Derek Bailey’s guests for Company Week at London’s ICA in July 1982 were contemporary classical pianist Ursula Oppens, folk/jazz singer-turned-improviser Julie Tippetts and her partner pianist Keith Tippett, violinist/electronics wizard Philipp Wachsmann, guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, harpist Anne LeBaron, and from Japan free jazz bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa and sound artist Akio Suzuki.

Altogether they performed the stunning extended improvisation Epiphany.
In different, more intimate lineups they detonated numerous Epiphanies.

Here, to start, Yoshizawa and Oppens (both on the keyboard and inside her piano) bounce ideas off each other like ping-pong balls.
Then Tippetts, Wachsmann and Bailey do extraterrestrial cubist flamenco; and Lewis and Frith rumble at everyone magnificently.
Tippett and Oppens kaleidoscope the entire history of the piano into just over fifteen minutes (Fourth and Fifth) with added seasoning from LeBaron and Wachsmann.
To close, Akio Suzuki — despite once describing himself as “pursuing listening as a practice” — makes one hell of a racket with his self-made instruments: a flute, a spring gong and his analapos (two single-lidded cylinders attached by a long steel coil, which he can manipulate and strike, besides vocalising into the tube). Yoshizawa and Bailey give him a real run for his money, and it all builds to an ecstatic, swirling, grinding climax, with Suzuki whooping and hollering wildly.

Epiphany \ i-ˈpi-fə-nē \ (1) a manifestation of the essential nature of something (usually sudden) (2) an intuitive grasp of reality through something (usually simple and striking) (3) an illuminating discovery or disclosure.
All three definitions apply perfectly to this span of music recorded at London’s ICA in July 1982. It’s a miracle of group interaction, wonderfully paced, moving steadily between moments of mounting intensity and tension. The passage about halfway through — when Derek Bailey’s harmonics ring out above a sheen of inside piano tremolos and shimmering electronics, topped off by Julie Tippetts’ soaring vocalese — is simply sublime. After which it’s fun to try and tell the two pianists apart. Are those runs Ursula Oppens, with her formidable technique honed from years performing some of the twentieth century’s most difficult notated new music, or are those Keith Tippett’s crunchy jazz zigzags? Are those intriguing twangs from one of Akio Suzuki’s invented instruments or could they be Fred Frith’s or Phil Wachsmann’s electronics? Bah, who cares?
There’s plenty of room for the more delicate instruments too, like Anne LeBaron’s harp picking its way gingerly through a pin-cushion of pings and scratches from Bailey and bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa. Of course, some performers are instantly recognisable: Tippetts, as lyrical and flighty on flute as when she sings, Phil Wachsmann, sinuous and sensitive on violin, and trombonist George Lewis, who, as John Zorn once put it, swings his motherfucking ass off.
So many magical moments abound, from the opening dawn chorus of Tippetts’ voice and Frith’s guitar swooping through a rainforest of exquisite piano cascades, to the Zen calm of the closing moments.
Epiphany, indeed.

A typically eclectic collection of guests joined Derek Bailey for Company Week in 1983: saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann; cellist Ernst Reijseger, mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio); American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran, veteran of the Black Artists’ Group and Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton ensembles.
The French bassist Joëlle Léandre is equally at home playing free or performing works by Cage and Scelsi, while Vinko Globokar is an acclaimed composer as well as a trombonist of monstrous virtuosity.
British electronics pioneer Hugh Davies served time alongside Globokar with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Percussionist Jamie Muir was with Davies on the very first (Music Improvisation) Company outing in 1970, before a brief stint with King Crimson.

Is there an ideal number of musicians for free improvisation? Bailey once described playing solo as a “second-rate activity” – though he did it spectacularly well – while at the other end of the spectrum, large improvising ensembles can descend into an unwieldy racket.
Three may be a crowd for some, but for Pythagoras it was the perfect number, and trios work surprisingly well in improvised music. Sometimes one instrument takes centre stage, like Parker’s circular-breathing soprano at the beginning of Five, but knowing when to lie low, as he does in the brief austere Three, is just as crucial to the success of the whole. Muir makes sure he doesn’t get in the way of Globokar and Parran’s leisurely exchanges on Four, but the trombonist is all over the place on One, with Léandre racing up and down her bass and Davies all spikes, squeaks and squiggles.
With a touch of Bailey’s dry humour, two of these seven recordings aren’t trios at all: Trio Minus One is his duo with Reijseger, running the gamut from crazed polyrhythmic strumming (imagine Reinhardt and Grappelli playing Schoenberg and Nancarrow simultaneously) to what must be the fastest cello pizzicati ever recorded. And on the closing ecstatic nonet, Brötzmann and trumpeter John Corbett prove that more cooks don’t necessarily spoil the broth but sure as hell can spice it up.

Aka Counceltation — pimped with a new sleeve and title straight out of the treacherous Hefner-Jazz nexus — featuring a hefty West Coast lineup: Jack Sheldon, Curtis Counce, Harold Land, Carl Perkins and Frank Butler.
Easy swinging and elastic, limpid and lyrical, with brilliant playing all round. Perkins is always a pleasure; Land another HJ legend, lethal in ballads; Butler bosses, as per.

Landmark Detroit jazz. Trumpeter Charles Moore was the founder of the Detroit Artist Workshop; he and pianist Kenny Cox would go on to found the highly influential Strata Records. The pair split the compositions here. The second of the Quintet’s two Blue Notes, AllMusic likens this 1969 session to Andrew Hill’s Grass Roots, Jackie McLean’s Jacknife, and Grachan Moncur’s Evolution.

Another key document of the Los Angeles radical jazz underground, by way of Outernational Sounds.
A tour de force of spiritually energised independent jazz music, this is pianist and composer Kaeef Ruzadun Ali’s debut recording as leader of the Creative Arts Ensemble, as it emerged from Horace Tapscott’s legendary Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra,
PAPA mainstays like reedsman Dadisi Komolafe, drummer Woody ‘Sonship’ Theus and altoist Gary Bias are here; besides such veterans as Henry ‘The Skipper’ Franklin on bass, and George Bohannon on trombone. Kaeef’s sister B.J. Crowley provides visionary, sanctified singing.
Classic spiritual jazz, available again as an LP for the first time since 1981; with the recordings at full length on vinyl for the first time ever.

Always hard-sought-after for the jazz dance gem Tabu, and the overall blend of Cal Tjader, Les Baxter and Luiz Bonfa. “In a way it’s world music,” says Don. “Polynesian, samba, Brazil, jazz, West Indian. It has the energy of Latin and funk records.”

Outstanding modal set for Futura in 1971, with the superb French trio Georges Arvanitas, Jacky Samson, and Charles Saudrais, expertly proliferating Mingus and Trane.

The great drummer with Wadada Leo Smith (who chips in a seventeen-minute tribute to Alice Coltrane) and Bill Frisell.

Legendary jazz fusion of Indian, Caribbean and Eastern influences, from 1969.
With Joe Harriott, Ian Carr, Bryan Spring, Dave Green and Norma Winstone.

Recorded at the tail end of summer 2020, in the garden behind Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, by this collective of artists, musicians, singers, and dancers, including Angel Bat Dawid and Ben LaMar Gay.
“It was about offering a new thought,” says Locks. “It was about resisting the darkness. It was about expressing possibility. It was about asking the question, ‘Since the future has unfolded and taken a new and dangerous shape… what happens NOW?’”

Another reaching, cosmic, old-to-the-new foray by saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, pianist Leo Genovese, bassist William Parker (also playing gralla and shakuhachi here), and drummer and vocalist Francisco Mela (singing snatches of traditional Cuban music).

This is terrific. Rawly soulful trio jazz.
‘There’s no denying the expressiveness of Jones’ music. His sustained, lancing high notes, coarse overblowing and strategically managed vibrato can signify open pain and more complex syntheses of emotion. On No More My Lord, the sole cover in an otherwise original sequence of compositions, bassist Chris Lightcap’s bowed bass and Gerald Cleaver’s scrabbling percussion amplify the dolour and desperation in his playing…’ (The Wire).

Dave Bailey (drums), Ben Tucker (bass), Bill Hardman (trumpet), Billy Gardner (piano), Frank Haynes (tenor sax).

Featuring the jazz-dance classic Life Is Like A Samba… a Rinder & Lewis production from 1979.