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PORCHBONE The PorchBone project is an extension of The Porch Trio, which has been active as a free improvisation unit since 2016. PorchBone juxtaposes the abstract, improvised textures of the Trio with the velvety tones of a trombone section, inspired by the sound worlds of the Duke Ellington and Sun Ra big bands. This suite of ten pieces plus an Ellington classic premiered at the Driff Festival 2021 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was reprised in 2023, and was reprised in 2023. |
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OUT FROM ATHENS A cross-generation and cross-genre collaboration bringing together two musicians who share a common city of origin and who find a common music thread in their distinct backgrounds. This beautifully recorded set of piano and bass duets and solos from the summer of 2023 in Athens, Greece, features a mix of original compositions and improvisations. |
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TRUSS Features the debut of a new quartet that bridges Chicago’s and Boston’s vibrant improvisation scenes. The group features long-time collaborators Dave Rempis on saxophones and pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, as well as two vital younger improvisers from Chicago, bassist Jakob Heinemann and drummer Bill Harris. (This CD is a co-production with Aerophonic Records, AR 042) |
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DUALS Triple CD set.
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THE HASAAN, HOPE Featuring four compositions from Hasaan Ibn Ali's recently re-discovered 1965 recording Metaphysics (Omnivore, 2021), three classics by Elmo Hope, and six Thelonious Monk favorites.
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WATER LILIES Forbes Graham - trumpet This live recording from May 2022 captures the reunion of Copenhagen-based drummer Kresten Osgood with four long time Boston-based musical companions during Kresten’s U.S. tour at the time. All five musicians here share a long history of working together and have developed a common language. The first four tracks are trio, followed by a longer piece from the entire group. |
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CUTOUT Jorrit Dijkstra - alto sax Cutout is a Boston-based quintet whose members have deep and decades-long collaborative roots in various groups. Original compositions are interspersed with improvisations, and use “instant-arranging” techniques inspired by free-jazz forms from North America and Europe. Often two or three pieces segue into each other forming a longer “suite” with connecting improvised segments. In this recording from January 2019, all members contribute compositions. |
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PANDELIS KARAYORGIS DOUBLE TRIO: CliffPools Pandelis Karayorgis - piano CliffPools is the merging of two different trios, Cliff (Driff CD1803), and Pools (Driff CD1802). This tantalizing, never-used instrumentation of two basses, two drum sets, and one piano offers a rich and exciting sound texture into which a shared language of improvisation blooms. This recording features original pieces by Pandelis Karayorgis, as well as improvised tracks based on prepared sketches and ideas.
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DELBECQ/DIJKSTRA/HOLLENBECK Jorrit Dijkstra - alto sax, lyricon, analog electronics Benoît Delbecq - prepared piano, bass synth John Hollenbeck - drums, percussion
Dijkstra and Hollenbeck have been collaborating as a duo since the mid-nineties. Recorded as a follow-up on their well-received album Sequence (Trytone Records, 2005), Linger adds French prepared piano master Benoît Delbecq to the mix. Dijkstra and Delbecq met at the Banff Jazz Workshop in 1990 and have collaborated occasionally over the years. As on Sequence, the same process of instant composition was used in the studio: to establish some textures and atmospheres first, then record a few takes per texture, and choose the best takes afterwards without further editing. The titles of the ten tracks all reflect movement of some sort, represented by the multi-layered rhythms, the dense microtonal textures, and the lyrical, lingering melodic interactions of Dijkstra and Delbecq. Delbecq’s mumbling bass synth lines, Dijkstra’s analog synth and processed saxophone sounds, and Hollenbeck’s hard-hitting grooves and almost electronic-sounding percussions give the album a unique sound that defies categories.
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KARAYORGIS/McBRIDE/GRAY TRIO: POOLS Pandelis Karayorgis, piano
Pools brings together three long-time musical collaborators into a new trio. Karayorgis has worked in other piano trios with McBride (with Randy Peterson and Curt Newton) and Gray (with Jef Charland) before, but here they play off of an expanded conception of restrained intensity and three-way dialogue that adds a new chapter to this thread. The three have forged a strong musical bond over the years by playing together in many different formations and are currently playing frequently as the rhythm section of the quintet Cutout (along with trombonist Jeb Bishop and saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra). For this set, made in July 2018 during an informal house recording session, they get a chance to stretch out as a trio, playing mostly original pieces by Karayorgis along with a free improvisation and a blues.
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KARAYORGIS/SMITH/ROSENTHAL TRIO: CLIFF Pandelis Karayorgis, piano
Cliff explores density, pulse and texture in four extended trio improvisations. Karayorgis and Rosenthal share a long musical relationship dating back to the early nineties. For this session they are joined by bassist Damon Smith who has recently relocated to the Boston area and has played with both several times over the past couple of years. This CD captures their first encounter as a trio in June 2018 during an informal house recording session.
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MATCHBOX Jorrit Dijkstra - alto sax, lyricon Pandelis Karayorgis - piano Nate McBride - bass Curt Newton - drums
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BATHYSPHERE Jorrit Dijkstra | alto saxophone, lyricon, analog synth In the spring of 2015 Karayorgis and Dijkstra put together a large ensemble of Boston musicians to explore writing for an extended group. Out-of-town guests Jeb Bishop, Tony Malaby, and Taylor Ho Bynum were added for this recording. The name Bathysphere comes from the deep-sea submersible in which scientists William Beebe and Otis Barton set diving records in 1934. The composers’ explorations highlight the two analog synthesizers and the abundance of deep pitches in the group: two basses, two trombones, tuba, lyricon and baritone sax. The pieces were composed with the individual musicians in mind and their contributions during the rehearsal process were crucial. The CD cover is a print for a 1934 article of National Geographic Magazine covering the Bathysphere’s descent into unknown territories of the deep ocean.
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JORRIT DIJKSTRA: Jorrit Dijkstra - alto sax, lyricon, analog synthesizer, effect pedals
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THE WHAMMIES: Jorrit Dijkstra - alto sax, lyricon Pandelis Karayorgis - piano Jeb Bishop - trombone Jason Roebke - bass Han Bennink - drums
In the spring of 2014 The Whammies played a short tour that included concerts in Padova, Italy and St. Johann, Austria, featuring a new set of Steve Lacy’s compositions. The Whammies Vol. 3 Live consists mostly of the Padova concert, and shows how the band has developed since its founding in 2012. Rather than making arrangements of the tunes beforehand, The Whammies take an open, “instant arranging” approach towards Lacy’s source material. During a concert each band member has the freedom to introduce backgrounds, solos, smaller groupings, or the next tune, to move the music forward. Apart from Lacy highlights such as “Revolutionary Suicide” (dedicated to Black Panthers activist Huey Newton) and “Papa’s Midnite Hop” (based on a poem by Goethe), The Whammies play a few gems that have never been recorded, such as the Sun Ra tribute “Sublimation” (featuring Dijkstra’s Lyricon, an analog wind synthesizer from the ‘70s), and the hard swinging tune “Bumpers.” The piece “Palermo-Orgosolo” which appears to be unfinished in Lacy’s notebooks, is a melody set to a poem by Italian “sound” poet Giulia Niccolai whose work Lacy used in a few other compositions. The composition “Letter,” set to a sweet letter that Lacy and his wife Irene Aebi received from young nephew Alex Aebi, is another beautiful piece that highlights Lacy’s elegant melodic writing. Following the tradition set on the first two volumes, Vol. 3 again closes with a Thelonious Monk tune, this time “Hornin’ In.”
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BOLT: Jorrit Dijkstra - alto saxophone, lyricon
Boston-based quartet BOLT has been working locally since 2011, focusing solely on free improvisation. Using the distinctive timbral combination of two stringed instruments with the lyricon (an analog electronic wind synthesizer from the 1970s), saxophone, and percussion, BOLT’s group sound balances anywhere between the energy-orgies of free jazz and the sparse soundscapes of electronic minimalist improv. In the more expressive moments of a BOLT set the music hints at Boston’s influential master of microtonal improvisation Joe Maneri. In the more quiet introspective moments one could hear a modern day extension of the late 1940s experiments with free improvisation of the Tristano school. This recording was deliberately conceived to create a different listening experience from that of a live concert. The nineteen takes of this CD were carefully chosen from thirty-six improvised pieces recorded during a session in the summer of 2013. Shuffling the pieces in random order gives the listener a fresh perspective on the music every single time, adding an aleatoric and more compositional element to the music.
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JORRIT DIJKSTRA: Jorrit Dijkstra – alto saxophone, lyricon, analog electronics
As a saxophone player and composer who has integrated electronics in my music for many years, I wanted to experiment with the reed quintet – typically a classical chamber music format – by opening it up with improvisation and electronics. I decided to launch a project spanning three cities where I’ve made long-lasting musical connections: Amsterdam, Chicago, and Oakland. While living in Oakland in the summer of 2013, I approached Philip, Jon, Kyle, and Frank (on a residency from Berlin); all veteran improvising reed players with experience with electronics. With the spirit of the experimental music scene there in mind, I wrote a set of short compositions that connect the textural possibilities of our reed instruments and our electronics. The electronics include my Lyricon (which counts as an analog electronic reed instrument) and John and Kyle’s interesting collections of analog synths and noisemaking modules. Music for Reeds and Electronics: Oakland is the first documentation of this project; it ended up as a curious assemblage at the intersection of electronic music, noise, free jazz, and modern chamber music. Jorrit Dijkstra June 2014.
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PANDELIS KARAYORGIS QUINTET: Dave Rempis alto, tenor and baritone sax
Afterimage is an outgrowth of the 2013 release “Circuitous.” It is a live recording made in April 2014 at Mike Reed’s Constellation in Chicago, during a brief tour. This group thrives on the tension between arranged and spontaneous, post-bop and avant-garde. A new set of original compositions was submitted to the group’s collective energy and was given shape during these performances. “Simmer,” “Haunt ,” and “Afterimage” are all through-arranged pieces with cued transitions, while the remaining seven pieces simply consist of a “head” that serves as a springboard to improvisation within an open format that the group arranges differently each time. Three of the pieces are tributes; “Velocipede” to Steve Lacy, “Sway” to Lennie Tristano, and “Veil” to Billy Strayhorn’s beautiful ballad writing (the only piece among these to feature chord changes). |
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JORRIT DIJKSTRA: Jorrit Dijkstra - alto saxophone
In the fall of 2003, Dutch sextet New Crosscurrents came together as a short-lived extension of the quartet “Sound-Lee!,” which was dedicated to the early compositions of cool jazz alto saxophonist Lee Konitz. Guus Janssen and Jorrit Dijkstra had shared a fascination for the lucid sound of the Tristano school, with its contrapuntal improvisations, its fluid phrasing, and its bare-bones use of the rhythm section. New Crosscurrents played a few concerts with a mix of pieces by Lennie Tristano from the legendary 1949 record Intuition (which featured the first recorded experiments in free improvisation in jazz history) and transcriptions of George Russell’s masterworks “Ezz-thetic” and Concerto for “Billy the Kid” (not included in this release). But mainly the sextet interpreted a set of Guus’ works that juxtapose shapes and forms from the cool jazz period into newly constructed compositional gems. The sudden cutoffs and improvisational blocks in these pieces resemble Guus’ earlier experiments with game pieces and clear collective improvisational forms. It also shows the influence Guus had on other Dutch composers and improvisers after him, walking the lines between contemporary classical music and jazz. It’s clear that the objective of this project was not to repeat history, but to expand on it, as a study in the relationship between composition and improvisation. |
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JORRIT DIJKSTRA: Jorrit Dijkstra - alto saxophone, tin whistle
Pillow Circles originated as the annual composition commission for the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam in 2009. The idea was to assemble a large ensemble where the guitar would play a major role in the group sound, inspired by the stretchy soundscapes of indie-rock bands such as Sonic Youth and Spiritualized. The basis was formed by Dutch guitarists Paul Pallesen (with whom Dijkstra has worked since the mid ‘80s) and Raphaël Vanoli (known from the successful improv-rock duo Knalpot), and three members of Dijkstra’s “Chicago” band The Flatlands Collective. New York saxophone giant Tony Malaby and Dutch virtuoso Oene van Geel, were added, and the results were first documented on Clean Feed Records in 2010. The group had the opportunity to get more touring experience in 2011 (with Jasper Blom, Ilja Reijngoud and Tanya Kalmanovitch as substitutes), and this recording documents the evolution Pillow Circles had gone through after a week of gigs in The Netherlands and Germany, with more open space for improvisations and an overall looser atmosphere towards the composed material. Each piece is dedicated to a musician that had a significant influence on Jorrit’s music, and pieces dedicated to Denardo Coleman and Kate Bush were newly composed for the tour. |
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THE WHAMMIES: Jorrit Dijkstra - alto sax, lyricon Pandelis Karayorgis - piano Jeb Bishop - trombone Nate McBride - bass Han Bennink - drums
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PANDELIS KARAYORGIS QUINTET: Dave Rempis alto, tenor and baritone sax
“Karayorgis and the quintet succeed brilliantly here in creating music that both reverberates with the tradition and creates its own extraordinary musical states—textures, visions and collisions that are unique, that could not be produced by any other group or any singular method.” Some of Chicago’s top improvisers in a group led by pianist Pandelis Karayorgis. All original compositions by Karayorgis. |
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PANDELIS KARAYORGIS TRIO: Pandelis Karayorgis, piano "These guys are as connected in musicianship as a piano trio can be. They think, breath, anticipate, and play as one—in the best sense. Right in the pocket of empathy and insight.” First studio recording by an established trio, made at the end of a year of monthly concerts during which this material was developed. Six new original compositions recorded at WGBH’s Fraser studio in Boston |
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GREGORIO/SWELL/KARAYORGIS: Guillermo Gregorio, clarinet
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THE WHAMMIES: Jorrit Dijkstra - alto sax, lyricon Pandelis Karayorgis - piano Jeb Bishop - trombone Nate McBride - bass Han Bennink - drums |
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JEB BISHOP/JORRIT DIJKSTRA: Jorrit Dijkstra - alto sax Jeb Bishop - trombone |
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Updated Nov 14, 2022
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