Explosions, featuring tape manipulations by avant-gardists Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma, captured much more radical music than the commercial style of pop jazz that eventually led to James doing TV theme music such as his famous Hill Street Blues intro music. Probably some of James’s albums outsold the entire ESP-Disk’ catalog.

Ran Blake’s ESP-Disk’ LP, another in the first batch of releases, was not his debut, since he’d already accompanied singer Jeanne Lee, but it was Blake’s first solo album, the format in which he has most frequently played and in which he has done his best work. It’s also the album in the initial dozen jazz releases that was most explicitly political with its stunning arrangement of “There’ll Be Some Changes Made,” a title that took on an additional meaning in this context, and Blake’s originals “Vanguard” and “Birmingham, U.S.A.” all addressing the political turmoil of the times. Listen to the tension found in “Birmingham, U.S.A.”, a more overt display of dissonance than in Blake’s interpretations of standards.

The final recording of the first dozen jazz albums on ESP-Disk’, coming from another connection made at the October Revolution concerts, was The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra. It was also not a debut – not only had Sun Ra been releasing LPs on his self-run Saturn label, Tom Wilson – famous for his hands-off production of Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa – had released a Sun Ra LP on Wilson’s Transition label. But none of those earlier releases made the impact that The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra did. A follow-up session was quickly set up, yielding The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra volume two. Of course, Sun Ra went on to a level of fame that perhaps now surpasses any other ESP jazz artist. His work at this time was absolutely distinct from other free jazz artists. Some swinging parts remind us that Sonny wrote arrangements for the Fletcher Henderson big band, while others are as radical in their deployment of sound as anything the European avant-garde of the time had to offer. Consider, for instance, the booming percussion and blatting trombones of the opening track, “Heliocentric.”

Working with a makeshift crew of employees and family members, Stollman’s label developed several visual aesthetics that set its releases apart from other jazz albums. For economic reasons having to do with printing costs, ESP favored black-and-white artwork, or one color – red was a favorite – on a white background, giving the front covers a stark simplicity that now looks classic. Bernard’s brother Saul’s drawings of the artists were sometimes featured; his sister Sandra’s photos also were used. The most stark of the first front covers was a rough white spiral on a black background, used for the Pharoah Sanders LP; it didn’t even include the artist’s name. Commercially this was a faux pas, of course, and the name was added later, but from a purely artistic sense, the original has a beautiful purity. In later years sometimes just the artist’s photo would be on the front cover, but this also proved an impediment to sales, so names in black block letters were eventually superimposed on those covers.

Bernard was not a musician himself, and was known to claim that when he started ESP-Disk’, he owned no record albums. He came to the New York City jazz avant-garde with completely fresh and unbiased ears. He once told me the reason he wasn’t interested in a particular famous jazz musician’s music was because he didn’t hear a narrative story in the sounds. But in many cases he didn’t even know what a particular jazz musician’s music sounded like when he told them he would record them. He was documenting a scene, and if somebody was considered an integral part of that scene, that was recommendation enough.

Because this is a jazz festival, I am emphasizing ESP’s jazz releases, but it must be said that Bernard’s disregard for stylistic consistency in the label’s releases was ground-breaking. Of course, a major label such as Columbia would have multiple styles represented in its output, but independent labels almost always had more of a genre focus than ESP-Disk’ did. After that first batch of jazz releases, the other styles included the shambling, provocative rock of The Fugs, a group Bernard took over from  Folkways because Folkways owner Moe Asch found them too profane; the intricate chamber rock of Pearls Before Swine, basically a Tom Rapp project that he submitted to ESP-Disk’ because he thought a label that would issue the Fugs might be the best home for his songs; and the untutored squalling of The Godz, neophyte musicians who worked for ESP (later they acquired a bit more finesse).

And there were weirder artists: the eccentric MIJ, dubbed the Yodeling Astrologer despite not actually yodeling or being an astrologer, though the alien caterwauling of his vocal style is undeniably difficult to categorize. There’s a reason one of ESP-Disk’s slogans is “You Never Heard Such Sounds in Your Life.”

The Fugs’ poet genius Tuli Kupferberg recorded an ESP-Disk’ album largely consisting of him reading advertisement texts over musical accompaniment. Another author, William Burroughs, had his French LP of readings from three novels picked up by ESP for U.S. release. Jazzy folkie Jerry Moore, with ill-fated jazz and R&B guitarist Eric Gale in his band, released an album featuring a song about the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama. A number of psychedelic bands piqued Bernard’s interest. My favorite is Octopus, who were all teenagers when they recorded their LP.

There are more, but those were the most famous non-jazz albums on ESP until the engineer of Charles Manson’s only studio recordings arranged for ESP to re-release an album he’d cobbled together. The enginner was having trouble distributing it, and but even little ESP-Disk was able to improve on its sales. Royalties were paid to the family of one of Manson’s victims by order of a French court.

How did a lawyer who often worked for free manage to release so many records? He asked his parents to give him his inheritance before they died, and his mother gave him $105,000, which was a hefty sum in 1964. But recording and manufacturing so many albums – 15 sessions in 1964 and ‘65 and many more after that – exhausted that money pretty quickly, especially since most of the jazz albums did not sell well. Nor was he a competent businessman, as he freely admitted. After he started having money problems, some sessions would sit in the vaults for several years while he waited to have enough money to press LPs and print album covers. By the way, here’s something about the record industry that you might not know: for any physical release, the costs for printing the packaging are higher than they are for the material the music is pressed on, whether that be vinyl, CDs, or tapes.

The label’s releases tilted more towards rock and folk after Bernard and his wife of the time moved from New York City to the Woodstock area in the early 1970s, because those were the musicians who were around him. But he never stopped issuing jazz. In 1974 and ’75, the last year or so that ESP-Disk’ was still sporadically issuing LPs before it ran out of money, Bernard gave the world two more classic avant-jazz albums: Sea Ensemble’s We Move Together, a duo of husband and wife Donald Rafael Garrett, who had recorded with Coltrane, and Zusaan Kali Fasteau, and The Will Come Is Now, the only album as leader by Sun Ra bassist Ronnie Boykins.

Then Bernard became a full-time lawyer working for the State of New York. Until he retired, ESP-Disk’ was basically inactive, though he agreed to several licensing deals with European labels and occasionally would put out new albums as part of a deal, notably a pair of Ayler concert LPs from Lower East Side club Slugs Saloon, a live Sun Ra album received in return for paying for the Arkestra to get back from a money-losing overseas tour, and the Sorgen/Rust/Windbiel Trio.

None of the licensing deals worked out as he had wished, so after he had retired, he used his pension to restart the label in 2005. At first he just reissued various classic titles, and put out a shelved album by Norman Howard and Joe Phillips, but of course newer artists wanted the honor of being on ESP-Disk’, so the people he hired to help him run the label started signing newer artists. Especially notable in this regard is that Tom Abbs, a jazz bassist himself, attracted many excellent artists such as guitarist Joe Morris. Then in 2010 Abbs and the other employees left to start their own label, Northern Spy.

When I heard about their departure, I was working at a record store in Williamsburg, the ultra-hip Brooklyn neighborhood home to dozens of indie-rock bands. I made myself available to Bernard and he found room for me writing press releases and doing PR. He hired me partly because we had both gone to Columbia University, though of course decades apart, and partly because in the 1990s I had worked for the Italian labels Black Saint and Soul Note, owned by the Bonandrini family; at the time, they had opened a New York office to distribute themselves after severing their deal with Polygram because Polygram wouldn’t keep all the albums in print regardless of how few copies they sold of some titles. I had also worked as a music critic since 1990, writing for The Wire, Jazziz, and other magazines, and had built relationships with many New York jazz artists.

When Bernard promoted me to manager in 2013, through my relationships I was able to bring well-known artists such as Matthew Shipp and Defunkt to the label. I also focused on reissuing some of the old titles that hadn’t already been revived by previous regimes, starting with the Ran Blake album. But the most important thing to me is to continue ESP-Disk’s legacy of promoting artists just starting their careers or, at least, artists whose only existing albums were things they had self-released, examples of this being the powerful sax/bass/drums trio Tiger Hatchery, who mix Frank Wright-style hard-blowing free improvisation with a punk aesthetic, and the avant-garde vocalist Fay Victor.

Here is a Fay Victor song, “Funky Dunk.”

Here is a bit of a typical high-energy Tiger Hatchery track, “Chieftain.”

More unknown was Polish saxophonist, flutist, and clarinetist Mat Walerian, who Matthew Shipp told me about. Walerian was the last new artist approved by Bernard before cancer took him from us in 2015. Walerian’s lack of fame means his albums don’t sell many copies, but it is not the ESP-Disk’ way to worry about that; if the music deserves to be heard, we put it out! Here is the first half of a duo track by Walerian and Shipp, “Blues for Acid Cold.”

I also brought Alan Sondheim back to the label. He had released two albums on ESP-Disk’ in its heyday, and was working with a saxophonist, Christopher Diasparra, who had been the manager of ESP when I started in 2010. Alan is not a jazz musician per se, but he is a fearless improviser on instruments from around the world. First came a trio with two saxophonists in 2014; then in 2017 I put out an album that I believe is unique in the world, Sondheim and Stephen Dydo playing free improvisation on qins. I’m sure I don’t have to tell this audience that the qin is a traditional Chinese stringed instrument, and a variety of other stringed instruments including viola, banjo, guzheng, rababa, and erhu. Their approach is NOT traditional, though Dydo is a past president of the New York Qin Society. That album is called Dragon and Phoenix, and here’s a track from it called “Zhuo.”

My presentation at OCT-Loft Jazz Festival with translator Susan (left) and Midori (right) handling the music and PowerPoint.

Albert Ayler: Prophecy & Bells

 Albert Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sonny Murray is best known for the July 10, 1964 recording of Spiritual Unity, the album that made both Albert and ESP-Disk' famous when it was released in 1965 (ESP-Disk' owner Bernard Stollman had waited until he had several albums ready to issue them all at once, theorizing that this tactic would garner the fledgling label more attention than a piecemeal program of releases). A decade after that, ESP-Disk' also released, as Prophecy (ESP3030), the first documentation of the group, as captured in concert by Canadian poet Paul Haines a month earlier at a 91st Street club. These Cellar Café recordings are augmented here beyond the five cuts on Prophecy by including another five tracks -- plus the brief closing theme -- from the same gig. (We use the more accurate titles found in their release in the Holy Ghost box set on Revenant rather than the fanciful titles on their first issue, as Albert Smiles with Sunny on the German label In Respect. Note also that "Wizard" on CD 1 and "The Wizard" on CD 2 are different compositions.)

Listening to Prophecy expecting the more poised and concentrated impact of Spiritual Unity could lead to disappointment. Ayler's sound was evolving by leaps and bounds within short periods of time, plus he was breaking in a new band, so the style here is more expansive in some ways, and less focused as the trio finds its way towards the groundbreaking style heard on Spiritual Unity. (But also compare the Cellar Café tracks to his February '64 Atlantic studios recordings, Goin' Home and Witches & Devils, to hear how much farther into freedom Ayler had moved with Peacock and Murray -- also the drummer in February -- since just four months later.) Sometimes the material sounds more loosely organized, though not always; certainly "Ghosts" as heard on disc 2 progresses in acutely conscious fashion, which may be why it is just a tad less bracingly intense than it would be in July. But the work this band put in before going into the studio in July served it well as it created on the fly a new improvisation paradigm: looser structure, less regard for standard pitch, and no obligation to present a regular beat. Ayler’s sound was unprecedented, much rawer than any other jazz of the time. Sometimes it was expressed in squalls of untempered sound, sometimes in outbursts of poignant spontaneous melody. Meanwhile, under and around the leader’s unfettered self-expressions, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray reinvented the roles of their instruments.

1965 yielded Ayler treasures as well as his style shifted. The transitional Bells was just under 20 minutes, released originally as one side of a clear vinyl LP with the other side empty of music. It was recorded at a May 1 Town Hall concert of ESP artists, displaying Ayler's new group. Murray remained, Albert's brother Donald joined on trumpet, and Lewis Worrell held down the bass slot. The denser sound of "Bells" shows Ayler moving towards the bigger sonic statement made on Spirits Rejoice, his September 23, 1965 Judson Hall session. By the way, "Bells" as heard here is not, in fact, a single composition; rather, it is a medley moving from "Holy Ghost" to an unnamed theme and then into "Bells" proper. Bernard was so excited by "Bells" that it was released on one side of an LP without delaying to record additional music to fill the other side. "Bells" also happens to be the recorded debut of saxophonist Charles Tyler, who would go on to record for ESP as a leader (ESP1029, Charles Tyler Ensemble, and ESP1059, Eastern Man Alone).

Both recording dates here document Ayler in transition, but then, he was always in transition, always moving to express himself in new formats and styles and sounds. 

Alan Sondheim: Cutting Board (ESP-Disk')

Short because it was written to fit on one panel of a "digipak." Not included: how funny Alan is; how neurotic he is; how incredibly prolific he is, far beyond his discography of released albums. Almost every day he posts a track of freshly improvised music on ESP-Disk's Facebook page.

Alan Sondheim is the first artist from ESP-Disk's 1964-75 heyday to return, since it was revived in 2005, to issue an album of new material on the fabled label. We find it especially appropriate that he does so during ESP's second annual 50th anniversary celebration. It was in 1963 that owner Bernard Stollman recorded ESP's first album, Ni Kantu En Esperanto, which gave ESP its name; 1964 was when he first began recording the avant-garde jazz artists who would make the label famous, and these were first issued in 1965.

Sondheim joined the roster with a 1967 session, Ritual-All-7-70, then followed up with 1968's T'Other Little Tune. (Drumming on the latter was Joel Zabor; now known as Rafi Zabor, he reunited with Sondheim at ESP's 50th anniversary concert in November 2013.)

Sondheim got his musical start as a guitarist, but soon moved into a much more original sound utilizing a vast array of instruments from around the world. His instrument collection has only grown in variety all these decades later. Cutting Board, his eighth album, is his first instrumental group album; his other albums have always either been solo (and there are two solo tracks on Cutting Board as well) or, like this year's Avatar Woman with partner Azure Carter on the Public Eyesore label, featured female vocalists. His collaborators here intertwine saxophone lines that offer a relatively consistent set of timbres against which Sondheim's arsenal of sounds presents contrasting textures in music of great energy and variety.

Though he's a pure improviser, Sondheim rightly insists that he doesn't play jazz; even playing with two saxophonists, he's outside that tradition's spectrum. The eclecticism of the sounds he's working with sonically can tenuously seem to connect him to world music, but he doesn't play the instruments in traditional ways. And on rare occasions you can hear the blues lurking, but I wouldn't bet on Living Blues putting him on the cover. Maybe if somebody starts a music magazine (or website) called Beyond Category, then Sondheim can be a cover subject.

Bud Powell: Live at the Blue Note Cafe, Paris 1961 (ESP-Disk')

When I put together this reissue, my focus was on fixing the track indexing (on the original CD release, if you just played the whole thing through, you'd never notice any problem, but if you skipped to a track, you'd be starting a few seconds into it) and using the original cover art, a pencil drawing by Francis Paudras. I probably should have had somebody with more Powell expertise write the booklet notes, but had to economize and thus wrote them myself. I could not have managed without constant reference to Peter Pullman's detailed biography Wail: The Life of Bud Powell, which I highly recommend. I bought it directly from Mr. Pullman via his website, and so should you!

Bud Powell moved to Paris, France at the end of March 1959. A 1954 arrest in Philadelphia for possession of heroin had cost him his cabaret card after his 1955 guilty plea in the case, so, for several years, he had been legally barred from steady gigs in New York City and had had to, instead, rely on out-of-town bookings, which did not always go well, given his mental problems and addictions. In contrast, a two-week engagement in November 1957, at Club Saint-Germain in Paris, had gone well.

Once in Paris, Powell soon hooked up with drummer Kenny Clarke, with whom he had made history in the previous decade on the jam sessions and recordings in which bebop was created. Clarke had had a band with Lester Young at the Blue Note Café, from January '57 into March (following which, Young, quite ill, returned to New York and immediately died). So Powell's arrival was fortuitous; he and Clarke played at the Blue Note for all of April. In December, they reconvened at the club, with bassist Pierre Michelot and—avoiding the question of who was the bandleader, though it was Bud who called the tunes—billed themselves as The Three Bosses. With time out for tours and festival appearances, they worked there for much of 1960 and '61 The first three tracks here, with Zoot Sims, date from January 1961.

Powell's alcoholism, prankishness, or a combination of both got the best of him in January 1962, when the Blue Note fired him for stealing a customer's drink. (Kenny Drew replaced him.) Powell then worked in Switzerland, Sweden, Copenhagen, and Norway for much of the rest of the year. Eventually, another visiting American saxophonist, Johnny Griffin, asked for Powell to accompany him at the Blue Note, and Powell got back in the club's good graces by 1963.

The longer trio set, recorded by Alan Douglas, is from 1961, although one discography, without explaining why, puts it in 1962, without pinning the date down any further. Though this is unlikely, were it true, it would have to have taken place in the first week of January '62, just before Powell was fired. It's hard to believe that anyone, while listening to Powell navigate the fleet tempos of these bebop standards, would care all that much about what might be as little as a matter of a week's difference.

Powell's work, from 1954 on, is generally denigrated, and certainly this always erratic artist, after a police beating, various shock therapies crudely administered during involuntary stays at mental institutions, the ravages of heroin and alcohol abuse, and the side effects of chlorpromazine AKA thorazine, was only rarely able to approach the top-notch digital technique he had flaunted in his youth. But sometimes, as in these concerts, he had good nights, and the greater expressiveness of his later years has its own attractions. His time in France rejuvenated him and spared him the hassles and, to some degree, the temptations of New York that had dragged him down. Nearing the sunset of his career, his musical light could still burst through the clouds and dazzle his faithful listeners.

Bob Moses: Devotion (Soul Note 121173)

It turned out, somewhat embarrassingly, that five of the tracks on Devotion had been released already on an out-of-print 1980 LP titled Family on the small Sutra Records label. Soul Note learned this when a reviewer pointed it out. Within a few years, expanded use of the internet would make such an error much less likely to occur.

The band here is Moses (drums/percussion), David Liebman (soprano saxophone), Terumasa Hino (cornet, percussion), Steve Kuhn (piano), and Steve Swallow (bass).

Issuing the early work of a jazz musician 17 years after it was recorded carries with it a heavy burden of expectation and responsibility. The musician better be somebody of stature, or his historic document will be dismissed with a simple "so what?" or worse (anybody remember the critical reaction to Harry Connick Jr.'s album of his work as an 11-year-old? Ouch!) And the music better be of more than scholarly interest, or it will speak only to a small coterie. The tapes that Bob Moses's father found in his basement pass both these acid tests easily.

Multi-instrumentalist Bob Moses, born in New York City in 1948, was playing piano, vibes, and drums when he was ten years old and within two years was jamming with Charles Mingus, who was one of his press agent father's clients. He paid his dues as a teenage vibraphonist in the Big Apple's thriving Latin music scene and at the age of 18 formed what many consider the first electric jazz-rock group, Free Spirits (which included Jim Pepper and Larry Coryell). He subsequently played in a wide variety of jazz contexts with David Liebman's Open Sky, various Gary Burton groups, Jack DeJohnette, Pat Metheny, Hal Galper and the Brecker Brothers, and large groups led by Mike Gibbs and George Gruntz, among others. When Gramavision released 1982's When Elephants Dream of Music and 1983's Visit with the Great Spirit, they brought Moses critical acclaim and a broad audience. Yet he has recorded only intermittently since then, partly because he's been expanding his musical palette with trips abroad.

Thus, previously unheard music by Moses is even more welcome for mitigating the paucity of releases. But this album may be a revelation for those who know his music only from the later releases, which tend to be for large ensembles and of polyglot style. To say the quintet documented here is an all-star aggregation is not to engage in hyperbole, but merely to state the obvious. The talents of the players are given much more space than Moses's subsequent large-group works generally afford, and the context is at first glance more traditional, but the search for new sounds and structures found in the later works is already evident here; it's obvious at every turn that this was no jam session, but rather a carefully arranged date.

Thoughout this album, compositions unfold in a highly organic manner, with each section flowing into the next without obvious demarcations. It's as though, having decided that the tonal colors of the instruments and the styles of the players offer contrast enough, Moses wove his music from strands rather than building it from blocks. Jazz references name-check Gil Evans, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and other bandleaders as influences on Moses's arranging, comparisons aiming obviously at Moses's large-group work; this quintet suggests that, structurally and developmentally, the subtle free jazz Jimmy Giuffre conceived in a trio format (to which Swallow was a major contributor) may have pointed towards some of the paths Moses travels down here, though the compositions are more worked out and a harmonic underpinning is almost always in evidence even if not always the governing feature.

"Autumn Liebs" is unsurprisingly a feature for Liebman, who solos first and longest; what is a surprise is that he's on tenor saxophone (as he is throughout the album) rather than on soprano sax. In fact, in the year following this recording he gave up tenor and flute to concentrate on the straight horn. His active (but not cluttered) style on this tune belies the accusation of Coltrane-clone often flung at his tenor work, covering a much broader bop and post-bop range in a thoroughly integrated way. Hino follows with a solo that seems ruminative even during its most expostulative outbursts and high-altitude moments; the longer it goes on, the more fragmentary his lines, lending a questioning quality, until Hino's phrases become so short that when Moses fills in the gaps with accents, it seems as though the two musicians are trading off. Kuhn's high-octane swirls follow in an effective contrast, and when the piece's hesitant theme returns, Kuhn underlines it with gusts and flurries.

"Heaven" is a ballad with an unusual structure: cornet and sax play the theme in unison, then repeat it with the tenor gradually diverging more to echo and comment. When Hino solos, Liebman continues to interject, as though the theme-and-divergence method were being continued, though by the second chorus it's Kuhn rather than Liebman who fills in the gaps. When Kuhn's solo begins, the effect at first is as if Hino has merely paused a bit longer. Kuhn's solo gradually becomes fuller, with his bright right-hand roulades balanced by weighty comping by the left hand, until Hino and Liebman return with the theme over Kuhn's most ornate runs. It is a highly organic arrangement that thoughtfully avoids the predictability and compartmentalization of head-instrument 1 solo-instrument 2 solo-instrument 3 solo-head structures.

The uptempo "Radio" has the merest excuse of a theme, its main characteristic being its asymmetrical phrase lengths and seemingly abrupt conclusion. In fact, it's a perfectly typical 32-bar length, but the ever-shifting phrase lengths with their unexpected pauses and extensions will throw listeners off-balance even on repeated hearings. Rising out of the absence of theme, Swallow steps to the fore for the first time, and then Hino plays his most fiery runs yet. The solos are not long, and after a typically bravura Kuhn excursion, Liebman charges in to top him. Throughout, Moses swings hard and fast, and after Hino spices the end of Liebman's solo, the theme gets played twice in a more assertive and less disconcerting fashion.

The oddly titled "Snake and Pygmy Pie" lays out a modal groove mostly carried by Swallow's ostinato pattern, with a sinister cornet/tenor melody full of pregnant pauses twining through Kuhn's spare Orientalisms while Moses plays a very free pulse. The textures are pared down even further when Swallow and Kuhn drop out, with Liebman and Hino trading figures which are more gestures than phrases, often overlapping, while Moses shifts the rhythm constantly. When the horns drop out, Kuhn and Swallow re-enter, both playing the ostinato figure, while Moses solos (a welcome change from the usual unaccompanied nature of drum solos). A lengthier and more elaborate variation on the style of the beginning turns into a coda that conjures the icy elegance of some of the quieter moments of electric-period Miles (a former employer of Liebman and an obvious influence on Hino, who on open cornet often manages to evoke a Harmon mute sound) with utterly different materials and procedures.

On "St. Elmo" (a reference to underappreciated bebop pianist/composer Elmo Hope, perhaps?), Hino finally does use a mute, recalling Miles's Prestige years. The piece seems continually to come to a close even in its earliest segments, yet keeps starting up again. The gorgeous ballad features Hino for quite a while until Kuhn takes over briefly with a strangely swirling line in which every accent is placed with lapidary precision, like Monk playing a Bill Evans tune. The oddly coda-like character of the entire piece, with Liebman entering late and Hino's fragile tone so predominant, leaves an elegaic impression at the same time it continually unsettles expectations; when it finally does cease to start up again, the effect is breathtaking.

The speedy "Portsmouth Figuration" has another odd, and quite short, head, with a few note-filled snippets of varying lengths alternating with brief, frenetic solos, with Swallow's trotting (this is too fast for walking) and Moses's headlong rush of a cymbal beat holding it together. Hino again plays fragmentary lines during most of his short solo, contrasting strongly with the robust, perpetual-motion lines Liebman spins out next. Moses then takes an unaccompanied solo of JATP-like proportions, shifting kaleidoscopically through a variety of patterns spiced up with some percussion sounds definitely not found in a standard drum kit. Through all the pauses and twists, his momentum never flags until he fades out before the oh-so-brief reappearance of the instruments.

The melody of "Christmas '78" is awfully nostalgic, in a fairly melancholic if hardly depressed tone, for a holiday a mere eight months past at the time of recording. Though Kuhn's comping under Hino's solo, along with Swallow's rhythm, is sometimes quite jaunty, it alternates with a foreboding modal pattern utterly lacking in cheer. Hino's improvisations here are much more of a piece than elsewhere on the album, and within a relatively narrow range. Similarly, Kuhn's solo is at first more restrained and less overtly virtuosic than his established norm on the other tracks. He takes us through a series of juxtaposed moods ranging from chirpy to ironic, all seemingly with quotes around them. Liebman's pensive, Shorteresque solo has an elliptical quality that leads into a unison restatement with Hino of the regret-laden theme.

Hino opens "Devotion" by himself in his most heart-wrenching tone, developing the nagging motif with some mildly avant timbres before returning to his plushly mellow tone. Swallow takes over with a minimal, broadly paced ostinato just barely accompanied by Moses, leading finally to the theme. A regal melody laid out in long notes, it has a flavor of archaic majesty to it that all the players emphasize as they simultaneously embroider it, slowly crescendoing in volume and intensity. The title helps suggest a sort of ritualistic worshipfulness, and the ever-increasing fervor of the players suggests this devotion brings with it an ecstasy surpassing verbal expression. Kuhn in particular utterly submerges his florid tendencies in a chiming procession of block chords. The bends and tonal inflections of Hino and the plangent, mournful sound Liebman draws from his horn, which eventually is stripped down to a long held tone, give way to Swallow's final statement of the ostinato and then to silence. It is the most organic and elliptical of all Moses's arrangements on this masterful session, and its hushed rather than bravura ending, like all of them, heeds conventional ideas only to quietly subvert them. Here's hoping Richard Moses finds some more tapes in his basement.

Azure Carter & Alan Sondheim: Avatar Woman (Public Eyesore)

Another job of recent vintage. I met Alan Sondheim through my work at ESP-Disk', and became friends when he and his partner Azure Carter lived a short walk away (now, alas, they have relocated to Providence, RI -- which is lucky to have them, but apparently unaware of its luck). Hanging out at their place listening to Alan demonstrate the sounds of his huge collection of instruments from around the world was a whole education in itself. I was happy to pitch in with these booklet notes when asked, and I heartily recommend acquiring this album.

Listen to any track on this album. Have you ever heard someone else who sings like Azure Carter? I sure haven't. Have you heard anyone who plays as a wide range of instruments, with such gleeful abandon, as Alan Sondheim does? Me neither. Put them together and this may be the most original and unique sound to come along in years, even decades perhaps.

Carter's lyrics are, I am told, related to and/or inspired by Second Life, an online virtual world. That may have significance for some, perhaps even great significance, but even a Luddite such as myself can enjoy them and interpret them in the context of meatbag life: longings for contact and connection, deconstructions of our strategies for satisfying that longing, self-analyses and reflection. Between the conundrums and quirks of that search and the restless music underpinning them, this is an album of unease, of a hypermodern sense of overwhelming possibility, even though sometimes Carter's cadences sound eerily like Psalms or the Song of Solomon (you can hear this right off the bat on "Among the Ferns").

About that music. Alan Sondheim, an underground icon from the '60s thanks to a 1967 debut album on Riverboat that made the infamous Nurse With Wound list, followed up with two albums on notorious outsider label ESP-Disk', has made a 21st-century comeback (in the interim, he established himself as an academic pioneering cyberspace theory). His improvised music resists all genre labels, though one can hear, in the sounds of the instruments chosen if not always the non-traditional techniques he uses to play them, so-called world music; on the tracks Ed Schneider and Chris Diasparra play on, there are traces of jazz in their contributions; and Sondheim's early blues roots shine through on "Credo." It is music based on gesture and timbre rather than harmony and/or melody, and rhythmically abjures beats. "That 'mama heartbeat,' that 'bom-bom-bom' — it's so boring, it's so banal," Don Van Vliet AKA Captain Beefheart once said. "I want things to change like the patterns and shadows that fall from the sun." Sondheim's improvisations are like that, except as though played by a metabolism operating at a faster rate of speed, or filmed and fast-forwarded. 

Yet there's an opposite effect, or rather a balance, brought by what Sondheim is doing with timbre — and, thanks to a broad and ever-changing instrument collection drawn from around the world, he's got a dazzling array of timbres available to him, with Schneider and Diasparra adding even more to the collective color palette. When apprehended by a listener acutely attuned to timbre rather than rhythm or the chimeras of melody and harmony, the scurrying gestures of his instrumental lines blur into clouds of sounds that paradoxically suggest a sort of perpetual-motion stasis. But there is no paradox, rather the Buddhist refusal to treat with dichotomy, a suggestion of the infinite possibilities in every moment and every movement. The way Carter's voice frictionlessly twists and slides through the buffeting textures and fits into the cracks amid those timbres/possibilities perfectly complements and reflects that infinity as she and Sondheim paint with sound on the canvas of time.

The Albert Ayler Story (ESP4072)

Something current, for a change. This accompanies a download-only July 2014 release with four disc's worth of tracks, mixing music and interviews.

Albert Ayler, one of the most controversial and polarizing musicians in the history of jazz, was accused of not being able to play his instrument, so radically did he reboot the whole idea of jazz saxophone. But consider this: in his youth in Cleveland, he was nicknamed "Little Bird" for his ability to mimic Charlie Parker, and later such old-school tenorists as Don Byas and Illinois Jacquet praised Ayler's playing.

The son of a saxophonist, Ayler was born in Cleveland on July 13, 1936, and from an early age was attracted to music. His father gave him his first lessons, starting him on alto sax. After excelling in both school and church bands, Albert began playing in professional bands in his mid-teens, famously being recruited for the band of blues harmonica great Little Walter Jacobs, who took him on tour. Ayler spent two years in Jacobs's band and also went on the road with New Orleans R&B singer Lloyd Price. At age 22, he joined the Army and was assigned to a Special Services band (an example of his playing in this context is included here), which basically meant he was still being a professional musician while he served for three years (and on top of that, he could take gigs in nearby Louisville). Eventually, he was posted to France, and also got to visit Denmark and Sweden.

During his time in service, he switched to tenor saxophone and began working on developing a more personal and revolutionary style. When he returned to the States, the change shocked old acquaintances. He was discharged in 1961, at which point Ornette Coleman had become notorious for playing microtonally and ignoring chord progressions, but Ayler went even farther into free improvisation. Faced with rejection in his native land (not only in Cleveland, but also during a brief sojourn in Los Angeles), Ayler returned to Sweden in April 1962.

He was out of place there too, playing with musicians who didn't fit his new style, but it's nonetheless historically fascinating to be able to chart his growth by listening to his June 1962 radio session in Finland, as guest with a band led by Swedish guitarist Herbert Katz – the first recorded example of Ayler's new approach. His rendition of "Summertime" brings to mind clarinetist Tony Scott's anecdote about a time, years later, when Albert sat in with his group and played the same tune: "…he went way out, you know. I turned to [fellow clarinetist] Perry Robinson and said, 'Does he know "Summertime"? He said, 'Forget that and listen to what he's playing!'" Ayler also sometimes got to play in the company of more adventurous and empathetic compatriots, notably with the Cecil Taylor Quartet the following month, as heard on an excerpt here that focuses on Albert's solo amid a free improvisation. By the time he left Europe and returned to the U.S. in 1963, he had recorded two albums, though again with relatively incompatible local sidemen.

When he returned to his home country, it was not to Cleveland, but to the center of the jazz world: New York City. Near the end of 1963, a friend of Ayler's urged Bernard Stollman, a lawyer who occasionally helped musicians, sometimes for no recompense, to go uptown to Harlem to hear Ayler sit in on an Elmo Hope gig. When Ayler got up to play, the other musicians stopped playing, but Ayler was used to such behavior by this time; it never stopped him from playing, and he played solo for twenty to thirty minutes. Stollman was overwhelmed by the intensity of Ayler's music. Earlier that year, Stollman had issued an album of music and poetry, Ni Kantu en Esperanto, to promote the constructed language Esperanto, of which Stollman was an enthusiast; he had named his label ESP for that reason.

Stollman's enthusiasm for Ayler's music led him to immediately propose issuing an Ayler LP. Ayler said he already had a session scheduled for the following February at Atlantic Studios (these recordings were eventually issued as Witches & Devils [AKA Spirits] and Swing Low Sweet Spiritual [AKA Goin' Home]), but that he would be in touch after that. To Stollman's surprise, Albert kept his promise. He had put together a trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sonny Murray that meant he was playing regularly with like-minded innovators, so their July 10, 1964 session went well, to say the least. In fact, it was a milestone of jazz. It would not be much of a stretch to say that ESP-Disk made Albert Ayler famous and Ayler made ESP famous. Ayler had impressed a few colleagues on the avant-garde jazz scene, but was little known before 1965, when ESP released his album Spiritual Unity, the label's first album of jazz, recorded at that 1964 session.

Spiritual Unity presented a new paradigm for improvisation. Not even Ornette Coleman's groups played with so little structure, standard pitch, and steady rhythm. Even Ornette had a system; Ayler ran on pure, unbridled emotion. Ayler's sound was so unprecedented, and so much rawer than any other jazz of the time, that poet Ted Joans famously likened it to "screaming the word FUCK in St. Patrick's Cathedral." Sometimes, it was expressed in squalls of untempered sound, sometimes in outbursts of poignant spontaneous melody. Meanwhile, under and around the leader's effusions, Peacock and Murray reinvented the roles of their instruments. Spiritual Unity ranks among the most influential 29 minutes on record in jazz, and "Ghosts," "The Wizard," and "Spirits" became familiar touchstones of "The New Thing," as this revolutionary musical movement was dubbed.

ESP followed up this success with many Ayler releases, some years later – more than by any other artist on the label. Three more 1964 recordings eventually appeared on ESP. Prophecy documented an earlier (June 14) trio performance at the Cellar Café in New York with, aside from the title track, the same repertoire as Spiritual Unity, but more loosely organized. It was recorded by Canadian poet Paul Haines.

The soundtrack for the art film New York Eye and Ear Control was recorded seven days after Spiritual Unity; it was a free improvisation for which Ayler's trio was joined by trumpeter Don Cherry, alto saxophonist John Tchicai, and trombonist Roswell Rudd. Even freer than Spiritual Unity, it's been called the link between Coleman's Free Jazz and Coltrane's Ascension. It is certainly not an iota inferior to Spiritual Unity, and the interaction with Cherry has led some to rank it even higher.

Another Ayler/Cherry collaboration that didn't appear until many years later, The Hilversum Session, was recorded at the end of a European tour with Cherry, Peacock, and Murray for a Netherlands radio station. It has not been blessed with the reputation of Spiritual Unity because of its tardy release, but it is just as boldly brilliant, the culmination of their year's work. We also sample a gig from earlier on that tour, this time without Cherry.

1965 yielded Ayler treasures as well as his style shifted. The transitional Bells was just 20 minutes (here we sample the beginning], released originally as one side of a clear vinyl LP with the other side. It was recorded at a May 1 Town Hall concert of ESP artists, displaying Ayler's new group. Murray remained, Albert's brother Donald joined on trumpet, and Lewis Worrell held down the bass slot. The denser sound of "Bells" shows Ayler moving towards the bigger sonic statement made on Spirits Rejoice, a September 23 Judson Hall session (ESP used the empty concert hall as a "studio," its reverberation adding to the bigness of the sound). Albert and Donald were joined in the frontline by Charles Tyler on alto sax while Peacock paired with fellow bassist Henry Grimes, with Murray a constant. Both Ayler's playing and the band sound are even more intense than before, the parts of the players sometimes only loosely related. Some defended it as an energetic ensemble style harkening back to the early days of New Orleans jazz in its intertwining of independent lines; it came to be called "energy music" and started a movement that continues to the present day in the playing of Charles Gayle, Sabir Mateen, and Peter Brötzmann.

In 1966 Ayler was signed by the Impulse! label, but a pair of LPs recorded at Slug's Saloon that May 1 was released by ESP many years later. It showcases Albert's regular group of that time: Donald, violinist Michel Samson, Worrell, and drummer Ron Jackson, AKA Ronald Shannon Jackson, continuing Ayler's run of superb, innovative drummers. The less-than-hi-fi sonics pale to insignificance in the face of the sheer power of the performances. A few non-Impulse! concert performances from '66-67 further extend our view of Ayler's evolution.

When Ayler's band went through Customs in July 1970 on their way to play at a festival in France, keyboardist Call Cobbs got held back and arrived a day late. Minus Cobbs, the band played anyway. The music-making of the resulting ensemble is freer and more adventurous than on the quintet's following Maeght Foundation concerts. This unique document, Ayler's penultimate recording, thus brings him back to something close to the trio setting in which he first found fame. Bassist Steve Tintweiss (who decades later brought his cassette tape of the concert to ESP) and drummer Allen Blairman are sometimes joined on Live on the Riviera by Ayler's partner Mary Maria, who adds occasional vocals and, once, another sax. Exactly four months later, Ayler's body would be found in the East River.

To dwell on how small Ayler's recorded repertoire was, and how often his bands recorded the same tunes, would be to miss the vastly larger point that the playing of both Ayler and his band mates was of such great spontaneity and imagination that no two performances are remotely the same beyond their themes. Ayler's influence at the time and for decades to come was based on his ESP records much more than his work for any other labels (yes, we're biased, but we're hardly the only ones who think that), but given the briefness of his career, every recording of Albert Ayler is precious musically and spiritually.