Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any general rules, instead following the intuition of its performers. The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre of experimental music in its own right.
Steve Beresford is a British musician who graduated from the University of York He has played a variety of instruments, including piano, electronics, trumpet, euphonium, bass guitar and a wide variety of toy instruments, such as the toy piano. He has also played a wide range of music. He is probably best known for free improvisation, but has also written music for film and television and has been involved with a number of pop music groups.
Evan Shaw Parker is a British tenor and soprano saxophone player who plays free improvisation.
Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, OC was a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. from the 1950s onwards.
Barry John Guy is an English composer and double bass player. His range of interests encompasses early music, contemporary composition, jazz and improvisation, and he has worked with a wide variety of orchestras in the UK and Europe. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music under Buxton Orr, and later taught there.
Joëlle Léandre is a French double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation.
Chris Corsano is an American improviser.
Peter Evans is an improvising trumpeter who specializes in free improvisation and avant-garde music.
Sylvie Courvoisier is a composer, pianist, improviser and bandleader. She was born and raised in Lausanne, Switzerland, and has been a resident of New York City since 1998. She won Germany’s International Jazz Piano Prize in 2022 and was named Pianist of the Year for 2023 in the international critics poll of Spanish jazz publication El Intruso. NPR’s Kevin Whitehead has encapsulated the distinctive character of Courvoisier’s art this way: “Some pianists approach the instrument like it’s a cathedral. Sylvie Courvoisier treats it like a playground.”
Paul Lytton is an English free jazz and free improvising percussionist.
John Russell was an acoustic guitarist who worked in free improvisation beginning in the 1970s. He promoted concerts and appeared on more than 50 recordings.
Dortmund Variations is an album by British jazz saxophonist Evan Parker and German pianist Georg Gräwe, which was recorded live in 2010 and released on Nuscope. This is the second recording by the duo, their first was Unity Variations.
Okkyung Lee is a South Korean cellist, improviser, and composer.
Relative Pitch Records is an American independent record label specializing in free jazz and avant-garde jazz, free improvisation, and experimental music. Run by Kevin Reilly, Relative Pitch has been ranked among the top jazz record labels in The New York City Jazz Record and DownBeat year-end lists, and praised by publications and organizations including The Guardian, NPR Music, The Brooklyn Rail, and in Bandcamp Daily's label profile, "Relative Pitch is Built on Enthusiasm for Experimental Music".
Psi Records is an independent record label that was founded by saxophonist Evan Parker, and that focuses on free improvisation.
Naan Tso is an album by the free improvisation ensemble known as Foxes Fox, featuring saxophonist Evan Parker, pianist Steve Beresford, double bassist John Edwards, and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo. It was recorded on October 27, 2004, at Gateway Studios in London, and was released in 2005 by Psi Records. The album was recorded five years after the group's debut album, and roughly a year prior to the departure of Moholo-Moholo, who moved back to his native South Africa in September 2005 after years of exile in England.
Sense is an album by the electronic music duo FURT, consisting of Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer. It features two long tracks: "Uranus," a studio recording from August 2, 2008, with twelve parts titled "Limen" I–XII; and "Curtains," a live recording from January 16, 2009, dedicated to Karlheinz Stockhausen, documenting a performance at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery at University College Cork, Ireland. The album was released in 2009 by Psi Records.
Hasselt is a live album by the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, recorded during the Open Circuit: iNTERACT 2010 festival, held at Kunstencentrum Belgie in Hasselt, Belgium. The first three tracks, recorded on May 21, 2010, feature sub-groups drawn from the Ensemble, while the final track, recorded on May 22, 2010, is an extended outing for the entire Ensemble. The album was released in 2012 by Psi Records.
The London Concert is a live album by guitarist Derek Bailey and saxophonist Evan Parker. It was recorded on February 14, 1975, at Wigmore Hall in London, and was initially released on vinyl later that year by Incus Records. In 2005, it was reissued on CD by Parker's Psi label with additional tracks, and in 2018, it was reissued on vinyl in remastered form but with the original four track format by Cafe Oto's Otoroku label.
As the Wind is a live album by saxophonist Evan Parker on which he is joined by percussionists Toma Gouband, playing lithophones, and Mark Nauseef, playing metallophones. It was recorded on September 22, 2012, at St Peters in Whitstable, England, and was issued on CD in 2016 by Psi Records as the label's final release.
