John Zorn is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". His avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jazz, rock, Jewish music, hardcore, classical, contemporary, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and world music. Rolling Stone noted that "[alt]hough Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he's gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time".
Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Capitol Music Group. Established in 1939 by German-Jewish emigrants Alfred Lion and Max Margulis, it derived its name from the blue notes of jazz and the blues. Originally dedicated to recording traditional jazz and small group swing, the label began to switch its attention to modern jazz around 1947. From there, Blue Note grew to become one of the most prolific, influential and respected jazz labels of the mid-20th century, noted for its role in facilitating the development of hard bop, post-bop and avant-garde jazz, as well as for its iconic modernist art direction.
Steely Dan is an American rock band formed in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 1971 by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Originally having a full band lineup, Becker and Fagen chose to stop playing live by the end of 1974 and continued Steely Dan as a studio-only duo, utilizing a revolving cast of session musicians. Rolling Stone has called them "the perfect musical antiheroes for the seventies".
Herbert Jay Solomon, known by his stage name Herbie Mann, was an American jazz flute player and important early practitioner of world music. Early in his career, he also played tenor saxophone and clarinet, but Mann was among the first jazz musicians to specialize on the flute. His most popular single was "Hi-Jack", which was a Billboard No. 1 dance hit for three weeks in 1975.
Pharoah Sanders was an American jazz saxophonist. Known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of "sheets of sound", Sanders played a prominent role in the development of free jazz and spiritual jazz through his work as a member of John Coltrane's groups in the mid-1960s, and later through his solo work. He released more than thirty albums as a leader and collaborated extensively with vocalist Leon Thomas and pianist Alice Coltrane, among many others. Fellow saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world".
Verve Records is an active American record label owned by Universal Music Group (UMG). Founded in 1956 by Norman Granz, the label is home to the world's largest jazz catalogue, which includes recordings by artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Cal Tjader, Nina Simone, Stan Getz, Bill Evans, Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, Jon Batiste, and Diana Krall among others as well as a diverse mix of other recordings that fall outside of jazz including albums from disparate artists like the Velvet Underground, Kurt Vile, Arooj Aftab, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and many more. It absorbed the catalogues of Granz's earlier label, Clef Records, founded in 1946; Norgran Records, founded in 1953; and material which was previously licensed to Mercury Records.
ECM is an independent record label founded by Karl Egger, Manfred Eicher and Manfred Scheffner in Munich in 1969. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres. ECM's motto is "the most beautiful sound next to silence", taken from a 1971 review of ECM releases in Coda, a Canadian jazz magazine.
Vernon Alphonsus Reid is a British-born American guitarist and songwriter best known as the founder of the rock band Living Colour. Reid was named No. 66 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, and in August 2023, was ranked #42 in Rolling Stone Magazine top 250 Greatest Guitarists of all time. Critic Steve Huey writes, "[Reid's] rampant eclecticism encompasses everything from heavy metal and punk to funk, R&B and avant-garde jazz, and his anarchic, lightning-fast solos have become something of a hallmark as well."
Steve Mackay was an American tenor saxophonist best known for his membership in the Stooges. His performances are showcased on three songs on the band's second album, Fun House (1970).
Egil Ragnar Monn-Iversen was a Norwegian musician, one of the most influential modern composers in Norway. He has had many important roles in Norwegian music, film, opera, television, comedy and theater. For some time he had so much influence in Norwegian culture that he got the nickname The Godfather, even though he always considered himself a down-to-earth musician.
Ingrid Jensen is a Canadian jazz trumpeter.
Chano Domínguez is a Spanish Latin jazz, post bop and flamenco pianist. Dominguez has released over 20 albums as a bandleader, and collaborated extensively with other jazz artists including Paquito D’Rivera, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Joe Lovano, Chucho Valdés, Martiro, and Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, He performs his own original compositions, as well as the music of Harold Arlen, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and the Spanish classical composer Joaquín Rodrigo. He was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2012 for his album Flamenco Sketches on the Blue Note label.
Fresh Sound, or Fresh Sound New Talent, is a jazz record label established in Barcelona, Spain, by Jordi Pujol. The label was initially founded as a reissue label.
Punk jazz is a genre of music that combines elements of jazz, especially improvisation, with the instrumentation and performance style of punk rock. The term was first used to describe James Chance and the Contortions' 1979 album Buy. Punk jazz is closely related to free jazz, no wave, and loft jazz, and has since significantly inspired post-hardcore and alternative hip hop.
Windham Hill Records was an independent record label that specialized in instrumental acoustic music. It was founded by guitarist William Ackerman and Anne Robinson in 1976 and was popular in the 1980s and 1990s.
Charles Matthew "Matt" Brubeck is an American cellist, bassist, keyboardist, composer, and arranger. He is both a performer of classical music and jazz and rock.
Mette HenrietteMartedatter Rølvåg is a performing artist, saxophonist, band leader and composer from Norway.
Joshua Ginsburg is an American jazz bassist and composer. He has toured internationally with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jeremy Pelt, George Colligan, Logan Richardson, Sachal Vasandani, and Helen Sung. He has performed with Tom Harrell, Mulgrew Miller, Mark Turner, Robert Glasper, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Aaron Parks.
Joe Goddard is a British musician, songwriter, and DJ. He is best known as a member of the English synth-pop band Hot Chip, which he co-founded with Alexis Taylor. In 2007, he co-founded record label Greco-Roman, which has released albums by artists such as Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Disclosure. Goddard is also a member of electronica group The 2 Bears, and produced three solo albums, Harvest Festival (2009), Electric Lines (2017) and Harmonics (2024).
Anne Mette Iversen is a Danish jazz bassist and composer. She leads and composes for the Anne Mette Iversen Quartet / Quartet +1 as well as the groups Double Life, Poetry of Earth, and the Ternion Quartet. She has released 9 albums as a leader.
