News & Updates — avant-garde

Karlheinz Stockhausen, a leading figure in avant-garde "contemporary" European music, made several records that could be enjoyed by rock & free jazz & noise fans, as well as those into experiments in orchestral music, serialism and nutty orchestral ideas. While the brainiac set will go off about his theories and how they apply to academic sound art, acoustics and music, the fact is that some of his music is also appealing to street jerks like me. Whether percussion pieces, chamber works, pieces for voices, pieces for piano, musique concréte, operas or single instrument concepts, his ideas fleshed out pretty well...

A true innovator, Pierre Schaeffer was the father of musique-concrete. Not a trained musician but an admirer of Luigi Russolo, Schaeffer sought to dispense with music theory early on and create a new experimental music that utilized found sounds, pitched turntables, manipulated & spliced magnetic tape, looping & sampling, noise & distortion and other revolutionary techniques that have been endlessly used by artists since. He was Lee "Scratch" Perry, Christian Marclay, the Bomb Squad, Edgar Varese, Stockhausen and Pole before most of them were even born. You could also say that without Schaeffer's imagination the genres of electro-acoustic music, hiphop,...

Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos was a steady figure in the world of experimental/improvised/"ethnic" jazz for decades. His work with Codona, Don Cherry, Egberto Gismonti, Milton Nascimento and others show a great contribution, especially in bringing the berimbau into a progressive jazz context. Born in Recife, he came from a musical family and participated in samba bands as a teenager and started playing in professional groups in his early 20s. Early appearances included recordings and performances with Os Mutantes, Gato Barbieri, Nascimento and Herb Alpert. In the mid-'70s, he made a great trio album with Perry Robinson and Badal Roy (Kundalini)...

Happy birthday to the world's greatest soprano saxophone artist, Steven Lackritz aka Steve Lacy. Polish-American and born in NYC, Lacy played in dixieland bands before helping launch the out-jazz revolution. He played early on with Pee Wee Russell, Jimmy Rushing, Gil Evans and others before joining Cecil Taylor's group, with their first album appearing in 1956. Lacy's 1958 album Reflections was the first all-Thelonious Monk program on an album. One of the planet's deepest diggers into the catalogue of Monk, the great composer of whom Lacy used to work with in the early '60s, he went on to produce several...

Here's a birthday shout-out to the underrated free-jazz saxophonist Charles Tyler. Best known for his work with Albert Ayler and his own ESP-Disk albums, he also recorded several highly-regarded records for Nessa, Silkheart, Bleu Regard, Adelphi, Storyville and a few on his own Ak-Ba label. His fiery style on the baritone is quite recognizable, and he also played alto, clarinet and piano. From Indianapolis, he worked often with Ayler's groups in both Cleveland and NYC in the early to mid '60s, and an encounter with Ornette Coleman was also a highlight for the young artist. He cut a couple of...