Leo Records Comes To Bandcamp!

20 crucial avant-garde jazz titles out this week, and more coming soon...

I made the announcement a few weeks ago, and now it’s actually happening. Burning Ambulance Music has partnered with legendary avant-garde jazz label Leo Records to bring their vast catalog to Bandcamp.

Leo Records, founded in 1979 by producer Leo Feigin, was launched with the Amina Claudine Myers album Song For Mother E. Over the 45 years since its founding, the label has released hundreds of titles by Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Marilyn Crispell, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ivo Perelman, Joëlle Léandre, Joe and Mat Maneri, and many others, including legends of avant-garde Russian jazz like the Ganelin Trio, Sainkho Namchylak, Simon Nabatov and Sergey Kuryohkin.

Leo Records releases have often been difficult to come by in the US, because of distribution issues and the challenges faced by record stores. These artists have made brilliant music for decades, and it deserves to be heard by as many people as possible. Bandcamp’s global reach makes that a reality.

Pricing will be as follows: $10 for the first disc, $5 for each additional disc. So when you see an item listed at $15, it’s because it was originally a 2CD set. Down the road, some titles will have originally been 3CD, 4CD, or even 9CD sets. And I’m still deciding whether to combine certain Braxton titles that were originally released as Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (or even Vols. 1-4) into single sets, for a single price. We’ll see…

In the meantime, here’s a concise guide to this first batch of releases, which will officially be available Friday, September 6, but which you can pre-order now.

Anthony Braxton, Quartet (London) 1985; Quartet (Birmingham) 1985; Quartet (Coventry) 1985

These three live albums, featuring pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist Mark Dresser, and drummer Gerry Hemingway, were recorded on November 13, 17, and 26 respectively. They loom large in the Braxton catalog, because they’re described in Graham Lock’s brilliant book Forces in Motion. Lock traveled around England with Braxton, interviewing him and his bandmates and watching them perform the intricate medleys of compositions that you hear on these six CDs’ worth of material. About an hour’s worth of those interview tapes are included on the third volume, from Coventry.

Anthony Braxton/Evan Parker, Duo (London) 1993

This is the first of two discs recorded at the London Jazz Festival on May 23, 1993; the second is a trio set featuring Braxton, Parker, and Paul Rutherford, which will be available next month. Braxton and Parker have very different approaches to music and the saxophone, to say the least, so hearing them interact and exchange ideas is endlessly fascinating.

Anthony Braxton, Quintet (London) 2004

This set, recorded at London’s Royal Festival Hall on November 15, 2004, features Taylor Ho Bynum on trumpet, Mary Halvorson on guitar, Chris Dahlgren on bass, and Satoshi Takeishi on percussion. They perform a single long piece, “Composition 343,” broken into two sections of 49 minutes and 11 minutes.

Anthony Braxton, Quartet (Moscow) 2008

This set, recorded at the DOM in Moscow on June 29, 2008, features Bynum and Halvorson again, and Katherine Young on bassoon…and that’s it. No rhythm section, and with Braxton cycling through four different horns (sopranino, soprano, and alto saxophones, and contrabass clarinet) and Bynum five (cornet, flugelhorn, piccolo and bass trumpets, and valve trombone) the music is constantly shifting, a brilliant avant-chamber jazz exploration.

Marilyn Crispell, Live In Zurich

This trio performance from April 14, 1989 features Reggie Workman on bass and Paul Motian on drums, and includes a version of John Coltrane’s “Dear Lord” as well as three Crispell originals ranging in length from 10 to nearly 22 minutes. Crispell, who will be honored as an NEA Jazz Master in 2025, is one of the most fascinating pianists around, and this first wave of releases includes most of her work for Leo. (A few more titles will follow in the next few months.)

Marilyn Crispell, Gaia

This album was recorded March 15, 1987 in Woodstock, NY, with Reggie Workman on bass and Doug James on drums and percussion; Crispell plays piano and harp. It consists of five untitled tracks (here relabeled “Gaia” parts 1 through 5) that blur the lines between free jazz and New Music.

Marilyn Crispell, For Coltrane

A stunning live solo piano performance from July 10, 1987 featuring versions of four John Coltrane compositions (“Dear Lord”, “Lazy Bird”, “Coltrane Time”, and “After the Rain”) and Crispell’s own three-part “Collage for Coltrane” suite.

Marilyn Crispell, Santuerio

This album, recorded on May 5, 1993 at Roulette in NYC, features Mark Feldman on violin, Hank Roberts on cello, and Gerry Hemingway on drums. Crispell writes in the liner notes, “I had the feeling that some deeply buried musical expressions which I’d been carrying around for twenty-five years since my days as a student in Boston were surfacing and merging with more current ideas.” Feldman’s violin is crucial, particularly on “Entrances of Light”, “Repercussions of Light”, and “Repercussions of Air”.

Marilyn Crispell, Stellar Pulsations/Three Composers

As its title indicates, this album, recorded in Boston and Cologne between February and July 1992, features works by three composers: Robert Cogan, Pozzi Escot, and Manfred Niehaus. On “Costellar Pulsations”, Crispell duets with second pianist Ellen Polansky; on “Mirabilis II”, she plays with clarinetist Don Byron and drummer Gerry Hemingway; and on “Concerto for Marilyn”, she’s joined by the WDR Radio Orchestra.

Marilyn Crispell, Dream Libretto

This album, recorded in Woodstock, NY in 2018, consists of two suites: the five-part “Memoria/For Pessa Malka”, which features violinist Tanya Kalmanovitch and electronic musician Richard Teitelbaum; and “The River”, a set of seven piano/violin improvisations.

Marilyn Crispell, Selected Works 1983-1986

This 2CD set gathers three of Crispell’s earliest LP releases: a 1983 solo set, Rhythms Hung In Undrawn Sky; a 1985 collection of duos with drummer Doug James, And Your Ivory Voice Sings; and a 36-minute 1986 improvisation with cellist Didier Petit, bassist Marcio Mattos, and drummer Yoval Mincemacher.

Amina Claudine Myers, Song For Mother E

The first release on Leo Records, this amazing album was somehow never available on CD until 2023! It’s a brilliant collection of pieces on which Myers switches between piano and organ, and Pheeroan akLaff plays drums. The music is an uncanny fusion of jazz, gospel, and psychedelia, like nothing you’ve ever heard. Essential.

Amina Claudine Myers, Salutes Bessie Smith

As its title suggests, this album, recorded in June 1980 with Cecil McBee on bass and Jimmy Lovelace on drums, contains versions of four compositions by legendary blues singer Bessie Smith — “Wasted Life Blues”, “Dirty No-Gooder’s Blues”, “Jailhouse Blues”, and “It Makes My Love Come Down” — but they’re thoroughly transformed by Myers, and the album’s second half consists of two original pieces, “The Blues (Straight to You)” and “African Blues”, that are stunning on their own.

Sun Ra, What Planet Is This?

A live double disc recorded July 6, 1973 in New York, this set features a version of the Arkestra more than two dozen members strong, including long-serving players like saxophonists John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, Danny Ray Thompson and Pat Patrick, and the leader on piano, mini-Moog, and organ; the tunes include classics like “Space is the Place”, “Love in Outer Space”, “Enlightenment” and “The Shadow World”.

Sun Ra, Live At Praxis ’84

This concert recording, originally a triple LP, was recorded live in Athens on February 27, 1984 and includes classic Sun Ra pieces like “Nuclear War”, “Fate in a Pleasant Mood”, and a fast-moving medley of “Space is the Place”, “We Travel the Spaceways”, “Outer Spaceways Incorporated” and “Next Stop Mars”, but it also offers a slew of surprising standards including “Mack the Knife”, “Cocktails for Two”, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, “Satin Doll”, and “Days of Wine and Roses”.

Sun Ra, Second Star To The Right (Salute To Walt Disney)

This is one of two discs recorded live in Austria on April 29, 1989 and as its title suggests, features versions of songs from Disney movies like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Sleeping Beauty, and Peter Pan. Be warned — it’s an audience recording that’s been polished up as much as possible, but if you’re a Sun Ra fan, you’re doubtless accustomed to a little sonic roughness and it won’t get in the way of your appreciation of this unexpected side of him.

Sun Ra, Stardust From Tomorrow

This double disc gathers up the non-Disney material from the April 29, 1989 concert described above; the set list runs the gamut from a Chopin prelude to Coleman Hawkins’ “Queer Notions” to Duke Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” and a kind of “greatest hits” medley — almost 100 minutes of live Ra in all. As with its companion piece, Second Star To The Right, the sound is rough but the music is thrilling.

Sun Ra, The Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab In Egypt

This is a compilation that includes recordings from the 1970s and ’80s by various ensembles: the Sun Ra Arkestra performs two pieces by noted Egyptian avant-jazz composer Salah Ragab; Ragab leads two different ensembles; and the Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble, a large group led by composer, conductor and Ra scholar Hartmut Geerken, appears on one track. Ra and Ragab were very much kindred spirits, and this set explores the intersections between their musical worlds.

That’s it for now. See you next week!