European Free Improvisation Pages

Begun in January 1995, EFIP was intended to be a comprehensive information resource for all aspects of the type of music known as European free improvisation. From January 2007 it is being updated approximately every two months (for rationale, please see bottom of this page).

Every effort has been made to check the information on this site as far as possible; in most cases the information has been sourced from the musicians themselves.

• As in the previous update, I'm starting off with a particularly impressive box set of 4 heavyweight 180g LPs documenting the highlights of the Just Not Cricket! festival that was held in Berlin in October 2011 with its line-up of 16 musicians from 4 different generations of British Improvisors. It's the first vinyl release from the new Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu label run by Antoine Prum and a DVD of the festival and other films of British improvisors should be released later in 2013. An earlier DVD from the same label is Tschüss Bethanien! by Rüdiger Carl and Sven-Åke Johansson.
• Three new DVDs have been released recently by Pavel Borodin's Panrec label: Nils Wolgram/Simon Nabatov with Moods and modes; Hans W. Koch/Thomas Lehn/Ben Patterson/Jozef Cseres with Requiem for a baby grand, in association with He^yerme^ars Discorbie; and The Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet Concert for Fukushima, Wels 2011, in association with Trost.
• New on Intakt are eight new CDs: Koch-Schütz-Studer with Shelley Hirsch, Walking and stumbling through your sleep; Die Enttäuschung with Vier Halbe; Aki Takase's My Ellington; the Gabriela Friedli Trio with Started; Elliott Sharp/Melvin Gibbs/Lucas Niggli Crossing the waters; Secret Keeper - Stephan Crump/Mary Halvorson - with Super eight; Omri Ziegele/Yves Theiler with Inside innocence; and Oliver Lake/Christian Weber/Dieter Ulrich featuring Nils Wolgram with All decks.
• Four brand-new releases on Erstwhile are Making A by Keith Rowe/Graham Lambkin and the first three CDs on the new aeu imprint: Joe Panzer/Greg Stuart's Dystonia duos; Anne Guthrie/Richard Kamerman's Sinter; and Graham Stephenson/Aaron Zarzutzki's Touching. New and recent on Unsounds are Plume by John Butcher/Tony Buck/Magda Mayas/Burkhard Stangl and Myriad from Magda Mayas/Christine Abdelnour.
• Two new CDs from Urs Leimgrumber: The pancake tour in duo with Roger Turner on Relative Pitch; and Montreuil in trio with Jacques Demierre and Barre Phillips on Jazzwerkstatt. Two new Ayler discs: Jean-Luc Cappozzo/Géraldine Keller with Air prints; and Matthieu Metzger's Selfcooking. Duo Baars-Henneman have a new disc - Autumn songs - on Wig; eBRAAM have 3 on BBB; Dedalus/Antoine Beuger/Jürg Frey are on Potlatch; and Faces and tales is by Daniele Cavallanti & The Brotherhood Creative Trance Music Ensemble on Rudi Records.

COPYRIGHT!! I don't want to get heavy with this but the work involved in setting up this site and maintaining it on a regular basis is substantial so copyright in this material rests with me (and contributors). At the same time, I'm happy for the information/files on these pages to be used in any reasonable way. However, this limited use should also acknowledge both me and the musician/label from where much of the data originally arose. Feedback would also be appreciated to know how any of this is being used elsewhere.

Statement, January 2007: Started at a time when the web itself was new this seemed a fairly modest aim but the availability of cheap digital media and the explosion of recordings that has resulted means that I have been chasing the vanishing tail of comprehensiveness for too many months now to have any expectation of ever catching the beast up. At the same time, my increasing responsibilities at the University of Sheffield are such that I don't have the spare time to go chasing the rareities that at one time seemed so exciting and appealing. So, while keeping the site going, I am going to have to cut back in a number of ways. I am not sure entirely how this will shape up though one immediate effect will be a replacement of the upcoming concerts section by a simple list of venues and contacts (no big surprise as this has already proved difficult to update). Content will probably be scaled back to ensure that everything fits within the scope of the site and my updates may no longer be monthly but when I can manage to do them (two-monthly?). I'll have to see how this goes...

p.stubley@shef.ac.uk