Luke Muehlhauser

A beginner’s guide to modern art jazz

See also: A beginner’s guide to modern classical music. Also, remember to get good headphones!

June, 1977

“Art jazz,” as I use the term, refers to that subset of jazz music that, rather than faithfully savoring the old styles, or re-interpreting old standards, tries to express new musical ideas, a la most modern classical music. Unfortunately, there are few guides to modern art jazz that are aimed at the beginner. The best guide I know of is by Piero Scaruffi, who rightly complains:

Most books on the history of jazz music, even the ones published very recently… tend to devote 80–90% of the pages to jazz before the Sixties, and then to quickly summarize (with countless omissions) the last 40 years… The paradox, of course, is that a lot more has happened “since” the 1960s than “until” the 1960s… by far, the greatest contributions of jazz to the history of humankind came in the second half of the century, for example with composers (repeat: composers) such as Charlie Mingus, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane.

…It is hard to name [Louis] Armstrong in the same sentence with Mozart or Stravinsky, but not difficult at all to mention Ornette Coleman or Anthony Braxton with those heavy-weights of classical music.

Scaruffi’s history of jazz thus focuses on the development of art jazz since ~1960. My contribution here is to focus on an even smaller set of pieces: art jazz since 1960 that is plausibly accessible to many new listeners. (So, no Anthony Braxton or Borbetomagus.)

I should also mention that while most jazz fans think mostly about jazz performers, I think mostly about jazz composers. Thus, many famous albums don’t appear in this guide because they are mostly filled with covers. Instead I focus on novel jazz compositions that push the art of jazz composition forward in some way. My focus on composers also means that many albums credited to a performer (e.g. Paul Bley’s Closer) are instead credited below to their primary composer (Carla Bley, in the case of Closer). 1

Note: This guide links to lots of music on YouTube or Spotify: wherever the music is available. While reading, I recommend you Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on Mac) to open those links in a new browser tab so you can hear the music play for a bit before reading further. Some of the Spotify links point to custom playlists I made, since many of the original albums that aren’t (directly) available on Spotify are reconstructable entirely from later compilation albums that are on Spotify. When I couldn’t find an album on Spotify or YouTube, I linked to another source instead. Here is a Spotify playlist of all the bolded albums listed below (in the main text, not those in the footnotes), in chronological order. Remember, these are not the “best” albums of art jazz. Instead, they are some of the best albums of art jazz that (1) are plausibly accessible to many new listeners, and that (2) are available on Spotify.

Update 1/7/2018: Albums I’ve listened to more recently, from all style categories, are in this Google doc, since I don’t have time to add them here.

Contents

A quick review of jazz up to ~1960

First, some context.

Jazz music emerged in the American South as a blend of ragtime, blues, spirituals, brass band music, and other influences. Depending on what you want to count as “jazz,” its origins date to somewhere from 1890–1915. The first jazz recordings came a bit later. A sampling of early jazz:

Many different threads of jazz music grew from this base. 3

The highly danceable swing jazz — think Benny Goodman, “Sing, Sing, Sing” — dominated American popular music from roughly 1935–1945.

Raymond Scott wrote frantic, quirky jazz pieces that Carl Stalling later licensed for use in cartoon soundtracks, for example “Powerhouse” (1937).

Bebop (aka bop) dropped the emphasis on danceability in favor of more complex structures, an often faster-than-danceable pace, and an existential mood, e.g. in Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia” (1942), Monk’s “Round about Midnight” (1944), Parker’s “Ko ko” (1945), and Tristano’s “Spontaneous Combustion” (1947).

Cool jazz focused even less than bebop on rhythm and melody, and had a more relaxed tone, e.g. in MacGregor’s “Moon Dreams” (1948), Getz’s “Early Autumn” (1948), Mulligan’s “Venus de Milo” (1949), Konitz’s “Subconscious-Lee” (1949), and Modern Jazz Quartet’s “Vendôme” (1952).

Hard Bop was an outgrowth of bebop with simpler melodies and a more energetic sound, e.g. in Brown’s “Daahound” (1954), Silver’s “The Preacher” (1955), Rollins’ “Valse Hot” (1956), and Mobley’s “Lower Stratosphere” (1957).

Free jazz discarded fixed chord progressions and tempos, e.g. in Tristano’s “Intuition” (1949) and “Descent into the Maelstrom” (1953), Giuffre’s “Fugue” (1953), Taylor’s “Toll” (1958), and Coleman’s “Peace” (1959).

Classic albums

In search of relatively accessible art jazz from ~1960 onward, let’s start with the most-played art jazz tracks that were released from 1959-1970. 4 Obviously this isn’t a pure measure of accessibility, since people will often play tracks based on what they’re told is good rather than what they find enjoyable. But here’s the list (as of this writing) nonetheless:

  1. Davis, Kind of Blue (1959, hard bop) 5
  2. Desmond’s “Take Five” and Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk” & “Strange Meadow Lark” & “Kathy’s Waltz” from Time Out (1959, cool jazz) 6
  3. Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” & “Fables of Faubus” & “Boogie Stop Shuffle” & “Better Git it in Your Soul” & “Self-Portrait in Three Colors” from Mingus Ah Um (post-bop)
  4. Coltrane’s “Naima,” “Giant Steps,” “Cousin Mary,” and “Countdown” from Giant Steps (1960, hard bop)
  5. Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” from My Favorite Things (1961, post-bop)
  6. Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island” from Empyrean Isles (1964, post-bop)
  7. Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” from Takin’ Off (1962, hard bop)
  8. Timmons’ “Moanin’” from Moanin’ (1959, hard bop)
  9. Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage” from Maiden Voyage (1965, post-bop)
  10. Davis’ “Pharaoh’s Dance” from Bitches Brew (1970, jazz-rock)

If you find yourself liking the bebop, cool jazz, and hard bop selections above, there’s a good chance you’ll like nearly all of the well-reviewed albums from those genres, and you can just listen to all the best albums from those genres on lists compiled elsewhere, including: 7

  • RYM’s chart of top-ranked albums in bebop, cool jazz, and hard bop. (The most accessible albums will typically be those where the first genre listed is bebop, cool jazz, or hard bop. The exception is when “modal jazz” — more of a compositional technique than a “style” — is listed as the first genre: in those cases, treat the 2nd-listed genre as the primary genre.)
  • An Allmusic advanced search for “main albums” rated 4.5 or 5 stars in bop, bop vocals, cool, or hard bop. (In this case, it will be harder to quickly filter for albums that are primarily bebop, cool jazz, or hard bop. One way to improve the average accessibility of the items in the search results list is to further restrict the advanced search to albums released from 1945–1962. But this will still return some experimental albums like L’Ascenseur Pour l’Échafaud.)
  • The albums from Piero Scaruffi’s Best Jazz Albums list that are primarily bebop, cool jazz, or hard bop: Kind of Blue, Crosscurrents, Brilliant Corners, Saxophone Colossus, Fontessa, Giant Steps, Go!, Birth of the Cool, and Freedom Suite. 8

Post-bop

From here on, I’ll be listing a lot of albums, so I’ll also begin to bold the standout albums. Since my own methods for judging the best in jazz are still developing, I decided to simply bold all albums appearing on Scaruffi’s ranked decade lists, which he says are more accurate than his overall list. Since Scaruffi has no decade lists starting with the 2000s, I’ve bolded Scaruffi’s #1 album for each year after 1999. 9 

The way I’m using the term, “post-bop” is a catch-all term for jazz music that is heavily influenced by bebop and/or hard bop, but which either “moves beyond” bebop/hard bop in various stylistic ways (e.g. the Davis quintet’s albums below), or which borrows heavily from other styles (world musics, free jazz, etc.), without being primarily free jazz, avant-garde jazz, jazz-rock, or some other major jazz genre. 10

Because post-bop is so varied, some varieties of it are a lot more accessible than other varieties, so I can’t as easily say “If you like these 5 examples of post-bop, you’ll probably like all the best-reviewed albums in the genre,” as I did with bebop, hard bop, and cool jazz. So, this is where I start providing some real value, since I’m not aware of anyone else who has tried to make a long list of the most accessible good albums of post-bop.

According to one critic, 11 the founding albums of post-bop — which are all pretty accessible, to my ears — were recorded from 1965–1968 by Miles Davis’ 2nd quintet:

Personally, I would trace the origins of post-bop much further back, at least to Charles Mingus. To my ears, the most accessible of his many great albums are: 12

Here are some other good and (relatively) accessible post-bop albums, grouped by artist: 14

(For more albums, see my supplemental Google doc.)

World jazz

I use the term “world jazz” for albums which fuse jazz styles (e.g. post-bop) with very heavy doses of world folk musics. Some recommended and accessible albums are: 97

(For more albums, see my supplemental Google doc.)

Third stream*

Gunther Schuller coined the term “third stream” in 1957 to refer “a new genre of music located about halfway between jazz and classical music.” (Had Schuller known that Chuck Berry was inventing rock music that very moment, perhaps he would have coined the term “fourth stream” instead.)

Schuller clarified that “third stream” music wasn’t jazz played with classical instruments, nor classical music played by a jazz band, nor the insertion of a bit of Ravel between bebop chord changes, nor a jazz fugue. Rather, third stream music is compositionally inspired by classical and jazz music roughly equally, although Schuller stressed that improvisation must be important in third stream music as it is in jazz. 118

Milhaud’s La Création du monde (1923) and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and other early fusion attempts mixed classical and jazz influences, though most of them didn’t count as third stream music by Schuller’s definition because they didn’t involve improvisation.

On this page, I’m going to be less strict than Schuller was about the improvisation rule, and I’ll “compensate” for that by preferring composers who came primarily from the jazz world rather than primarily from the classical world. Call it “third stream*” if you like.

Then, from among third stream* recordings, I’ll try to list the ones which seem most “accessible”: 119

(For more albums, see my supplemental Google doc.)

For a while, it looked like third stream music might be the future of jazz. Instead, free jazz came along and crushed it. Then, after the free jazz revolution, the basic idea of third stream was reborn in “creative” jazz, this time heavily influenced by free jazz.

Free jazz

“Free jazz” is what you’d guess from the name. It’s jazz that often does one or more of the following: (1) forgoes planned chord progressions, (2) forgoes planned tempos, (3) forgoes planned melodies in favor of pure improvisation, and/or (4) forgoes other standard compositional or performance assumptions. At the extreme, it consists in a bunch of players improvising for 10+ minutes without any pre-planned rhythms or chord progressions or modes or anything. As such, much of free jazz sounds like random screeching noises to most people, and it requires serious effort to find true examples of free jazz that are at least somewhat “accessible.” As such, my standards for what counts as “accessible” are even looser for this section than they are for most other sections.

Though the earliest free jazz tracks go back to 1944, the genre is usually considered to have been launched in the late 1950s, by Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman. As it happens, Coleman also produced a few of the most melodic and accessible albums of free jazz:

Other good and relatively accessible free jazz albums and tracks include: 125

(For more albums, see my supplemental Google doc.)

Creative jazz

“Creative” jazz, in my usage, refers more to a school than to a style, but it has its own section here because there are stylistic similarities between the artists in the creative school, and because otherwise I’d have to dump all these artists into the already-too-large-and-diverse “other avant-garde jazz” section.

In 1965, Muhal Richard Abrams co-founded the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a non-profit devoted to “nurturing, performing, and recording serious, original [jazz] music.” The style of AACM composers, or thoroughly AACM-influenced composers, was most often a blend of free jazz and the classical avantgarde, with a special focus on the timbres and textures of the music. In a stylistic sense, creative jazz was a continuation of third stream music. But culturally, it was more directly a descendent of the free jazz tradition.

Braxton 76 excerptCreative jazz is home to many of the most complicated, intellectually challenging compositions of jazz, comparable to e.g. the works of Babbitt, Stockhausen, or Ferneyhough from the classical tradition. Some creative jazz composers, especially Anthony Braxton, wrote long, dense volumes on music theory, invented special musical notations to capture their musical ideas, and published intimidating-looking musical scores like the one to the right (from the score for Braxton’s Composition No. 76.)

I should mention that if an artist is clearly part of the “creative” tradition, I’m not going to think very hard about whether an album is best characterized as post-bop, avantgarde jazz, jazz fusion, creative jazz, or indeed contemporary classical. If it sounds like any of those and the composer is firmly in the creative jazz tradition, I’m usually just going to classify it as creative jazz. For this reason, most of the albums listed below are not very representative of “creative jazz,” because the albums accessible enough to make this list tended to be “on the border” with other genres, but that happened to be composed by a musician associated with the creative school.

As with my free jazz section, my standards for what counts as “accessible” in this section must be even looser than they are for most other sections. Also as with my free jazz section, most of the key albums in this genre will only be mentioned in footnotes, because they aren’t as accessible as those below: 136

(For more albums, see my supplemental Google doc.)

Jazz fusion

Creative jazz was always a difficult, obscure tradition with a limited audience. After free jazz, the next “mainstream” movement within jazz was jazz fusion. Starting in the late 1960s, dozens of artists fused jazz with rock, R&B, funk, country, and even pop music. Many of the jazz greats who had gone through post-bop and free jazz phases next turned their attention to fusion.

As jazz artists stepped toward rock, rock artists stepped toward jazz: see Frank Zappa, Soft Machine, Colosseum, Caravan, and Chicago. Below, I focus on fusion artists who primarily trace their lineage to jazz rather than rock (or country, etc.), even though some fusion artists from the rock tradition recorded albums that were “jazzier” than some of the fusion albums recorded by artists from the jazz tradition. (Note that I’ve excluded all “new age jazz” that I felt was closer to “new age” than to “jazz.”) 183

Unsurprisingly, jazz fusion is often the genre of jazz most accessible to those raised on rock and pop music, so this section contains a lot of recommended “accessible” albums. It is also probably the jazz genre with the highest number of popular but artistically dubious/worthless albums. The result is that whereas the vast majority of “notable” albums in free jazz and creative jazz were relegated to my footnotes as “inaccessible” (even given my relaxed accessibility standards for those genres), the vast majority of “notable” albums in fusion jazz are relegated to my footnotes as “dull” — i.e., not artistically ambitious, or just bad.

As usual, I suggest you start with the bolded albums. 184

(For more albums, see my supplemental Google doc.)

ECM style jazz

ECM style jazz, 258 named after the record label that released many of the earliest albums in this style, combines several elements:

  • free jazz’s willingness to abandon structure for lengthy periods of total improvisation
  • cool jazz’s relatively subdued aesthetic (not free jazz’s violent, dissonant aesthetic)
  • third stream’s interest in classical forms (not so much creative jazz’s interest in less accessible post-1940 contemporary classical music)

Describing the earliest ECM style artists, RYM adds:

Their approach is usually described as “ascetic,” “restrained,” or “meditative” and their playing can be characterized by long, slow-pacing gestures that are preferred to displays of virtuosity, usage of silence, subdued expressivity and attention to “spatial” organization in music. They approach their instruments in more traditional way compared to free jazz, not pushing them to their expressive limits. ECM style jazz is tonal, although it doesn’t operate with instantly recognizable melodies, it is often quite static and close to Impressionism in its treatment of textures and atmospheres. Rhythmically the music is straight (often in straight eight-notes) and doesn’t have the “swing” feel that’s common to majority of jazz. The adjectives usually associated with ECM style are “dreamy,” “ethereal,” “icy,” etc.

Here are some relatively accessible ECM style jazz albums: 259

(For more albums, see my supplemental Google doc.)

Other avant-garde jazz

This is my catch-all category for avant-garde jazz that I couldn’t really place under other headings, such as free jazz or creative jazz. Most albums in this category are too inaccessible for this list, 267 even given more relaxed standards for what counts as “accessible” (as I did for the free jazz and creative jazz categories). But here are some (highly diverse) exceptions: 268

(For more albums, see my supplemental Google doc.)

Footnotes:
  1. There are also many albums I simply haven’t been able to cheaply and efficiently access for listening. Albums I tried to find but couldn’t — at least, not cheaply and efficiently — were: Steve Lacy’s Raps, Follies, Flim-Flam, Sweet Sixteen, The Owl; John Tchicai’s Moonstone Journey, Hindukush Serenade; Dewey Redman’s Soundsigns; Richard Abrams’ Things to Come from Those Now Gone, Roots of Blue, Variations for Solo Saxophone Flute and Chamber Orchestra, Quintet for Soprano Piano Harp Cello and Violin, Improvisation Structures, Odyssey of King, Saturation Blue, String Quartet #2, String Quartet #3, Saxophone Quartet #1, NOVI; Roscoe Mitchell’s More Cutouts, Four Compositions, Pilgrimage, Tone Ventures; Mal Waldron’s Number Nineteen, Signals, Meditations, Encounters; McIntyre’s Forces and Feelings, Ram’s Run, Morning Song; Leroy Jenkins’ Manhattan Cycles, Straight Ahead / Free At Last, Beneath Detroit; Leo Smith’s Cosmos Has Spirit; Danny Zeitlin’s Zeitgeist, Expansion, Syzygy; George Lewis’ Virtual Discourses, Ring Shout Ramble, Signifying Riffs, Interactive Trio; Chico Freeman’s Beyond the Rain, The Search, Mudfoot, Heaven Dance; Fred Anderson’s Chicago Chamber Music; Hamiet Bluiett’s S.O.S., Orchestra Duo And Septet; Joe Mcphee’s MFG in Minnesota, In Black and White; Egberto Gismonti’s Fábula de la Bella Palomera; Frank Lowe’s Skizoke, Inappropriate Choices; Don Pullen’s Five to Go; James Newton’s From Inside; Billy Bang’s Billy Bang / John Lindberg, Rainbow Gladiator, Forbidden Planet; Gerry Hemingway’s Terrains, Fire Works, Johnny’s Corner Song, Pulses; Jane Ira Bloom’s We Are; Misha Mengelberg’s Misja Mengelberg Quartet, Saxophone Concerto; Willem Breuker’s The Message, Muziek In Amsterdam, Hiebel; Maarten Altena’s Rif; Gunter Hampel’s Trailblazer, Generator, Life On This Planet, Vogelfrei, All Is Real, Ruomi, Celebrations, Angel, I Love Being With You, Unity Dance, Out from Under, Familie; Nana Vasconcelos’ Zumbi, Nanatronics; Louis Andriessen & others’ Reconstructie: Een Moraliteit; Peter Brotzmann’s Free Jazz Und Kinder; Albert Mangelsdorff’s Movin’ On; Gunter Christmann’s Topic; Andrea Centazzo’s Cjant, Omaggio a Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Battle; Franz Koglmann’s Join!; Werner Dafeldecker’s Ant Ort, Comprovisations I-X, Bonsai Boat, Dipthongs, Insections; Graham Collier’s Memories Arrested in Space; Henry Threadgill’s Pop Start The Tape Stop; David Friesen’s Storyteller; Art Lande’s The Eccentricities of Earl Dant, The Story of Ba-Ku, Times and Places; Mike Westbrook’s Plays for the Record; Lol Coxhill’s Poppy-Seed Affair; Wolfgang Dauner’s Dauner-eschingen; Joachim Kuhn’s Solos; Sergey Kuryokhin’s Subway Culture, Mad Nightingales In The Russian Forest; Ernie Krivda’s Glory Strut; Jack Walrath’s Revenge of the Fat People, A Plea for Sanity; Bobby Watson’s Post-Motown Bop, Beatitudes, Tailor Made; James Williams’ Alter Ego; Tom Harrell’s Play of Light, Form; David Liebman’s Trio + One, Quest; Greg Osby’s Season of Renewal; David Darling’s Inverness; Daniel Kobialka’s Dream Passage, Afternoon of a Fawn, Softness of a Moment; Michael Jones’ Wind Song; Mark Nauseef’s Islam Blues; Trilok Gurtu’s Farakala; Nels Cline’s The Allure of Roadside Curios; Chris Speed’s Iffy; Tony Coe’s Tony’s Basement, Tournée Du Chat; Elliott Sharp’s Tessellation Row; Eugene Chadbourne’s Insect and Western Attracter, Horror Part One; Saturn’s Finger; Jon Rose’s Solo Violin Improvisations Vols. 1 & 2, Decomposition, Towards a Relative Music, The Anatomy of the Violin; Gary Thomas’ Overkill; Motoharu Yoshizawa’s Cracked Mirrors; Christy Doran’s Returning Dream of the Leaving Ship, Take The Floor And Lift The Roof; John Hollenback’s Semi-Formal; Samm Bennett’s Metafunctional, Ready Question; Jim Staley’s OTB; Tom Varner’s Swimming; Hank Roberts’ The Truth and Reconciliation Show; Saheb Sarbib’s Live at the Public Theater, Evil Season; Butch Morris’ Conduction 117; Bobby Previte’s Pull to Open; Paul Dunmall’s East West North South, Blown Away, Deep Whole Trio; Fred Longberg-Holm’s First Contact, Theory of Motion, Building a Better Future, Pillow; Scott Rosenberg’s Toad in the Hole, Meet Me on the Gastral Plane; Toshinori Kondo’s Panta Rhei; Exias-J’s Avant-Garde; Joe Maneri’s Kalavinka; Guillermo Gregorio’s Chicago Approach; Paul Plimley’s Everything in Stages; Greg Kelley’s Nmperign; Craig Harris’ Shelter, Souls Within the Veil; Tyondai Braxton’s The Grow Gauge; Greg Headley’s Table of Opposites; Markus Stockhausen’s Koln Music Fantasy; Allen Lowe’s At the Moment of Impact, Blues and the Empirical Truth; Outward Sound Ensemble’s Cloudburst; Agusti Martinez’s Are Spirits What I Hear; Martin Archer’s 88 Enemies, Blue Meat Black Diesel & Engine Room Favourites; Howard Riley’s Descending Circles; Fred Ho’s The Black Panther Suite, Red Arc; Vienna Art Orchestra’s From No Art to Mo(z)-Art, Serapionsmusic; Steve Lehman’s Camoflage; Mark Harvey’s Aardvark Steps Out; Either/Orchestra’s Radium, The Half-Life of Desire, The Brunt; Oscar Aichinger’s Poemia, To Touch a Distant Soul; Andy Milne’s Forward to Get Back, Y’all Just Don’t Know; Ken McIntyre’s Way Way Out.[↩]
  2. I typically only mention differences between writing/recording/publishing dates when there is more than a 2-year gap. When I list a year for recording, writing, or publishing, it is the last year during which that happened for the piece in question.[↩]
  3. If you’d like to understand jazz, I recommend Gridley’s Jazz Styles. There isn’t much difference between the 10th and 11th editions, and you can get a used copy of the 10th edition very cheaply. The book guides you not only through the major developments and styles of jazz, but also includes detailed “listening guides” for many famous jazz pieces, so that you can read what the major musical events are (at particular time markings) as you listen to the piece.[↩]
  4. To construct this list, I began with the recently-most-played jazz tracks according to last.fm, removed tracks released outside the 1959-1970 window (e.g. tracks by Norah Jones), removed tracks that weren’t really part of the stylistic vanguard at the time (e.g. Rollins’ version of “God Bless the Child” from The Bridge), and collapsed tracks from the same album into a single line item.[↩]
  5. Kind of Blue and many other albums on this page are often classified as primarily “modal jazz.” I won’t treat modal jazz as a distinct genre in this guide, since it’s more of a compositional technique than a “style.” So in practice and for the most part, there is modal jazz that sounds like bebop, modal jazz that sounds like cool jazz, modal jazz that sounds like hard bop, etc.[↩]
  6. Note that when I refer to an individual track, I always name the composer, even if the track is usually attributed to the lead performer rather than the composer. But when I refer to albums, I refer to whomever the album is usually credited to, even if that’s not the lead composer. I think this is unfair to the composer, but it’s one of many shortcuts I decided to take in order to finish this guide before the heat death of the universe.[↩]
  7. There are also a few albums from this period with a relatively accessible “classic” style — e.g. swing — that, unlike most albums in their style, were trying to push artistic boundaries. Judging which albums meet this criteria is of course pretty subjective, but one likely uncontroversial example is Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite (1967). (Jazz historians sometimes distinguish “classic” jazz from “modern” jazz. The latter began with bebop and includes everything that came after.) [↩]
  8. I checked Scaruffi’s list for bebop, cool jazz, and hard bop albums up through selection #100, as of 06-05-2015.[↩]
  9. I should also mention that, part-way through developing this guide, I stopped providing release dates and hyperlinks for albums included in the footnotes but not in the main text, so that’s why that inconsistency exists. It was simply too much tedious work.[↩]
  10. Post-bop is a contested term. Some sources consider hard bop a subgenre of post-bop. Others don’t necessarily do that, but they do have a much broader definition of post-bop than I do, and thus trace its origins all the way back to, say, 1945.[↩]
  11. Namely, Jeremy Yudkin. He includes Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro as post-bop, but I’m counting them as jazz-rock here.[↩]
  12. Presents Charles Mingus isn’t listed here due largely to the relatively challenging “What Love?” In some cases I included an album if it only contains one short “inaccessible” track, for example I included Oh Yeah despite “Passions of a Man.” Mingus’ later works are excluded here for containing some relatively inaccessible sections, but if you like Mingus you might want to check them out anyway: Mingus Moves (1973), Changes One (1974), Changes Two (1975), and Cumbia & Jazz Fusion (1978).[↩]
  13. This album will also appear in my “world jazz” section, later in the post.[↩]
  14. Excluded for inaccessibility: Charles Lloyd’s Dream Weaver (1966), Forest Flower (1968), Hagar’s Song; Steve Lacy’s Momentum (1987), Let’s Call This… Esteem! (1993), Vespers (1993); Karl Ikonen’s Beauteous Tales and Offbeat Stories; Empirical’s Empirical. Excluded for dullness: Takuya Kuroda’s Edge, Rising Son; Bennie Maupin’s Penumbra; Gregory Porter’s Water; Kurt Elling’s The Gate; Eric Reed’s The Baddest Monk; Chris Dingman’s Waking Dreams; Manu Katche’s Neighborhood, Playground, Third Round; Ingrid Laubrock’s Who Is It?, Some Times; Wolfgang Muthspiel’s Solo, The Promise; Tigran Hamasyan’s A Fable; Melissa Aldana’s Back Home; Jack DeJohnette’s The DeJohnette Complex; Kenny Barron’s The Art of Conversation, Sunset to Dawn, Peruvian Blue, Things Unseen, Four for All, Images; Wolfgang Dauner’s Dream Talk, Music Zounds; Jessica William’s And Then There’s This, Inventions; Joachim Kühn’s Nightline New York; Joe Lovano’s Tones Shapes & Colors, Solid Steps, Village Rhythm, Friendly Fire, Universal Language, Trio Fascination, Flights of Fancy, Worlds; Lyle Mays’ Fictionary; Bobby Watson’s Appointment in Milano; Tom Harrell’s Moon Alley, The Art of Rhythm, Time’s Mirror; Terence Blanchard’s Wandering Moon, Terence Blanchard, Simply Stated, Romantic Defiance; Mulgrew Miller’s Hand in Hand; Fred Hersch’s Horizons; Joshua Redman’s Freedom in the Groove, Beyond, Passage of Time; Brad Mehldau’s Ode; Don Rendell’s Space Walk; Kenny Clarke’s Jazz Convention Volume II; Jack Duff’s The Enchanted Isle; Joe Haider’s Cafe Des Pyrennees; Uptown String Quartet’s Just Wait a Minute![↩]
  15. Ra’s other albums aren’t primarily post-bop.[↩]
  16. Taylor’s later albums are primarily free jazz.[↩]
  17. Probably his only album that counts as post-bop.[↩]
  18. I consider these albums to be mostly post-bop with some elements of free jazz, whereas some of Coleman’s later work I classify as free jazz.[↩]
  19. I’m counting Waldron’s earlier albums, and also Evidence, as not primarily post-bop.[↩]
  20. A few of these are arguably more free jazz than post-bop, but in the end I decided they were more post-bop than free jazz. I’m counting Coltrane’s later albums as not primarily post-bop.[↩]
  21. Excluded for dullness: Pictures in a Frame. Excluded for inaccessibility: Scott Free, Live in Tokyo.[↩]
  22. It was a tough call, but I decided Outward Bound (1960) wasn’t quite post-bop enough to make the main list. I couldn’t find a copy of Naima (1964) to evaluate, though Dolphy’s track from that album, “Springtime,” is available on Spotify. I decided Conversations (1963) and Iron Man (1963) weren’t accessible enough for this list. The famous Out to Lunch (1964) is probably best classified as free jazz.[↩]
  23. Earlier albums are mostly hard-bop, and not world-y enough even to qualify as post-bop. Excluded for inaccessibility: Psychicemtous, 1984.[↩]
  24. I decided that Blues for Smoke (1960) wasn’t “mostly” post-bop, though it’s certainly accessible. I also decided that Freedom Together! (1966) and Sunshine of My Soul (1967) weren’t accessible enough for this list.[↩]
  25. Liquid Dancers excluded because dull. Thesis excluded because inaccessible.[↩]
  26. I decided Enlightenment (1973), Sama Layuca (1974), Atlantis (1974), 4×4 (1976), Supertrios (1977), and others were too inaccessible for this list.[↩]
  27. Ellington’s other albums aren’t primarily post-bop.[↩]
  28. I’m counting McLean’s earlier albums as not primarily post-bop. I also decided that McLean’s New and Old Gospel wasn’t accessible enough for the main list.[↩]
  29. I decided that Compulsion (1965), Invitation (1974) and the jazz opera Lift Every Voice (1970) probably aren’t accessible enough for this list.[↩]
  30. I decided that Archie Shepp/Bill Dixon Quartet (1962) and The New York Contemporary Five (1963) weren’t accessible enough for this list, and Wo!Man was too dull.[↩]
  31. Rivers’ later albums are inaccessible and/or free jazz.[↩]
  32. I’m counting Shorter’s earlier albums as not primarily post-bop. Excluded for inaccessibility: The All-Seeing Eye, Super Nova. Excluded for dullness: High Life.[↩]
  33. I’m counting Kirk’s earlier albums as not primarily post-bop. I excluded Left & Right (1968) because its central composition, the 20-minute “Expansions,” is probably too inaccessible for this list. I did include Rahsaan Rahsaan, though, because only a few minutes of “The Seeker” are particularly difficult. I excluded Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata (1971), Prepare Thyself To Deal With a Miracle (1973), The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man (1976) because they’re not mostly post-bop, and several of their tracks are not particularly accessible. Blacknuss (1972) is an unusually creative album of covers, but it’s an album of covers nonetheless, so I excluded it from this list.[↩]
  34. Excluded for inaccessibility: Dialogue, Oblique, Components.[↩]
  35. Probably his only album that might count as post-bop.[↩]
  36. Excluded for dullness: Piano Improvisations Vol 1, Piano Improvisations Vol 2, Akoustic Band. Excluded for inaccessibility: Now He Sings Now He Sobs, The Song of Singing.[↩]
  37. Jazz Long Playing is just standards.[↩]
  38. I haven’t heard any of his other albums. His later albums are more fusion than post-bop.[↩]
  39. Excluded for dullness: The Maker.[↩]
  40. Excluded for dullness: Angel Song, All the More, What Now?, Mirrors, Kayak, Dream Sequence.[↩]
  41. Excluded for inaccessibility: Life Between the Exit Signs, The Mourning of a Star, Birth, Expectations, Death and the Flower, Back Hand, Inside Out. Meanwhile, Restoration Ruin is folk rock, not jazz.[↩]
  42. I’m counting Henderson’s earlier albums as not primarily post-bop. I also decided Barcelona wasn’t accessible enough.[↩]
  43. Blues and the Soulful Truth is pretty dull except for “Gypsy Queen.”[↩]
  44. I decided Brilliant Circles and both volumes of Handscapes weren’t accessible enough for this list.[↩]
  45. I’m counting many of his later albums as primarily fusion, and most of his earlier albums as primarily hard bop.[↩]
  46. I’m counting some of Burton’s albums as ECM style jazz.[↩]
  47. I’m counting most of Sanders’ albums as not primarily post-bop. I’ve included these albums here despite a few not-so-accessible minutes of music here and there.[↩]
  48. Excluded for dullness: The Opal Heart, Forgotten Fantasies. Excluded for inaccessibility: Open Sky, Of One Mind, The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner.[↩]
  49. Excluded for inaccessibility: Ecstasy.[↩]
  50. The Windmills of Your Mind was excluded because it’s mostly covers, and relatively dull. Others were excluded for inaccessibility: Conception Vessel, Le Voyage, The Story of Maryam, Jack of Clubs, It Should’ve Happened a Long Time Ago.[↩]
  51. Excluded for dullness: Invitation, Aft, Fi-Fi Goes to Heaven, Special Identity.[↩]
  52. Excluded for dullness: Characters, Up and Coming.[↩]
  53. I’m counting Brown’s other albums as either insufficiently accessible, or some other genre (usually free jazz).[↩]
  54. Some of Shaw’s other albums — in particular Blackstone Legacy (1970), Song of Songs (1972), The Iron Men (rec. 1977, rel. 1980) — are also very good, but I decided they weren’t quite accessible enough to make the list for this article.[↩]
  55. Excluded for inaccessibility: Meant to Be, Past Present.[↩]
  56. Excluded for inaccessibility: Just Us, Oh for the Edge, Boundaries.[↩]
  57. Excluded for dullness or being too hard-bop: Patrao, Parade.[↩]
  58. Bush Baby excluded for inaccessibility. Put Sunshine On It and Da-Da excluded for dullness.[↩]
  59. Excluded for dullness: Night-Glo. Excluded for inaccessibility: Jazz Realities.[↩]
  60. Excluded for dullness: Black Codes, J Mood, The Majesty of the Blues, Blue Interlude, In This House On This Morning, Sweet Release and Ghost Story, Big Train, The Marciac Suite, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary. Not post-bop: Jump Start and Jazz.[↩]
  61. Excluded for dullness: Unforseen Blessings, Lord Riff and Me, Stablemates, Pied Piper, Oh By the Way, Salutes the Saxophone, Focus.[↩]
  62. Excluded for dullness: Manhattan Moonrise, Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down to Me.[↩]
  63. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Mystery of Compassion.[↩]
  64. Excluded for dullness: Random Abstract, Trio Jeepy, Requiem, Eternal, Braggtown, Royal Garden Blues.[↩]
  65. Excluded for inaccessibility: Master of Suspense, Demons in Pursuit.[↩]
  66. Excluded because they’re mostly just hard-bop: First Song, Silence, Haunted Heart, Always Say Goodbye, Now is the Hour, Art of the Song, American Dreams, Sophisticated Ladies. Excluded for inaccessibility: Closeness.[↩]
  67. Excluded for dullness: Every One of Us. Excluded for inaccessibility: Wishbone, Hence the Reason, March of Dimes. Many other Ray Anderson albums have been classified under other genres.[↩]
  68. Excluded for inaccessibility: Eyes in the Back of Your Head, The Printmakers.[↩]
  69. Excluded for dullness: The Art of War, The Duality Perspective.[↩]
  70. Excluded for dullness: Canterbury Song, Some Other Autumn, Coe-Existence. Not post-bop: Til the Girls Come Home.[↩]
  71. Excluded for dullness: Amanecer.[↩]
  72. Musics wasn’t accessible enough for this list, and Redman’s other albums tend to be mostly free jazz rather than mostly post-bop.[↩]
  73. Excluded for dullness: Introducing Kenny Garrett, African Exchange Student, Songbook, Pushing the World Away, Do Your Dance![↩]
  74. Excluded for inaccessibility: John Surman, How Many Clouds Can You See?, Westering Home.[↩]
  75. Excluded for dullness: The Thompson Fields.[↩]
  76. Excluded for dullness: Fire and Ice, Right There, Rhythm Within.[↩]
  77. Excluded for dullness: The Call.[↩]
  78. Excluded for dullness: Concentric Circles, Sundiata, Gratitude, Coming Together, Transatlantic, Vertigo.[↩]
  79. Excluded for dullness: Journey to the Urge Within, Destiny’s Song, To the Eyes of Creation.[↩]
  80. Excluded for inaccessibility: Music 81, Bluish, Wolnosc w Sierpniu.[↩]
  81. Excluded for dullness: Tanjah, Blues to Africa.[↩]
  82. Excluded for dullness: Modernistic.[↩]
  83. Excluded because mostly hard bop and/or cool jazz: Looking Ahead, Hindsight, Open Horizon, Chasing the Sun, Stone Blues, Year of the Iron Sheep.[↩]
  84. Excluded for dullness: Michael Brecker.[↩]
  85. Excluded for dullness: Year of the Snake.[↩]
  86. Excluded for dullness: Tango Palace.[↩]
  87. Excluded for dullness: Canvas.[↩]
  88. Excluded for dullness: Faithful.[↩]
  89. Excluded for dullness: When the World Was One.[↩]
  90. Excluded for dullness: Adama, Devotion, Colors, Aurora, Continuo, From Darkness.[↩]
  91. Excluded for dullness: In Search Of, Pharaoh’s Children.[↩]
  92. Excluded for dullness: Intersection, Crescent Boulevard, A Brand New Take.[↩]
  93. Excluded for dullness: Yam Yam, In This World, Dharma Days, Dusk is a Quiet Place.[↩]
  94. Excluded for dullness: Light of the World, Harmony of Difference.[↩]
  95. Excluded for dullness: No Morphine No Lillies.[↩]
  96. Excluded for dullness: Warriors, Believe, Time and Time Again, Cast the First Stone.[↩]
  97. Excluded for not being jazzy enough: Choying Drolma’s Cho, Selwa; L. Shankar’s Evening Concert, Raga Aberi, Eternal Light, Celestial Body, Who’s to Know, Song for Everyone, Pancha Nadai Pallavi, Soul Searcher; Steve Gorn’s Yantra, Luminous Ragas, From the Caves of the Iron Mountain. Excluded for dullness: Rail Band’s Orchestre Rail Band de Bamako; Bembeya Jazz National’s 10 ans de succes; Barney Wilen’s Moshi. Excluded for inaccessibility: Big Black’s Message to Our Ancestors; The Pyramids’ King of Kings, Lalibela; Mor Thiam’s Dini Safarrar; Maulawi’s Maulawi.[↩]
  98. Excluded for dullness: The Common Ground, The Wailing Dervishes, Do the Bossa Nova, Flute Brass Vibes and Percussion, Brazil Blues.[↩]
  99. Excluded for dullness: High Life.[↩]
  100. Excluded for dullness: Jazz Meets the Folk Song.[↩]
  101. Excluded for dullness: The Lasting Impressions of Ooga Booga, The Americanization of Ooga Booga, The Emancipation of Hugh Masekela, Trumpet Africaine. Not world-y enough: Verse 1.[↩]
  102. Not jazzy enough: Music for Zen Meditation and Other Joys, Music for Yoga Meditation and Other Joys.[↩]
  103. Excluded for inaccessibility: Arvore, Danca Das Cabecas, Sanfona, Amazonia.[↩]
  104. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Third World. Mostly covers: Fenix and El Pampero. Barbieri’s albums after Alive in New York are mostly not trying to push any artistic boundaries.[↩]
  105. Excluded for inaccessibility: Friends, Violin. Excluded for dullness: Beyond Words, Northwest Passage.[↩]
  106. Excluded for inaccessibility: Free.[↩]
  107. Excluded for dullness: Moving Along.[↩]
  108. Excluded for inaccessibility: African Sketchbook, African Dawn, Cape Town Fringe, African Portraits, Sangoma, The Journey. Excluded for dullness: Africa Tears and Laughter, Duke’s Memories, Desert Flowers, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Cape Town Revisited, African Magic, Anatomy of a South African Village, African Piano, Ancient Africa, Blues for a Hip King, Water from an Ancient Well, Black Lightning, Anthem for the New Nations, African Marketplace, Mantra Mode, Township One More Time, African Breeze.[↩]
  109. Excluded for inaccessibility: Grazing Dreams.[↩]
  110. Not jazzy enough: In India, In Kashmir, Inside the Taj Mahal, Inside the Great Pyramid, China, Inside the Cathedral, Traveler.[↩]
  111. Excluded for inaccessibility: Africadeus.[↩]
  112. Excluded for inaccessibility: Handdance, Internal Combustion.[↩]
  113. Excluded for dullness: Tarab, Arabian Waltz, Odd Times, Yara, Nafas.[↩]
  114. Excluded for dullness: Rhythm in the House.[↩]
  115. Excluded for dullness: The Glimpse, African Fantasy, Arkeology, Kathak, Massical, Spellbound.[↩]
  116. Excluded for dullness: Le pas du chat noir, Le Voyage de Sahar, Barzakh.[↩]
  117. Excluded for inaccessibility: Moving Pictures, 12 Arrows.[↩]
  118. A few of the pieces I listed in the “Blurred Lines” section of my beginner’s guide to contemporary classical music probably count as third stream, but I’m going to cover the genre more thoroughly here in my jazz guide.[↩]
  119. I considered including Mingus’ Jazzical Moods (1955), but I don’t think is classical enough to be called third stream*. I made the same call for Davis’ Sketches of Spain (1960). Examples of third stream* music that weren’t accessible enough for this list include: Lateef’s African-American Epic Suite (rec. 1993, rel. 1996), Weber’s The Colours of Chloë (1974), Coleman’s Skies of America (1972), Giuffre’s Piece For Clarinet And String Orchestra (1960), Alice Coltrane’s Lord of Lords (1972) and World Galaxy (1972), Macero’s What’s New? (1956), Mann’s Concerto Grosso in D Blues (1968), Penderecki’s Actions for Free Jazz Orchestra (1971), Horn’s Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts (1965), and Burton’s Seven Songs for Quartet and Chamber Orchestra (1973).[↩]
  120. Stan Kenton’s early albums — Stan Kenton Presents (1950), Innovations in Modern Music (1950), City of Glass (1952), New Concepts in Artistry of Rhythm (1952), This Modern World (1953) — are definitely third stream*, but they generally aren’t accessible enough for this list, which is why I selected particular tracks from them instead. Kenton’s New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm (1952) and several later albums are accessible enough, but not mostly third stream*. Kenton returned to third stream* music later, e.g. on Conducts the Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra (1965), but I decided these albums weren’t reliably accessible enough for this list.[↩]
  121. Most of Concorde (1955) and Fontessa (1956) isn’t third stream*, so I included only the most third stream* track from those albums, “Fontessa.”[↩]
  122. This was the most accessible-sounding piece by Schuller I could find. He wrote a lot of third stream* music, but almost none of it is accessible enough for this list.[↩]
  123. My judgment is that Moondog’s earlier albums are not very accessible, and rarely third stream*.[↩]
  124. I decided Free Jazz (1960), This Is Our Music (1961), Ornette! (1961), Chappaqua Suite (1965), Who’s Crazy (1966), Ornette at 12 (1968), and Science Fiction (1972) weren’t accessible enough for this section. Skies of America (1972) is third stream*. New York is Now! (1968) and Love Call (1968) are accessible enough, but not very “free.” Most of Coleman’s later work is jazz-rock or jazz-funk.[↩]
  125. Many, many good albums of free jazz were excluded from this list due to insufficient accessibility, including: John Coltrane’s Ascension (1965), Sun Ship (rec. 1965, rel. 1971), Om (1965), and others; Albert Ayler’s Spirits (rec. 1964, rel. 1966), New York Eye and Ear Control (1965), Spiritual Unity (1965), Ghosts (1965), Bells (1965), Spirits Rejoice (1965), Love Cry (1968), Music is the Healing Force of the Universe (1969); Sun Ra’s Heliocentric Worlds Vol 1 (1965), Vol 2 (1966), & Vol 3 (rec. 1965, rel. 2005), The Magic City (1966), Atlantis (1969), When Angels Speak of Love, Featuring Pharoah Sanders And Black Harold; Sam Rivers’ Dimensions & Extensions (rec. 1967, rel. 1986), Streams (1973), Crystals (1974), The Quest (1976), Paragon (1977), Waves (1978), and Tangens (1997); Marion Brown’s Marion Brown Quartet (1966), Juba-Lee (1966), Three for Shepp (1966), Porto Novo (1968), Duets, Why Not?; Archie Shepp’s Fire Music (1965), On This Night (1966), Mama Too Tight (1966), The Way Ahead (1969), and Blasé (1969); Alice Coltrane’s Universal Consciousness (1971); Dave Burrell’s Echo (1969), After Love (1970), High Won-High Two, La Vie de Boheme, Windward Passages [1979]; Bill Dixon’s Intents and Purposes (1967), Opium (rec. 1969, rel. 2001), Vade Mecum (1994), Vade Mecum II (1996), The Enchanted Messenger (1994), Considerations 1 (rec. 1976, rel. 1981), Considerations 2 (rec. 1976, rel. 1980), Collection (rec. 1976, rel. 1999), and Berlin Abbozzi (2000); Charles Tyler’s Charles Tyler Ensemble (1966), Eastern Man Alone (1967), and Saga of the Outlaws (1976); Frank Wright’s Uhuru Na Umoja (1970), Church Number Nine (1973), Frank Wright Trio, Your Prayer; Sonny Simmons’ Staying on the Watch, Music from the Spheres, Reeds & Birds, Sonny’s Time Now, Sunny Murray, Big Chief, An Even Break, Homage to Africa, Sunshine, Ancient Ritual, Backwoods Suite; New York Art Quartet’s New York Art Quartet and Mohawk; Milford Graves’ Percussion Ensemble, Grand Unification, Stories; Patty Waters’ Sings (inaccessible mostly for the most important track, “Black is the Color”), College Tour; Steve Lacy’s Moon, Stamps, The Flame, Rushes, Clinkers, One More Time, Axieme, November, Disposability, Trickles, N.Y. Capers & Quirks, Troubles, Morning Joy, Weal & Woe, Two Five & Six Blinks, The Forest and the Zoo, Revenue, Sortie, The Sun, Itinerary, Three Blokes, Remains; Roswell Rudd’s Numatik Swing Band, Everywhere, Roswell Rudd; Dewey Redman’s Look for the Black Star, Tarik, Ear of the Behearer, Coincide, The Struggle Continues; Clifford Thornton’s Freedom and Unity, The Panther and the Lash, Communications Network, Ketchaoua; Chick Corea’s Is, Sundance; Keith Jarrett’s Always Let Me Go; Gato Barbieri’s In Search of Mystery, Hamba Khale!, Obsession.[↩]
  126. Taylor’s later albums are too inaccessible for this list, including: World of Cecil Taylor (1960), Air (1960), New York City R&B (1961), Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come (1962), Student Studies (1966), Unit Structures (1966), Conquistador! (1966), Spring of Two Blue J’s (1973), Silent Tongues (1974), Dark to Themselves (1976), Air Above Mountains (1976), 3 Phasis (1978), Cecil Taylor Unit (1979), It is in the Brewing Luminous (1980), The Eighth (1981), Winged Serpent (1984), etc.[↩]
  127. Excluded for dullness: Personal Portrait.[↩]
  128. Excluded for inaccessibility: Inside Story.[↩]
  129. I excluded most Cherry albums for being too inaccessible, including Symphony for Improvisers (1966), Eternal Rhythm (1968), Where is Brooklyn? (1969), Mu (1969), Relativity Suite, and Orient (rec. 1971, rel. 2003).[↩]
  130. Excluded for inaccessibility: Monkey-Pockie-Boo.[↩]
  131. Excluded for inaccessibility: Flight for Four, Self Determination Music.[↩]
  132. I included these albums despite the fact that there are ~5 minutes of pretty inaccessible sections in each of them. I excluded other Sanders albums because they were too inaccessible, including Pharoah’s First (1964), Tauhid (1966), Izipho Zam (1969), Jewels of Thought (1969), and Thembi (1971).[↩]
  133. Excluded for inaccessibility: Cassava Balls, Timo’s Message, Solo, Grandpa’s Spells, John Tchicai with Strings, Boiler (All Ear Trio), Look to the Neutrino, Other Violets.[↩]
  134. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Giant is Awakened, Flight 17, The Call, Aiee! The Phantom.[↩]
  135. The Cosmosamatics are a project of Sonny Simmons and Michael Marcus. Excluded for inaccessibility: Cosmosamatics, Magnitudes, Free Within the Law.[↩]
  136. Excluded for inaccessibility: Anthony Braxton’s Three Compositions of New Jazz, For Alto, Anthony Braxton, Silence, The Complete Braxton 1971, Together Alone, Saxophone Improvisations Series F, Creative Music Orchestra ‎RBN—-3° K12, Town Hall 1972, Live at Moers Festival, Four Compositions, First Duo Concert, Royal Volume 1, Trio and Duet, New York Fall 1974, Five Pieces, Creative Orchestra Music 1976, Time Zones, Elements of Surprise, Duets (w/ Abrams), Donaueschingen, Dortmund, Duets (w/ Mitchell), For Trio, Quintet (Basel) 1977, Solo (Koln) 1978, Creative Orchestra 1978, For Four Orchestras, Alto Saxophone Imrovisations, Birth and Rebirth, Performance (Quartet) 1979, Composition No. 94, Open Aspects, For Two Pianos, One in Two — Two in One, Composition No. 96, Four Pieces, Composition 98, Composition 113, Seven Compositions 1978, Ensemble (Victoriaville), Four Compositions (Quartet), The Aggregate, 19 Solo Compositions, Five Compositions (Quartet), Six Compositions (Quartet), Eugene, 4 Ensemble Compositions, Composition 173, Two Lines, Trillium R — Shala Fears for the Poor, Composition 174, Ensemble [New York] 1995, Octet [New York] 1995, Tentet [Antwerp] 2000, Composition 102, Anthony Braxton with the Creative Jazz Orchestra, Composition 165, 11 Compositions, Composition 192, 10 Compositions (w/ Fonda), Ninetet (Yoshi’s) Vols. 1-4, Tentet (New York) 1995, Four Compositions (Quartet) 1995, Beyond Quantum, Four Compositions (Washington D.C.) 1998, Composition No. 169 + (186 + 206 + 214), Creative Orchestra (Bolzano 2007), Trillium E, Trio (Victoriaville) 2007, 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006; Joseph Jarman’s Song For, As If It Were the Seasons, Sunbound, Egwu-Anwu, The Magic Triangle; Leroy Jenkins’ Creative Construction Company, CCC Volume 2, Revolutionary Ensemble, The Psyche, The Legend of Ai Glatson, Lifelong Ambitions, The People’s Republic, For Players Only, Solo Concert, Swift Are the Winds of Life, Space Minds New Worlds Survival of America, Mixed Quintet, Urban Blues, Themes and Improvisations on the Blues, The Art of Improvisation, Beyond the Boundaries of Time, Counterparts, And Now, Solo; Circle’s Circulus, Paris Concert, Circling In, The Gathering; Lester Bowie’s Numbers 1 & 2, The 5th Power, Fast Last, Rope-a-Dope, African Children, The Great Pretender, All the Magic! / The One and Only; Barry Altschul’s A.R.C.; Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre’s Humility in the Light of the Creator, Peace and Blessings, Paths to Glory, Musical Blessing, South Eastern; Don Moye’s Sun Percussion; Anthony Davis’ Of Blues and Dreams, Song for the Old World, Mystic Winds Tropic Breezes, Hidden Voices, Lady of the Mirrors, Under the Double Moon, Episteme, I’ve Known Rivers, Variations in Dream-time, Hemispheres, Trio 2, Middle Passage, The Ghost Factory, Undine, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Amistad, Notes from the Underground / You Have the Right to Remain Silent, Tania; Han Bennink’s Solo, Acoustic Swing Duo, Nerve Beats, Jazz Bunker; Maarten Altena’s Handicaps, Cities & Streets, Code, K’ploeng, Op Stap, Tel, Quotl; Peter Brotzmann’s For Adolphe Sax, Machine Gun, Nipples, Alarm, Noise of Wings, 2×3=5, Fuck de Boere, Songlines, 14 Love Poems (Plus 10 More), Balls, Outspan 1, Outspan 2, Reserve, FMP 130, Lose & Found; Manfred Schoof’s European Echoes, The Munich Recordings; Irene Schweizer’s Wilde Senoritas, Hexensabbat, Spring, Welcome Back, Tuned Boots, Messer Und, Goose Pannee, Santana, Ramifications, Die V-Mann; Gunter Christmann’s We Play, White Earth Streak, Vario II, Off; Andrea Centazzo’s Environment for Sextet, Ictus, Escape from 2012, Indian Tapes; Ganelin Trio’s Poco-a-Poco, Ancora Da Capo, Con Anima / Concerto Grosso; Werner Dafeldecker’s Polwechsel, Polwechsel 2, Zu, Mal Vu Mal Dit, Till the Old World’s Blown Up and a New One is Created, Dafeldecker / Kurzmann / Fennesz / O’Rourke / Drumm / Siewert, Printer, Der Kreis des Gegenstandes, Aluminum, Traces of Wood; Spontaneous Music Ensemble’s Withdrawal, Summer 1967, Karyobin, Oliv, For You to Share, The Source – From and Towards, So What Do You Think?, Mouthpiece, Birds of a Feather, Face to Face, Low Profile; Evan Parker’s Cinema, The Topography of the Lungs, Collective Calls, Saxophone Solos, Six of One, Monoceros, Atlanta, Hall of Mirrors, Toward the Margins, Drawn Inward, Dark Rags, Trio with Interludes, A Life Saved by a Spider and Two Doves, Psalms, Improcherto, Cinema, Most Materiall, After Appleby, Conic Sections, Process and Reality, Belle Ville; Derek Bailey’s Music Improvisation Company 1968-1971, Improvisations for Cello and Guitar, Solo Guitar Vol 1, Drops, Outcome, Aida, Company 1, Lace, Village Life, Epiphany, Mirakle, Takes Fakes & Dead She Dances, No Waiting; Tony Oxley’s Tomorrow is Here, The Enchanted Messenger, Ichnos, February Papers, Floating Phantoms, 4 Compositions for Sextet, Tony Oxley, The Baptised Traveller; Barry Guy’s Ode, Double Trouble, Theoria, Three Pieces for Orchestra, Inscape / Tableaux, Oort-Entropy, Amphi & Radio Rondo, Schaffhausen Concert, Time Passing, Studio II / Stringer, Harmos, Gryffgryffgryffs, Zurich Concerts, Study / Witch Gang Gong II/10, Supersession, Metal!, Schweben / Ay, But Can Ye?, Double Trouble Two, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra with Barry Guy, Sensology; Howard Riley’s Synopsis, Overground, Airplay, Two is One; Paul Rutherford’s The Gentle Harm of the Bourgeoisie, Neuph, Frankfurt 1991, Premonitions; Paul Lytton’s The Inclined Stick, Was it Me?, Death is Our Eternal Friend, Moinho Da Asneira, ?, The Balance of Trade; John Butcher’s The Scenic Route, Invisible Ear, Conceits, Thirteen Friendly Numbers, News from the Shed; Paul Lytton’s Adonis; Eugene Chadbourne’s Solo Acoustic Guitar Vol. 1, Solo Acoustic Guitar Vol. 2, The Collected Symphonies of Dr. Eugene Chadbourne, 2000 Statues, Relative Band ‘85;  Fred Frith’s Digital Wildlife, Traffic Continues, The Big Picture / Freedom in Fragments, Guitar Solos, Pacifica, With Enemies Like These Who Needs Friends?, The Previous Evening, Impur, Impur II; Jon Rose’s Violin Music for Restaurants, Brain Weather, The Virtual Violin, Techno Mit Störungen, Paganini’s Last Testimony, Fleisch, The Violin Factory, The People’s Music, The Hyperstring Project, Perks, The Fence; Masayuki Takayanagi’s La Grima, Call in Question, Free Form Suite, Action Direct, Mass Projection; Motohary Yoshizawa’s Empty Hats; Kaoru Abe’s Jazz Bed, Partitas; Larry Ochs’ Quintet for a Day, The Neon Truth, The Fictive Five; Tony Oxley’s The Glider & the Grinder; Gunter Christmann’s Topic; Mir’s Mir; Charles Noyes’ Free Mammals, The World and the Raw People; Borbetomagus’ Borbetomagus, Barbed Wire Maggots, Fish That Sparking Bubble, Work on What Has Been Spoiled, Borbeto Jam; Voice Crack’s Infra_Red, Beyond Below Above, Earflash, buda_rom; 16-17’s Hardkore and Buffbunker, 16-17, When All Else Fails, Gyatso, Human Distortion, Mechanophobia; ZGA’s Riga, Zgamoniums; Jay Clayton’s All-Out; Black Artists Group’s In Paris Aries 1973. Some other albums are excluded because they aren’t jazz enough to qualify: Charles Noyes’ Full Stop; Fred Frith’sSpeechless, Gravity, Cheap at Half the Price, Learn to Talk, The Technology of Tears, The Happy End Problem; Eugene Chadbourne’s Jesse Helms Busted with Pornography, Country Protest.[↩]
  137. Excluded for inaccessibility: Duets and Solos, Sound, Old/Quartet, Congliptious, Quartet, Solo Saxophone Concerts, 3×4 Eye, …and the Sound & Space Ensembles, 8 O’Clock, The Flow of Things, This Dance is for Steve McCall, In Walked Buckner, Solo [3], Not Yet, Conversations 1, Conversations 2, Sketches from Bamboo, Snurdy McGurdy and Her Dancin’ Shoes, Angel City, In Pursuit of Magic, New Music for Woodwinds and Voice, An Interesting Breakfast Conversation, First Meeting, Song for My Sister, Numbers, L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples.[↩]
  138. Excluded for inaccessibility: Directing 14 Jackson Pollocks, Luminosity, Hoarded Dreams, Day of the Dead.[↩]
  139. Excluded for inaccessibility: Nation Time, Trinity, Black Magic Man, Graphics, Old Eyes and Mysteries, Pieces of Light, Topology, Oleo & A Future Retrospective, Linear B, Common Threads, Sweet Freedom Now What, Unquenchable Fire, Let Paul Robeson Sing, The Watermelon Suite, Rapture, Journey, The Sugar Hill Suite, Lark Uprising, Guts, Angels Devils and Haints, Babylon.[↩]
  140. Excluded for inaccessibility: Early Combinations, A Jackson in Your House, Message to Our Folks, Reese and the Smooth Ones, Certain Blacks, Tutankhamun, Go Home, Eda Wobu, People of Sorrow, Chi Congo, Bap-Tizum, Fanfare for the Warriors, With Fontella Bass, Phase One, Nice Guys, Full Force, Urban Bushmen, The Spiritual, People in Sorrow.[↩]
  141. Excluded for inaccessibility: Point of No Return, Coon Bid’ness, Steppin’, Raw Materials and Residuals, Flat-out Jump Suite, Live in New York, W.S.Q., Blue Boye, Roi Boye & the Gotham Minstrels, At Dr. King’s Table, One Atmosphere, Live at Kassiopeia.[↩]
  142. Excluded for inaccessibility: Whisper of Dharma, Junk Trap.[↩]
  143. Excluded for inaccessibility: African Portraits. Also, Dear Mrs. Parks is far enough from jazz that I didn’t include it here.[↩]
  144. Excluded for inaccessibility: Music from Two Basses, Improvisations for Cello and Guitar, Conference of the Birds, Emerald Tears, Life Cycle.[↩]
  145. Excluded for inaccessibility: Levels and Degrees of Light, Young at Heart / Wise in Time, Sightsong, Lifelong Ambitions, 1-OQA+19, Lifea Blinec, Spihumonesty, Mama and Daddy, Rejoicing with the Light, Open Air Meeting, View from Within, Song for All, The Hearinga Suite, Blu Blu Blu, One Line Two Views, Visibility of Thought, Vision Towards Essence, Spectrum, SoundDance.[↩]
  146. Starting with Destiny’s Dance, Freeman’s albums are so clearly post-bop or fusion that I classified them that way instead of classifying them as “creative.”[↩]
  147. Excluded for inaccessibility: Mutima, Alernate Spaces, Flying Out, Unspoken.[↩]
  148. Excluded for inaccessibility: Resolution, The Clarinet Family, Im/possible to Keep, Walkin’ & Talkin’, Say Something for All, Live at the Knitting Factory.[↩]
  149. Excluded for inaccessibility: Lunchconcert for Three Amsterdam Street Organs, De Onderste Steen, Instant Composers Pool 007/008, De Achterlijke Klokkenmaker, Contemporary Jazz from Holland.[↩]
  150. Excluded for inaccessibility: Birdhouse, 21st Century Chase, Black Horn Long Gone, Staying in the Game.[↩]
  151. Excluded for inaccessibility: Circle of Time.[↩]
  152. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Solo Trombone Record, Chicago Slow Dance, From Saxophone & Trombone, The Shadowgraph Series, George Lewis / Douglas Ewart, Changing with the Times, 28 Rue Dunois Juillet 1982, Triangulation, Collage for Quincy, The Usual Turmoil and Other Duets, Triangulation II, Conversations, Endless Shout, Les Exercices Spirituels, Streaming, Transatlantic Visions, Artificial Life 2007.[↩]
  153. Excluded for inaccessibility: Chasing Paint, Like Silver Like Song, Modern Drama.[↩]
  154. Excluded for inaccessibility: Solo Piano Album, Healing Force, Capricorn Rising, Warriors, Evidence of Things Unseen, The Sixth Sense, Milano Strut, Five to Go, Jazz a Confronto, Evidence of Things Unseen, New Beginnings, Random Thoughts.[↩]
  155. Excluded for inaccessibility: Very Urgent, Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, Brotherhood, Travelling Somewhere, Procession.[↩]
  156. Excluded for inaccessibility: Cosmic Dancer, Enfant Terrible, Freedom of the Universe, All the Things You Could Be if Charles Mingus Was Your Daddy, Jubilation, Fresh Heat, Celestial Glory, Oasis, Music from Europe, The 8th of July 1969, Out of New York, People Symphony, Ballet Symphony No. 5 / Symphony No. 6, Journey to the Song Within, Broadway.[↩]
  157. Excluded for inaccessibility: Flowers for Albert, Interboogieology, Low Class Conspiracy, Sweet Lovely, Ming, Picasso.[↩]
  158. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Point from Which Freedom Begins, Heavy Spirits, Holding Together, Prophet, Expandable Language, Matador of 1st and 1st, Edge-ing, Movements Turns and Switches, Shine!, Life Dance of Is, Otherside, Trio 3, For a Little Dancin’, Refraction Breakin’ Glass, What I Heard.[↩]
  159. Excluded for inaccessibility: Instant Composers Pool 005, Instant Composers Pool 010, Coincidents, B + B (In Edam), Groupcomposing, Einepartietischtennis, Een Mirakelse Tocht / Midwoud 77, Tetterettet, Konijnehol I, Konijnehol II, Jubilee Varia, Oh My Dog!, Who’s Bridge, Four in One, Nunc![↩]
  160. Excluded for inaccessibility: Duo Exchange, Black Beings, The Loweski, The Flam, Out Loud, The Other Side, Fresh, Tricks of the Trade, Lowe and Behold, Doctor Too-Much.[↩]
  161. Air Lore is accessible but so unusual for ‘creative jazz’ that I decided not to list it in the main post for fear of misleading readers about the nature of the genre. Excluded for inaccessibility: Air Song, Air Raid, Open Air Suit, Air Mail, X-75 Volume 1, Air Time, Easily Slip into Another World, Song Out of My Trees, Makin’ a Move, This Brings Us To (Vol 1), This Brings Us To (Vol 2), X-75 Volume 2, Tomorrow Sunny/The Revelry, Everybodys Mouth’s a Book, Up Popped the Two Lips, In for a Penny In for a Pound, Old Locks and Irregular Verbs.[↩]
  162. Excluded for inaccessibility: ou Can’t Name Your Own Tune, Another Time Another Place, For Stu, Brahma, Tales of the Unforseen.[↩]
  163. Excluded for inaccessibility: Have You Heard, Special Edition.[↩]
  164. Excluded for inaccessibility: Mystery School, Paseo del Mar, James Newton, Echo Canyon, Sacred Works, Portraits, Luella, Axum, Suite for Frida Kahlo, Binu, Toil and Resolution.[↩]
  165. Excluded for inaccessibility: New York Collage, First String, Rebirth of a Feeling, History of Jazz in Reverse, Distinction Without a Difference, Outline No. 12, Bangception, Changing Seasons, Untitled Gift, Medicine Buddha, Sweet Space, Commandment, Invitation, Configuration.[↩]
  166. Excluded for inaccessibility: Creative Music 1, Go in Numbers, Human Rights, Akhreanvention, Divine Love, Song of Humanity, Reflectativity [1972], The Mass on the World, The Sky Cries the Blues, Touch the Earth Break the Shells, Procession of the Great Ancestry, Tao-Nija, Prataksis, Light Upon Light, Spirit Catcher, Kulture Jazz, Rastafari, Golden Hearts Remembrance, Snakish, Golden Quartet, Red Sulphur Sky, Sonic Rivers, Tabligh, Lake Biwa, Organic Resonance, Saturn Conjunct…, Abbey Road Quartet, Heart’s Reflections, Spiritual Dimensions, Dark Lady of the Sonnets, Ten Freedom Summers, Occupy the World, Twine Forest, Twine Forest, Brooklyn Duos, Luminous Axis, The Nile, Bishopsgate Concert, Ancestors, Great Lakes Suite, Red Hill, America’s National Parks.[↩]
  167. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Bath of Surprise, Cue Sheets II, White String’s Attached, Teatime, Short in the U.K.. Excluded because dull: Signals for Tea.[↩]
  168. Excluded for inaccessibility: Protocol, Outside Pleasure, Aloha, It’s a Wonderful Life, Wireforks, Ice Death, Invite the Spirit.[↩]
  169. Excluded for inaccessibility: Cinema Rovate, Morphological Echo, The Bay, Saxophone Diplomacy, The Removal of Secrecy, Daredevils, The Crowd, This Time We Are Both, From the Bureau of Death, Pipe Dreams, The Mirror World, Invisible Frames, As Was, Long on Logic, A Short History, Never Was.[↩]
  170. Excluded for inaccessibility: Split Image, Attack the Future, Come Ahead Back.[↩]
  171. Excluded for inaccessibility: Globe Unity, The Hidden Peak, Jahrmarkt / Local Fair, Das Hohe Lied, The Morlocks, Complete Combustion, Swinging the Bim.[↩]
  172. Excluded for inaccessibility: Oahspe, Harrisburg Half Life, You Be, Slideride, Right Down Your Alley.[↩]
  173. Excluded for inaccessibility: Black Paladins, Inheritance, Connecting Spirits, Out of the Mist, Earth Passage/Density.[↩]
  174. Excluded for inaccessibility: Schlaf Schlemmer Schlaf Magritte, Ich, The Use of Memory, Orte Der Geometrie, Cantos I-IV, O Moon My Pin-Up, Fear Death by Water, Let’s Make Love, A White Line.[↩]
  175. Excluded for inaccessibility: Live 1973, Clay.[↩]
  176. Excluded for inaccessibility: NRG Ensemble, Conserving NRG, Generation, Hal’s Bells, Hal on Earth.[↩]
  177. Excluded for inaccessibility: Ear of the Beholder, Welfare State, Fleas in Custard, Joy of Paranoia, Digswell Duets, Three Blokes, Out to Launch, Instant Replay, Worms Organising Archdukes, One Night in Glasgow, Toverbal Sweet, Termite One.[↩]
  178. Excluded for inaccessibility: Radiation, Is Eternal Life, Tibet, Heart of the Sun, Shamballa, Mindfulness, Monsoon, Armageddon, Black Mask, Hard Time, Lifeline, The Distance Between Us, Joy.[↩]
  179. Excluded for inaccessibility: Kwambe, Tubworks, Acoustic Solo Works, Outerbridge Crossing, Down to the Wire, Demon Chaser, Marmalade King, Perfect World, The Whimbler, Thirteen Ways, Double Blues Crossing, Tom & Gerry, Table of Changes, Inbetween Spaces, Chamber Works, Special Detail, Divine Doorways.[↩]
  180. Excluded for inaccessibility: Trombirds, Shake Shuttle and Blow, Tromboneliness, Room 1220. Excluded for dullness: Trombone Summit.[↩]
  181. Excluded for inaccessibility: Shed Grace, Gens de Couleur Libres, Mississippi Moonchile, River Run Thee, Feldspar, Always.[↩]
  182. Excluded for inaccessibility: Santuerio, Red, Blue, Spirit Music, Rhythms Hung in Undrawn Sky, Images, Labyrinths, Overlapping Hands, Band on the Wall, MGM Trio.[↩]
  183. For example, I’ve excluded the following albums as “too new age”: Mark Isham’s Vapor Drawings, Tibet, Castalia, The Beast, Songs My Children Taught Me; Michael Jones’ Amber, Pianoscapes, Seascapes, Sunscapes, After the Rain, Magical Child, Morning in Medonte, Air Born; David Darling’s Journal October, Cycles, The Tao of Cello, Cello, 8-String Religion, Cello Blue, Prayer for Compassion, Dark Wood; George Winston’s Autumn, December, The Velveteen Rabbit; Georgia Kelly’s Seapeace, Ancient Echoes, Birds of Paradise, A Journey Home, Gardens of the Sun, Tarashanti; Daniel Kobialka’s Timeless Motion, Fragrances of a Dream, When You Wish Upon a Star, Velvet Dreams, Path of Joy, Somewhere Over the Rainbow; David Lanz’s Heartsounds, Nightfall, Christofori’s Dream, Skyline Firedance; Liz Story’s Solid Colors, Escape of the Circus Ponies; Georgia Kelly’s The Sound of Spirit; Teja Bell’s Summer Suite; Montreux’s Sign Language; Steve Kindler’s Dolphin Smiles; Michael Shrieve’s The Big Picture, Stiletto, In Suspect Terrain, The Leaving Time; Paul Winter’s Common Ground, Callings, Missa Gaia, Sun Singer, Canyon, Whales Alive, Prayer for the Wild Things, Callings, Canyon Lullaby, Celtic Solstice, Journey with the Sun, Miho Journey ot the Mountain, Crestone, Something in the Wind, Concert for the Earth.[↩]
  184. Excluded for dullness: Flora Purim’s albums; Chico Freeman’s The Mystical Dreamer, Sweet Explosion, Thresshold; Leni Stern’s Clairvoyant, Secrets, Africa; Snarky Puppy’s Sylva, The Only Constant; George Benson’s The New Boss of Guitar, It’s Uptown, Giblet Gravy, The Shape of Things to Come, Beyond the Blue Horizon, Body Talk, Breezin’, Give Me the Night; Spyro Gyra’s Spyro Gyra, Catching the Sun, Incognito, Breakout, Road Scholars; Al Jarreau’s We Got By, This Time, Jarreau; Yellowjackets’ Yellowjackets, Mirage a Trois, Greenhouse, Run for Your Life, Blue Hats, Mint Jam; Kenny G’s Duotones, Paul McCandless’ Navigator; Lyle Mays’ Sweet Dreams, Lyle Mays; Branford Marsalis’ Buckshot Lefonque, Music Evolution; Stanley Jordan’s Magic Touch, Touch Sensitive; Cassandra Wilson’s New Moon Daughter, Belly of the Sun, Glamoured; Kurt Rosenwinkel’s The Next Step; Mark Isham’s Group 87; Andy Narell’s The Hammer, Little Secrets; Shadowfax’s Shadowdance; Akira Ishikawa’s Bakishinba; Alex Rodriguez’s Busqueda; Bingo Miki’s Mystic Solar Dance; Michael Shrieve’s Fascination, Two Doors; Jimmy Giuffre’s Dragonfly. Excluded for barely being jazz: Gil Scott-Heron’s Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, Pieces of a Man, Spirits, Winter in America, First Minute of a New Day, From South Africa to South Carolina, Bridges, Secrets, 1980, I’m New Here; Samm Bennett’s History of the Last Five Minutes, Life of Crime, The Big Off. Excluded for inaccessibility: Mark Nauseef’s Sura, The Snake Music, Wun-Wun; Nels Cline’s Silencer, Ground, Edible Flowers, Instrumentals, The Giant Pin, Chest, Sad, Draw Breath, Coward, Initiate, Dirty Baby, Tocsin; Semantics’ Semantics; Elliott Sharp’s Datacide.[↩]
  185. Excluded for dullness: The Time Machine, Tennessee Firebird, Good Vibes, Alone at Last. Many other Burton albums aren’t primarily fusion. Also, after a while I just got sick of listening to Burton’s albums, because I don’t like them much, even the ones which are historically important like Duster.[↩]
  186. Out of Sight and Sound excluded for being too rock-ish.[↩]
  187. Excluded for dullness: The Man with the Horn, Doo-Bop.[↩]
  188. Excluded for dullness: Electric Dreams.[↩]
  189. Excluded for inaccessibility: Et Cetera, Output, Et Cetera Live. Excluded for dullness: Changes, Zeitlaufe, Live Opus Sechs, Round Seven, Na Endlich.[↩]
  190. Excluded for dullness: The Million Dollar Legs, The Joy of Flying, The Old Bum’s Rush.[↩]
  191. Excluded for dullness: Secrets, Sunlight, Feets Don’t Fail Me Now, Monster, Magic Windows, Future Shock, Sound System, Perfect Machine. Excluded for inaccessibility: Crossings, Sextant.[↩]
  192. Excluded for inaccessibility: Just Ahead.[↩]
  193. Excluded for inaccessibility: Septober Energy, A Loose Kite in a Gentle Wind Floating….[↩]
  194. Excluded for inaccessibility: Open Strings, Sonata Erotica. Excluded for dullness: A Taste for Passion, Civilized Evil, Mystical Adventures, Individual Choice.[↩]
  195. Excluded for dullness: Imagine My Surprise, Heavy Metal Be-Bop.[↩]
  196. Excluded for dullness: Black Byrd, Street Lady, Stepping into Tomorrow, Places and Spaces.[↩]
  197. Excluded for inaccessibility: Sart, Triptychon.[↩]
  198. Excluded for inaccessibility: Bleak House, Chaser.[↩]
  199. Excluded for dullness: The Immigrants and Lost Tribes.[↩]
  200. 8:30 didn’t have enough new material on it for me to list it here.[↩]
  201. Excluded for dullness: The Leprechaun, MusicMagic, Elektric Band, Light Years, Beneath the Mask. I also haven’t included Corea’s Septet or Lyric Suite for Sextet or Piano Concerto on this page because they’re so clearly modern classical rather than avantgarde jazz.[↩]
  202. Excluded for dullness: I’ve Known Rivers and Other Bodies, Music Is My Sanctuary, Singerella, The Shadow Do.[↩]
  203. Excluded for dullness: Love Songs, Solid Gold Cadillac. Excluded for inaccessibility: Citadel / Room 315.[↩]
  204. Excluded for dullness: Chase the Clouds Away, Bellavia, Feels So Good, Friends and Love.[↩]
  205. Excluded for inaccessibility: Inactin’, Paratyphus B.[↩]
  206. Excluded for dullness: Incoming, The Traveler, Focused.[↩]
  207. Excluded for dullness: I Wanna Play for You, If This Bass Could Only Talk, Children of Forever.[↩]
  208. Excluded for dullness: Doin’ It Again.[↩]
  209. Excluded for inaccessibility: Cinemascope, Carambolage, Let’s Be Generous.[↩]
  210. Excluded for dullness: Amber Skies, Voices, Inner Voices. Color Pool excluded because it’s inaccessible and probably post-bop. Two for the Show excluded for inaccessibility.[↩]
  211. Excluded for inaccessibility: Word of Mouth.[↩]
  212. Excluded for dullness: Pursuit of Radical Rhapsody, Casino, Flesh on Flesh, World Sinfonia, The Grande Passion.[↩]
  213. Excluded for inaccessibility: Body Meta, In All Languages, Tone Dialing.[↩]
  214. Excluded for inaccessibility: Sorcery. Excluded for dullness: Compost.[↩]
  215. Excluded for dullness: Falcon & the Snowman, Beyond the Missouri Sky. Excluded for inaccessibility: 80/81.[↩]
  216. Excluded for dullness: The Blue Man, Eyewitness.[↩]
  217. Excluded for inaccessibility: Bad Blood in the City, Are You Glad to Be in America?, No Wave, Original Phalanx, In Touch, Cross Fire, Elec Jazz, After Dark, In the Name of Music, Harmolodic Guitar with Strings.[↩]
  218. Excluded for inaccessibility: Willisau, with Dom Um Romao, Kikiruki, Cerberus.[↩]
  219. Excluded for dullness: Sextet.[↩]
  220. Excluded for dullness: Rough House, Shinola, Bar Talk, Out Like a Light, Still Warm, Loud Jazz, What We Do, Time on My Hands, Quiet, Bump, Uberjam, Uberjam Deux.[↩]
  221. Excluded for inaccessibility: Urszula, Newborn Light, Future Talk.[↩]
  222. Excluded for inaccessibility: A Veritable Centaur, Bar Torque.[↩]
  223. Excluded for inaccessibility: I’m the One, Paul Bley Synthesizer Show, Been in the Streets Too Long. Excluded for dullness: The Perfect Release, An Acrobat’s Heart, 31:31.[↩]
  224. Excluded for inaccessibility: Morning Glory. Excluded for dullness: The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon, Such Winters of Memory, Withholding Pattern.[↩]
  225. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Hapless Child, Silence.[↩]
  226. Excluded for dullness: Modern Times.[↩]
  227. Excluded for inaccessibility: Liberation Music Orchestra.[↩]
  228. Excluded for inaccessibility: Renaissance Man.[↩]
  229. Excluded for inaccessibility: Eye on You, Nasty, Man Dance, When Colors Play, Street Priest.[↩]
  230. Excluded for dullness: Endless Way, Kylyn, Oyatsu.[↩]
  231. Excluded for inaccessibility: Confusing the Spirits, Red Twist & Tuned Arrow, La Fourmi, Phoenix, What a Band, Henceforward.[↩]
  232. Excluded because not jazzy enough: Circlesongs.[↩]
  233. Excluded for inaccessibility: Nimal, Curlew, Lucky Water, The Untraceable Cigar, Abandon.[↩]
  234. Excluded for inaccessibility: Purple Sun, Freelectronic. Excluded for dullness: Chameleon, Lady Go.[↩]
  235. Excluded for dullness: Rhythm People, World Expansion, Sine Die, A Tale of 3 Cities. Excluded for inaccessibility: Myths Modes & Means, Genesis, Lucidarium, The Ascension to Light.[↩]
  236. Excluded for dullness: Neesh, Jigsaw, Odds and Evens, Is What It Is, Between the Lines, Play.[↩]
  237. Excluded for dullness: 3-D Lifestyle.[↩]
  238. For Kuryokhin in particular, I didn’t try hard to figure out which albums weren’t “jazzy” enough to qualify for this list. Several of these albums are more rock than jazz. Classifying Kuryokhin’s music is a tough job. Excluded for inaccessibility: Live in Bari, Live At…[↩]
  239. Excluded for inaccessibility: Last Exit, Koln.[↩]
  240. Next excluded for dullness. Excluded for inaccessibility: Open, Aether, Mosquito / See Through, Chemist, Silverwater, Mindset.[↩]
  241. I had an especially difficult time deciding on “primary genres” for Ray Anderson’s albums, so they ended up being scattered all over this guide. Wow Bag, Modern Life, Don’t Mow Your Lawn, and Funkorific were excluded for dullness.[↩]
  242. Excluded for dullness: Elegant Punk.[↩]
  243. Excluded for inaccessibility: Friday Afternoon in the Universe.[↩]
  244. Not jazzy enough: Goldbug, Night Science, Green Machine. Excluded for inaccessibility: Mainspring.[↩]
  245. Jump Up excluded for dullness.[↩]
  246. Excluded for inaccessibility: Yeah No, Deviantics, Emit.[↩]
  247. Excluded for inaccessibility: Current Events.[↩]
  248. Excluded because not jazzy enough: The World Has Made Me…[↩]
  249. Excluded for dullness: The Line, Kneedelus.[↩]
  250. Excluded for dullness: Living with a Tiger.[↩]
  251. Excluded for inaccessibility: Leucocyte. Excluded for dullness: Viaticum.[↩]
  252. Excluded for dullness: Another Mind.[↩]
  253. Excluded for inaccessibility: Troyka.[↩]
  254. Excluded for dullness: BBNG2, IV.[↩]
  255. Excluded for dullness: New Age of Aquarius, Layers of Chance.[↩]
  256. Excluded for dullness: Astronautilus.[↩]
  257. Excluded for dullness: Tonbruket, Dig it to the End, Nubium Swimtip, E.S.T. Symphony.[↩]
  258. As always, different critics and historians put different boundaries around their genre terms. Some people would count e.g. Paul Bley’s (really, Carla Bley’s) Closer (1965) as ECM style jazz. For my own convenience, I’m going to hue pretty close to RYM’s definition of ECM style jazz.[↩]
  259. Excluded for inaccessibility: Paul Bley’s Open to Love, In the Evenings Out There.[↩]
  260. Excluded for inaccessibility: Changes, Radiance. Excluded for dullness: Staircase, Jasmine. Sun Bear Concerts was also excluded for some long passages that were relatively inaccessible.[↩]
  261. Blue Sun excluded for inaccessibility.[↩]
  262. Excluded for dullness: Around 6, The Widow in the Window, Songs for Quintet.[↩]
  263. Excluded for dullness: Aftenland, Visible World, Paths Prints.[↩]
  264. Excluded for inaccessibility: Eos.[↩]
  265. Red Lanta excluded for dullness.[↩]
  266. Excluded for dullness: Nordic Quartet. Excluded for inaccessibility: Stranger Than Fiction.[↩]
  267. Bill Dixon’s In Italy Vol 1, In Italy Vol 2, November 1981, Thoughts, Son of Sisyphus, Papyrus Vol 1, Papyrus Vol 2, 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur, Tapestries for Small Orchestra; Marion Brown’s Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, Geechee Recollections, Sweet Earth Flying; John Carter’s Dauwhe, Castles of Ghana, Dance of the Love Ghosts, Shadows on a Wall, Fields; Steve Lacy’s The Cry, The Window, Clangs; Roswell Rudd’s Flexible Flyer; John Tchicai’s Cadentia Nova Danica, Afrodisiaca, Put Up the Fight, Love is Touching, Anybody Home?; Miles Davis’ Aura; Charlie Haden’s Golden Number; Michael Mantler’s Communication, Jazz Composer’s Orchestra; Keith Rowe’s A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality, Harsh, Dial Log-rhythm, Queue, The Hands of Caravaggio, Wigry, Electric Chair + Table, Rabbit Run, Duos for Doris, The Room, Afternoon Tea, Weather Sky, Cloud; Jack Wright’s The Darkest Corner the Most Conspicuous; Joe Zawinul’s Mauthausen; Hans Reichel’s Shanghaied on Tor Road; Larry Karush’s May 24, 1976; Glen Moore’s Introducing; Keith Tippett’s Warm Spirits Cool Spirits, Frames; Basil Kirchin’s Quantum, Particles, Words Within Worlds [1971], Worlds Within Worlds [1974]; Wolfgang Dauner’s Fur, Psalmus Spei; Joachim Kuhn’s I’m Not Dreaming, Distance, Wandlungen / Transformation, Dynamics, Dark; David Liebman’s Chant, The Tree, The Seasons, Time Immemorial, Colors; Various’ Popofoni; Daniel Kobialka’s Labyrinth Within; Frank Perry’s Deep Peace, New Atlantis; Medeski Martin & Wood’s Farmer’s Reserve; Nels Cline’s The Inkling, Destroy All Nels Cline, Celestial Septet; The Necks’ Vertigo; Tony Coe’s Zeitgeist, Mer de Chine, Le Chat Se Retourne; Elliott Sharp’s Six Songs, ISM, Larynx, Cryptid Fragments, Boodlers, Tectonics Abstraction Distraction, SyndaKit, Allure of the Roadside Curios, Virtual Stance, Fractal, XenocodeX, K!L!A!V!, Abstract Repressionism 1990-99; Tom Cora’s Cargo Cult Revival, Live at the Western Front, Gumption in Limbo, Etymology; Lesli Dalaba’s Trumpet Songs and Dances, Dalaba / Frith / Glick / Rieman / Kihlstedt, Core Sample, Timelines, Lung Tree; Jim Staley’s Mumbo Jumbo, Don Giovanni; Mark Dresser’s Arcado String Trio; Butch Morris’ 3+2=XXX, New York City Artists’ Collective Plays Butch Morris, Current Trends in Racism in Modern America, X-Communication, Homeing, Berlin Skyscraper, Dust to Dust, Verona, Holy Sea Vol. 1, Testament, Burning Cloud, Tit for Tat, Possible Universe, In Touch But Out of Reach; Schnellertollermeier’s X, Zorn einen ehmer uttert stem!!; Paul Dunmall’s I You, Out from the Cage, Four Moons, Love Warmth and Compassion, Deep See, Desire and Liberation, Bebop Starburst, Solo Bagpipes, The Great Divide, I Wish You Peace, All Said & Dun, Rylickolum, Go Forth Duck, High Birds, Blown Away, Deep Whole Trio, Shooters Hill; Elton Dean’s Bladik; Ken Vandermark’s The Color of Memory, Big Head Eddie, Solid Action, International Front, Oslo/Chicago Breaks, Double Arc, Single Piece Flow, Elements of Style / Exercises in Surprise, Target or Flag, Baraka, Collide, Simpatico, Burn the Incline, Acoustic Machine, Company Switch, Pipeline, Transatlantic Bridge, Atlas, Map Theory, Site Specific, New Horse for the White House; Scott Rosenberg’s Creative Orchestra Music Chicago 2001, IE; Zeena Parkins’ Ursa’s Door, Something Out There, Isabelle, Phantom Orchard, Necklace, Mouth=Maul=Betrayer; Alan Licht’s Sink the Aging Process, Plays Well, Rabbi Sky; Peter Zummo’s Zummo with an X, Experimenting with Household Chemicals; Toshinori Kondo’s Fuigo from a Different Dimension; Robert Dick’s Venturi Shadows, Worlds of If, Irrefragable Dreams; Fritz Hauser’s Pansieri Bianchi, Flip, Solodrumming; Ivo Perelman’s Sound Hierarchy, The Alexander Suite, The Seven Energies of the Universe, Black on White, The Apple in the Dark, The Stream of Life, The Hour of the Star, Cama de Terra, Suite for Helen F., Seeds Vision and Counterpoint, Sad Life; Denman Maroney’s Hyperpiano, Fluxations; Supersilent’s 1-3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12; Exias-J’s Critical Blank, Balance of Chaos; Guillermo Gregorio’s Approximately, Ellipsis, Degrees of Iconicity, Faktura; Joe Maneri’s Get Ready to Receive Yourself, Coming Down the Mountain, Dahabenzappele, Going to Church, Tenderly, Let the Horse Go, In Full Cry, Out Right Now, Tales of Rohnlief, Three Men Walking, Blessed, Angles of Repose, Background Music, Red Cube(d); Paul Plimley’s When Silence Pulls, Safe-Crackers, Sensology; Greg Kelley’s Field Recordings Vol. 1, Trumpet, We Devote Every Effort To Offer You The Best That You Deserve To Have For Your Enjoyment; Eric Glick Rieman’s Ten to the Googolplex; Kevin Drumm’s Kevin Drumm, Second, Comedy, Imperial Distortion; Miya Masaoka’s Compositions / Improvisations, While I Was Walking I Heard a Sound, For Birds Planes and Cello; Triosk’s Moment Returns; Philip Jeck’s Vinyl Coda IV, Sand, 7; Gunter Muller’s Eight Landscapes; Burkhard Stangl’s Recital, Schnee; Tetuzi Akiyama’s Pre-Existence, Relator, Resophonie; Otomo Yoshihide’s Null & Void, Anode, Onjo; Taku Sugimoto’s Unaccompanied Violoncello Solo, Chamber Music; Kazuhisa Uchihashi’s Phantasmagoria; Greg Headley’s Adhesives; Max Roach’s Survivors, One in Two Two in One; Martin Archer’s Wild Pathway Favourites, Echoic Enchantment, Bad Tidings From Slackwater Drag, Story Tellers;Earl Howard’s 5 Saxophone Solo; Paul Flaherty’s The Hated Music, Impact, The Ilya Tree, Whirl of Nothingness, It’s Magnificent But It Isn’t War, Simitu, Voices; Hilmar Jensson’s Meg Nem Sa; Darius Jones’ Cosmic Lieder, Book of Mae’bul; Fire Orchestra’s Exit!, Enter, Ritual; Power of the Horns’ Alaman; Sam Newsome’s The Straight Horn of Africa; Farmers By Nature’s Love and Ghosts; Steve Swell’s Kanreki; Rob Mazurek’s Return the Tides, Alien Flower Sutra, Skull Sessions, Galactive Parables Volume 1; Dave Hurley’s Outer Nebula Inner Nebula; Toshimaru Nakamura’s Select Dialect; Free Music Ensemble’s Cuts; Craig Taborn’s Avenging Angel; Sylvie Courvoisier’s Double Windsor; Okkyung Lee’s I Saw the Ghost of an Unknown Soul and It Said; Tyshawn Sorey’s Alloy; Rhodri Davies’ Wound Response; David Virelles’ Continuum; Masabumi Kikuchi’s Sunrise; Pharoah & the Underground’s Spiral Mercury; Battle Trance’s Palace of Wind, Blade of Love; Common Objects’ Whitewashed with Lines; Chicago Reed Quartet’s Western Automatic; Bathysphere’s Bathysphere; William Parker’s For Those Who Are Still; Ikue Mori’s Trouble in Paradise; Mark Harvey’s Paintings for Jazz Orchestra; Mat Maneri’s Fifty-One Sorrows, Blue Decco, Pentagon, In Time, Light Trigger, Jam; Wolfgang Fuchs’ Binaurality, Six Fuchs, Duets Dithyrambisch; Tomasz Stanko’s Music from Taj Mahal and Karla Caves, Fish Face, Bosonossa and Other Ballads; Mats Gustafsson’s Catapult, Hidros One, Electric Eel, Norrkoping, Mouth Eating Trees and Related Activities, The Education of Lars Jerry, Frogging, How to Raise an Ox, Critical Mass; Adam Rudolph’s Go Organic Orchestra Vol. 1, Web of Light, Thought Forms, Sonic Mandala, Turning Toward the Light; TV Pow’s Away Team Tokyo 1997; Jonah Parzen-Johnson’s Michiana; Oscar Aichinger’s Elements of Poetry, Synapsis; Andy Milne’s Where is Pannonica?; Telectu’s Quartetos; Taylor Ho Bynum’s Enter the Plustet; Jaap Blonk’s Consensus, Speechlos; Andrew Cyrille’s The Declaration of Musical Independence; Cecilia Persson’s Composer in Residence; Thumbscrew’s Convallaria; Tania Chen’s Ocean of Storms; Kris Davis’ The Slightest Shift, Rye Eclipse, Good Citizen, Massive Threads, Capricorn Climber, Waiting for You to Grow, Save Your Breath, Duopoly; Spring Heel Jack’s Masses, Amassed, The Sweetness of Water, Songs and Themes; Bob James’ Explosions; Grachan Moncur’s Some Other Stuff; Jacques Berrocal’s Paralleles, Musiq Musik; Richard Landry’s 4 Cuts Placed in A First Quarter; Kafka’s Ibiki’s Kafka’s Ibiki; New Direction’s Call in Question; Tony Scott’s Voyage into a Black Hole; Michael Wollny’s Wunderkammer.[↩]
  268. Excluded for not being close enough to “jazz”: Lyle Mays’ Twelve Days In The Shadow Of A Miracle; Jack DeJohnette’s Music in the Key of Om; Zeena Parkins’ Spill; Eyvind Kang’s Virginal Co-ordinates, The Story of Iceland, Live Low to the Earth in the Iron Age; Supersilent’s 13; Mats Gustafsson’s Apertura; Richard Landry’s Fifteen Saxophones. Excluded for dullness: Ian Carr’s Sounds and Sweet Airs; Terence Blanchard’s The Malcolm X Jazz Suite; Matt Ulery’s By a Little Light; Craig Taborn’s Chants; Bobo Stenson’s Cantando; Tomasz Stanko’s Tales for a Girl; Andy Milne’s Scenarios.[↩]
  269. Excluded for inaccessibility: Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow, Secrets of the Sun, When Sun Comes Out, Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy, Other Planes of There, Strange Strings, Nothing Is…, Space Aura, The Solar Myth Approach Vol. 1, Universe in Blue, Continuation Vol. 1, Other Strange Worlds, Pictures of Infinity, Outer Spaceways Incorporated, Space is the Place, My Brother the Wind Vol. 1, My Brother the Wind Vol. 2, Nidhamu & Dark Myth Equation Visitation, Astro Black, Pathways to Unknown Worlds, The Soul Vibrations of Man, Disco 3000, Other Voices Other Blues, Oblique Parallax, Purple Night, A Fireside Chat with Lucifer, Planets of Life or Death, On Jupiter, Strange Celestial Road, Hiroshima, Hidden Fire, Voice of the Eternal Tomorrow.[↩]
  270. Excluded for inaccessibility: Conspiracy.[↩]
  271. Excluded for inaccessibility: Tropic Appetites. I should have also excluded all of Escalator Over the Hill for inaccessibility, but I made a special exception for “Hotel Overture” because it’s one of my favorite jazz pieces.[↩]
  272. Excluded for inaccessibility: Improvisie, Dual Unity, Ballads, Virtuosi. Excluded for dullness: Paul Bley & Scorpio.[↩]
  273. Excluded for inaccessibility: Marching Song Vols 1 & 2, The Cortege, Mama Chicago.[↩]
  274. Excluded for inaccessibility: Othello Ballet Suite, Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature, Listen to the Silence, Creative Construction Set.[↩]
  275. Excluded for inaccessibility: Yasmina a Black Woman.[↩]
  276. Excluded for inaccessibility: Q.E.D., Skywards. Excluded because not jazz: Lux Aeterna, Melodic Warrior.[↩]
  277. Excluded for inaccessibility: In the Light, Hymns/Spheres, Invocations/The Moth and the Flame.[↩]
  278. Excluded for inaccessibility: Looking for the Next One.[↩]
  279. Excluded for inaccessibility: Encounters, Aisha. Excluded for dullness: It Couldn’t Happen Without You.[↩]
  280. Excluded for inaccessibility: A Monastic Trio, Huntington Ashram Monastery, Ptah the El Daoud, Journey in Satchidananda, Eternity, Transfiguration.[↩]
  281. Excluded because dull: The High Sign / One Week, Go West, Quartet, Ghost Town, Disfarmer. Excluded because inaccessible: Richter 858.[↩]
  282. Excluded for inaccessibility: Emergency Peace, Just Before the Dawn, Side by Side.[↩]
  283. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Sevens, The Veil, Songs and Rituals in Real Time, The Ancestors, Theoretically, Fulton Street Maul, Sanctified Dreams, Pace Yourself, Memory Select, Fractured Fairy Tales, I Can’t Put My Finger On It, Loose Cannon, Open Coma, The Sublime And, Souls Saved Hear, Insomnia, Shadow Man.[↩]
  284. Excluded for inaccessibility: Terminals, Dull Bang Gushing Sound Human Shriek, Claude’s Late Morning, The 22 Constellations of Joan Miro, Slay the Suitors.[↩]
  285. Excluded for inaccessibility: Turn Pain into Power, Warrior Sisters, Night Vision, Way of the Saxophone, Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon, Celestial Green Monster, Once Upon a Time in Chinese America.[↩]
  286. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Lounge Lizards. Excluded because not jazzy enough: Fusion.[↩]
  287. Excluded for inaccessibility: 4+1 Ensemble, Joe Hill, Nine Below Zero, Todos Santos, One Dance Alone. Excluded for dullness: Sweeter Than the Day, Brand Spankin’ New.[↩]
  288. Excluded for inaccessibility: Little Motor People.[↩]
  289. Excluded for inaccessibility: Introduction in Pop Mechanics, Some Combinations of Fingers and Passion, Spectre of Communism, Dovecot, Just Opera, Don Carlos, Friends Afar, France, Popular Science, It, Soviet Sound Experiments, Japan, 2 for Tea, Dear John Cage, Insect Culture, Iblivy Opossum, Underground Culture, Mad Nightingales In The Russian Forest, Absolutely Great [there are enough inaccessible passages across these 7 CDs I had to mark it “inaccessible,” but there are also multiple discs that are mostly accessible, e.g. CD 2].[↩]
  290. Excluded for inaccessibility: Best Laid Plans.[↩]
  291. Excluded for inaccessibility: Newsense, Moorsong, QED.[↩]
  292. Note that for John Zorn in particular, I didn’t even try to distinguish jazz from non-jazz. Excluded for inaccessibility: John Zorn’s Naked City, School, Cobra, Pool, Archery, Locus Solus, Rimbaud, Hockey, Ganryu Island, Spillane, Buried Secrets, Redbird, Aporias, The Bribe, The String Quartets, Cartoon S&M, IAO Music in Sacred Light, Chimeras, Six Litanies for Heliogabalus, Late Works, Nova Express, In Sacred Blood, Rituals, Cynical Hysterie Hour, Magick, Torture Garden, Guts of a Virgin, Heretic, Kristallnacht, Radio, Leng Tch’e, Godard / Spillane, Taboo and Exile, Bar Kokhba, Femina.[↩]
  293. Excluded for inaccessibility: Low Profile, Am I Bothering You?, The Rub and Spare Change, The Distance.[↩]
  294. Excluded for inaccessibility: Alive in the House of Saints, Even the Sounds Shine, The Image of Your Body, Snowy Egret, The Same River Twice, Above Blue, Dance Beyond the Color, Where the Two Worlds Touch.[↩]
  295. Excluded for dullness: Quiet Song, Japan Suite, Hot, Alone Again. Excluded for inaccessibility: Axis, Tears, Paul Bley Quartet.[↩]
  296. Excluded for inaccessibility: Scenes from a Mirage.[↩]
  297. Excluded for inaccessibility: Trials of the Argo, Trespass, Portal, Ghost Stories, The Cliff, Intervals, In Cahoots, Quintet for Clarinet and Strings.[↩]
  298. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Door the Hat the Chair the Fact, Twelve Minor, Almost Never.[↩]
  299. Excluded for inaccessibility: Music for Six Musicians, No-Vibe Zone. Excluded for dullness: The Red-Tailed Angels.[↩]
  300. Excluded for dullness: Little Symphony.[↩]
  301. Excluded for inaccessibility: Echoes of Techno.[↩]
  302. Excluded for inaccessibility: No Answer, Michael Mantler / Carla Bley, Hide and Seek, Many Have No Speech, The School of Understanding, Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update, Cerco un paese innocente, Songs and One Symphony.[↩]
  303. Excluded for inaccessibility: Toys.[↩]
  304. Excluded for inaccessibility: Live at the Knitting Factory, Broken Night Red Light, Implement Yourself, Deranged & Decomposed.[↩]
  305. Excluded for inaccessibility: Parallel Worlds, In Our Lifetime, Five, A Thousand Evenings, Convergence, Witness, Mountain Passages, Charms of the Night Sky, El Trilogy, Spark of Being. Excluded for dullness: A Single Sky, Be Still, Brazen Heart, Spark of Being.[↩]
  306. Excluded for inaccessibility: Possible Worlds, Aparis, Cosi Lontano Quasi Dentro, Karta, Still Light.[↩]
  307. Excluded for inaccessibility: Black Water.[↩]
  308. Excluded for inaccessibility: Raised Pleasure Dot, Tongue in Groove, Dinosaur Dances. Excluded be cause dull and mostly post-bop anyway: Down Home, We’ll Soon Find Out.[↩]
  309. Excluded for inaccessibility: Someone Killed the Swan, Moments to Delight / Urban Music, Comedia Tempio, Chamber Music, Wilhelm Dances, Spoors, Repetitive Selective Removal Of One Protecting Group, Cold Peace Counterpoints, Spes, Gaps Absences.[↩]
  310. Excluded for inaccessibility: Birth of a Being, From Silence to Music, Flight of I, Cryptology, Oblations and Blessings, Dao, Passage to Music, Great Bliss, Third Ear Recitation, Earthquation, Go See the World, Threads, Planetary Unknown, Godspelized, Wisdom of Uncertainty.[↩]
  311. Excluded because fusion and also dull: Fast Future.[↩]
  312. Excluded for inaccessibility: Radhe Radhe Rites of Holi, A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke, Mutations, Memorophilia, Architextures, Blood Sutra, Still Life with Commentator, Door, Wiring.[↩]
  313. Excluded for inaccessibility: Two Little Animals, Concerto Piccolo, From No Time to Rag Time, Suite for the Green Eighties, A Notion in Perpetual Motion, Nightride of a Lonely Saxophoneplayer, Blues for Brahms, Tango from Obango.[↩]
  314. Excluded for inaccessibility: All These Things, American Jungle Suite, Eruption, Dialogs, Three Henries, Joy of Being.[↩]
  315. Excluded for inaccessibility: No Images, Rainbow Jimmies, A Blessing.[↩]
  316. Excluded for inaccessibility: Apostolic Polyphony, Sonic Explorations, Circular Temple, By the Law of Music, Thesis, Strata, So What?, Expansion Power Release, Pastoral Composure, New Orbit, Equilibrium, Sorcerer Sessions, Harmony and Abyss, One, Points, Critical Mass, Symbol Systems, Flow of X.[↩]
  317. Excluded because insufficiently jazz and kinda dull: At the Octoroon Balls / Fiddler’s Tale Suite.[↩]
  318. Excluded for dullness: Star of Jupiter, Caipi.[↩]
  319. Excluded for inaccessibility: Mise en Abîme, Demian as a Posthuman, Structural Fire, Manifold, Interface, Dialect Fluorescent.[↩]
  320. Excluded for inaccessibility: Song Songs Song. Excluded for dullness: Slight Freedom.[↩]
  321. Excluded for dullness: Common Ground.[↩]
  322. Excluded for inaccessibility: Sensible Shoes.[↩]
  323. Excluded for dullness: Let’s Call This. Excluded for inaccessibility: Sleepthief, Anti-House, The Madness of Crowds, Strong Place, Roulette of the Cradle, Ubatuba, Serpentines, Buoyancy, And Other Desert Towns.[↩]
  324. Excluded for inaccessibility: Heyday, The Irrational Numbers.[↩]
  325. Excluded for inaccessibility: Black Bone, Blackout in the Square Root of the Soul, Aboriginal Affairs.[↩]
  326. Not jazzy enough: Luys I Luso.[↩]
  327. Excluded for inaccessibility: Holy Abyss.[↩]
  328. Excluded for inaccessibility: Sakuteiki, Chiaroscuro, Strjon, Places of Worship.[↩]
  329. Excluded for dullness: You Live and Learn (Apparently).[↩]
  330. Excluded for inaccessibility: The Soul and Gone, Ahimsa Orchestra, Jalolu, Fight or Flight.[↩]
  331. Excluded for inaccessibility: Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Shamokin!!!, Red Hot.[↩]
  332. Excluded for inaccessibility: History That Has No Effect, Hive1.[↩]
  333. Excluded for inaccessibility: Renku. Excluded for dullness: Spun Tree, Credo.[↩]
  334. Excluded for inaccessibility: Saturn Sings, Bending Bridges, Prairies, On and Off, Thin Air, Dragon’s Head, Calling All Portraits, Crackleknob, Electric Fruit, Mechanical Malfunction, Plymouth, Reverse Blue, Mary Halvorson & Noel Akchote, Illegal Crowns, Crop Circles.[↩]
  335. Excluded for dullness: Yesterday You Said Tomorrow.[↩]
  336. Excluded for inaccessibility: Multitude Solitude.[↩]