In music, a quartet or quartette is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers; or a musical composition for four voices or instruments.
Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improvisor.
Eugene Chadbourne is an American jazz guitarist and music critic.
Henry Kaiser is an American guitarist and composer, known as an idiosyncratic soloist, a sideman, an ethnomusicologist, and a film score composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. He is considered a member of the "second generation" of American free improvisers. He is married to Canadian artist Brandy Gale. He is the son of Henry J. Kaiser Jr. and the grandson of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser.
Illuminations is a 1974 collaboration between Alice Coltrane and Carlos Santana. Jazz musicians Jules Broussard, Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland also contributed to the record, on saxophone, flute, drums and bass.
Polly Bradfield is an American violinist from the New York City free improvisation scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her closest musical associates were Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn. She also played on records by William Parker and Frank Lowe. Her music career ended when she moved to California sometime in the 1980s. Her last appearance on record was on Zorn's The Big Gundown in 1986.
The Big Gundown is an album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn. It comprises radically reworked covers of tracks by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone.
Filmworks VII: Cynical Hysterie Hour is a 1989 album by John Zorn featuring music written for a series of Japanese animated shorts that were created by Kiriko Kubo. It features Zorn's first music for cartoons and was originally released on the Japanese Sony label in limited numbers. In late 1996 Zorn finally attained the rights for his music and remastered and re-released the album on his own label, Tzadik, in 1997.
The Circle Maker is a double album by John Zorn featuring Zorn's Masada compositions performed by the Masada String Trio and the Bar Kokhba Sextet which was released in 1998 on the Tzadik label.
John Zorn's Cobra: Live at the Knitting Factory is an album of a performance of John Zorn's improvisational game piece, Cobra, performed at the Knitting Factory in 1992. The album resembles the missing link between John Zorn's work with Masada and Naked City. It also had a major impact on the electronic scene of New York.
LaDonna Smith is an American avant garde musician from Alabama. She is a violinist, violist, and pianist. Since 1974 she has been performing free improvisational music with musicians such as Davey Williams, Leland Davis, Michael Evans, Gunther Christmann, Anne Lebaron, Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, Misha Feigin, Michael Evans, David Sait, Jack Wright, John Russell, Sergey Letov, Toshi Makihara, Andrew Dewar and many other of the world's major improvisers. As a performer, she has toured the US, Canada, Europe, including Russia and Siberia, Korea, India, China and Japan. Her music is documented on dozens of CD and LP recordings, including Say Daybew Records - of Fred Lane & the Debonaires. She produced concerts and festivals in Alabama and the Southeast, including the Birmingham Improv Festival and the improvisorfestival. She serves on the Board of Directors of I.S.I.M., the International Society of Improvised Music. In 1976, LaDonna Smith co-founded TransMuseq Records with Davey Williams. In 1980, The Improvisor magazine began as an extension of I.N.: The Improvisor's Network, a grass-roots organization in New York City that attempted to connect improvising musicians across the U.S. LaDonna is editor-in-chief and publisher of The improvisor. She is a member of the Fresh-Dirt collective.
Archery is an album by John Zorn featuring his early "game piece" composition of the same name. The album was first released on Parachute Records in 1982 and later released on Tzadik Records with additional rehearsal takes as a part of The Parachute Years Box Set in 1997 and as a triple CD set in 2001.
Pool is an album by John Zorn featuring his early "game piece" composition of the same name which was first released on vinyl on Parachute Records in 1980 as a double album including the composition "Hockey". The album was released on CD on Tzadik Records with an additional bonus track featuring a test recording of Archery as part of The Parachute Years Box Set in 1997 and as a single CD in 2000. The album was the first released solely under Zorn's name following his collaboration with Eugene Chadbourne, School (1978).
Hockey is an album by John Zorn featuring his early "game piece" composition of the same name which first appeared on the Parachute Records edition of Pool in 1980. The full recordings of the piece were first released on CD on Tzadik Records as part of The Parachute Years Box Set in 1997 and as a single CD in 2002.
In Memory of Nikki Arane is an album of improvised music by Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn recorded in 1980 but not released on Derek Bailey's Incus Records until 1996. The album is named after a character from Stanley Kubrick's first major feature film The Killing (1956).
The Parachute Years: 1977-1981 is a compilation album 7-CD box set by John Zorn. It features recordings of Zorn's game pieces originally released as self-produced albums on the Parachute label as well as previously unreleased performances. All of the discs in this box set have been subsequently given their own releases on Zorn's Tzadik label.
Greatest Hits is the first compilation album released by the punk rock band Half Japanese, in 1995. It includes the line ups from all albums released by the band.
Richard David Carrick is an American composer, pianist and conductor. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition for 2015-16 while living in Kigali, Rwanda. His compositions are influenced by diverse sources including traditional Korean Gugak music, the flow concept of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Gnawa Music of Morocco, Jazz, experimental music, concepts of infinity, the works of Italo Calvino and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his work as improviser.
Hallelujah, Anyway – Remembering Tom Cora is a 1999 double-CD compilation album by various artists dedicated to United States cellist and composer Tom Cora, who had died on April 9, 1998. It includes material composed in Cora's memory, songs he had written for other musicians and groups, and a selection of music he had performed and participated in. It was released in May 1999 by John Zorn's Tzadik Records.
