Mark Bennett:
> Absolutely. Musical archeology is very rewarding. I snatch up every new
> Mosaic release at the earliest opportunity
Mosaic the Jazz box set reissue company? That must be a very expensive habit!
But since you like improvised music, then there is no excuse for assuming there is nothing new under the sun. What about the last ten years of improvised music coming out of the Berlin-Tokyo-Vienna-London matrix? Axel Doerner? Andrea Neumann? Mark Wastell? Polwechsel? Toshimaru Nakamura?
When this stuff first hit the scene ten to twelve years ago, I think some critics and enthusiasts overstated things in terms of it being a reaction *against* free jazz-based forms of improv. After all, Doerner also plays in a group that plays exclusively Thelonious Monk repetoire, and Christof Kurzmann of Polwechsel stated in an interview that he still seems himself as being in a continuity with the tradition of Jazz, however oblique.
Nonetheless, what made these people interesting was being the first free improvisers to also have points of reference entirely outside of the Jazz or first generation free improv lineage. Things like the New York School, or Helmut Lachenmann, Cornelius Cardew, etc.