Stuart Broomer

Bruno Heinen Sextet. Karlheinz Stockhausen: Tierkreis. Tierkreis (German for zodiac) is Stockhausen’s most accessible, most adapted, and likely best-known work. It may also be the most symmetrical, its twelve movements conforming to the zodiac’s twelve signs, each melody based on a twelve-tone row, the pieces arranged in the sequence[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 117

Anthony Braxton. Echo Echo Mirror House. At the 2011 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton led a septet in his Composition No. 347+. That “+” in a Braxton title will usually be followed by a series of numbers indicating interpolated compositions, but in No. 347[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 117

Insubordinations The shifting technological terrain that has brought about the decline of the CD, the rise of the download, and the return of the LP, invites inventive solutions from musicians who want to get their music heard. In this spirit, the Swiss netlabel Insubordinations combines free downloads along[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 117

Yang Jing and Christy Doran. No. 9. One of the more striking recent developments in improvised music has been the entry of several musicians trained in Chinese traditional music. There’s Min Xiaofen, a pipa player and singer residing in New York, who worked with the late Derek Bailey (the usually adversarial guitarist[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 116

John Butcher. Winter Gardens. John Butcher is one of the world’s most resourceful solo improvisers, a musician who has extended his saxophones in uncanny ways, creating waves of complex continuous sound with overtones arising and disappearing to the accompaniment of sudden percussive explosions. This LP contains[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 116

Kyle Brenders Quartet. Offset. Toronto-based saxophonist Kyle Brenders has studied and played extensively with Anthony Braxton, and he’s also a member of The Rent, a group dedicated to playing the compositions of Steve Lacy. The influences of both these American saxophonist-composers are evident in the debut recording[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 115

Le Grand Grouped Régional d’Improvisation Libérée & Evan Parker. Vivaces. At a time when it’s possible to find cadres of improvisers almost everywhere, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that there are enough improvising musicians in Rimouski, Quebec to form an eleven-member ensemble, and more of a surprise still when one hears the group’s[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 115

Peter Van Huffel’s Gorilla Mask. Howl! Originally from Kingston, Ontario, saxophonist Peter van Huffel has been creating a growing body of work in New York and Berlin, much of it integrating improvised music, expanded jazz harmonies, and sometimes chamber music dynamics, like the subtle HuffLiGNoN with the Belgian singer Sophie[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 115

Peter Brötzmann. Solo + Trio Roma. This two-CD set chronicles Brötzmann’s solo and Trio Roma concerts at 2011’s FIMAV on the approach of his seventieth birthday, a momentous occasion for an artist whose work combines titanic stamina and anarchic expressionism.   The solo concert might stage[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 115

Joe Morris Quartet. Graffiti in Two Parts. Graffiti in Two Parts documents an exceptional moment in improvised music—a one-time performance by a loosely assembled band in 1985. In 1981 Boston guitarist Joe Morris met Lowell Davidson, an elusive figure in the history of free jazz, who had recorded a single CD as a pianist for the[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 114

Aaron Lumley. Wilderness. Aaron Lumley is a string bassist who recently moved to Montreal after some years of activity in the Toronto improvising community. Wilderness presents eight highly organic solo improvisations. In an accompanying note, Lumley compares his approach to wandering off a forest path for the chance to[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 114

John Butcher and Mark Sanders. Daylight. The saxophone–drum duo has a long history in free jazz—a primal pairing that achieved an early high in the 1967 John Coltrane and Rashied Ali recording called Interstellar Space. Such fire-breathing antecedents might seem distant from the music of English saxophonist John Butcher,[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 114