The distinction between composition and improvisation has always been fraught territory in the discourse surrounding jazz; some artists have argued that all music begins as improvisation, and what makes it "composition" is notating the ideas after you've played them. Even the classical composers who are held up as Western music's greatest artists started out fucking around at the piano, testing ideas, rejecting them, playing something else, then settling on one melodic snippet as the best and writing it down, and gradually constructing a symphony or a concerto in that way. (And even then, classical concertos often leave room for cadenzas — flourishes at the end of a movement — that are meant to be improvised by the performer on the night.)
Drummer and producer Makaya McCraven is a composer, but his compositions are made not with pen and paper, but with recordings of himself and his friends improvising. Since 2015, McCraven has been releasing albums and mixtapes that subject live recordings to rigorous editing, slicing and dicing and highlighting particular moments until he's created something entirely new, a beatmaker's collage of looped improvisations and atmospheres (you can often hear yelps of appreciation from audience members repeating, like sirens in a Bomb Squad track).
McCraven's latest releases take two forms. The first is a series of digital EPs: PopUp Shop, Hidden Out!, Techno Logic, and The People's Mixtape. Each documents one ensemble at one moment (or in the case of Techno Logic, several moments over multiple years). But these four EPs have also been compiled as a double LP or double CD, Off The Record.
"I felt like they were in a way independent projects," McCraven told me recently by phone from Chicago. The PopUp Shop material is the oldest; it was recorded in September 2015 in Venice, California with guitarist Jeff Parker, vibraphonist Justefan, and bassist Benjamin J. Shepherd. McCraven says it "kind of flows like a mixtape and and had some structure that I had worked on at several separate times back to 10 years ago, when we first made the original edits, the chops, and then I kind of worked on it more like five years later but still never had the avenue, assets or the time to release that."
The second EP, Hidden Out!, comes from 2017. It was recorded with Parker, trumpeter Marquis Hill, saxophonist Josh Johnson, and bassist Junius Paul at the Hideout in Chicago. He recalls that the music slipped through the cracks at the time. "I had done those sessions and [had the] intention of putting that project together from those sessions [but] that hadn't happened after 2018," because other projects came along; as he says, "I'm always working on a lot of different things."
The third EP, Techno Logic, features cornet player Ben LaMar Gay and tuba player Theon Cross, and differs from everything else in that it documents the continuing evolution of a group. The recordings come from London in 2017, Berlin in 2024, and New York in 2025, and McCraven says he wants that three-way relationship to continue: "[That's] something I am hopeful to extrapolate on as a project with those guys and collaborate, so that [EP] kind of felt right to encapsulate that."
The fourth EP, The People's Mixtape, was also recorded in 2025, when McCraven was an artist in residence at Winter Jazzfest. The lineup includes Marquis Hill, vibraphonist Joel Ross, synth player Jeremiah Chiu, and Junius Paul, and was recorded at Public Records in Brooklyn. The Winter Jazzfest residency, it seems, was what sparked the idea for all these releases; "it was really then, between the Berlin show with Theon and Ben, as well as everything that happened in Winter Jazzfest, really brought all these things together into one project, but [I wanted] to keep them having some integrity from whence they came together."
What's interesting about McCraven's discography is that it sets up a kind of feedback loop – an album of re-edited improvisations generates source material that is then performed by a different live band on tour, changing shape night after night. As he explains it, "Part of my process is, like, as I'm meeting musicians or doing these kind of creative collabs and improvised sessions or spontaneous composition, collective composition, first we don't really have a repertoire, but once we do this and then I reshape it in a way or re-present it, now there's some body of work for us to come together and expound upon, and organically have something come about with people who have their own busy schedules and careers."
He continues, "Getting people together [and] recording, right – that is like a writing session. The music then comes about through production and putting it together in some body of work that's going to translate in one way or another, and then I'll take that music and come together with that ensemble or different working bands I'm touring around with... and then we learn these pieces of music with whatever ensemble I'm working in and we'll re-present that music now, and when we learn it, it gets rearranged for the band so we can play it live and maybe have improvised solo sections and, you know, some composition to play, and then that becomes its own kind of version of the piece that really it sounds often like, you know, very different than the record."
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It's worth noting that not every Makaya McCraven gig is an improvised session with an ad hoc lineup of collaborators. He tours regularly, playing good-sized venues and presenting versions of tunes from his albums in a more traditional concert style. "I love to do these improvised intimate sets, but as my career [has grown] and I do bigger shows and I do things with larger ensembles sometimes, it never felt like I wanted to do that type of thing in a 500-1,000-person standing room venue or at a festival or something." So in a way, doing residencies in small out-of-the-way rooms that allow for these spontaneous encounters is a way of recharging his creative batteries.
It's also worth mentioning just how intricate and detailed his re-edits of this live material can be. This is not a case of simply looping a few things; McCraven takes tiny fragments of material and totally recontextualizes them, creating entirely new works that layer sonic elements atop and around each other with the complexity of Miles Davis's 1970s productions or Frank Zappa's "xenochrony," where solos from one song are dropped into another.
He describes his work as "a very rigorous and kind of in-depth process of me, like, picking apart the recordings, chopping them up. I spend a lot of time doing this type of production, and it's pretty meticulous. You can ask people who've been in the studio [and they'll tell you] that my sessions get a little bit insane." However, it's not all he does. His 2022 album In These Times was a more traditional studio album with a large ensemble and lush string arrangements that took him seven years, off and on, to write and record. "A lot of the music on In These Times were my compositions that were written on paper and then orchestrated for strings, and then I still employed some production process after the fact on top of that."
McCraven acknowledges the challenges of his method – in fact, he embraces them as almost one of Brian Eno's oblique strategies. "Yeah, this process has many limitations, it's full of limitations. I think that's kind of what has made it creatively fun to do and fruitful, because basically I'm creating a ton of limitations for myself. I'm using these recordings that are fully improvised that are imperfect; I gotta figure out what I like, how do I rearrange this, what can loop or not? Or if I twist the chord progressions around, do I have more composition? Can I turn four bars into 16 bars somehow? And then create a melody with that and write on top of it? But I'm stuck with that recording or the way it sounds, these imperfections or the limited changes... I think that's the creative outlet right there, and then I have space to still write traditionally and bring tunes and do whatever I want. And that's really exciting to me, because I ultimately don't want to be just stuck as, like, 'the sample guy' or just stuck as 'the free jazz guy'... I'm not kind of here to try to define myself like that."
At the beginning of PopUp Shop (which is also Side A of Off The Record), McCraven announces, "We're about to be making some stuff up right here on the spot. This is improvised music, spontaneous composition." To me, that's a very interesting moment. Hearing it, I wondered, do audiences need that kind of explanation, even in 2025? Does it help? Can they relax and get into it more once they know the rules of the game?
"I think it's a beautiful thing," McCraven says, "a little bit of context where I can say, 'Look, we don't know what we're doing ahead of time, this is fully happening on the spot.' I like to give a little bit of that context for people to come on the journey with me. And sometimes I'll elaborate [to] where it's like, this idea of improvisation isn't really so unique but rather an expression of life, and we all are improvising all the time; it's like the natural state and all these structures and compositions and things that we have in the world to survive the chaos and cruelty all around us sometimes take us away from, you know, the true state of all trying to figure shit out in real time."
TAKE 10
JD Allen - "Don't Go To Strangers"
I fucking love JD Allen's music. He seems like a traditionalist — he plays tenor saxophone, with a burnished tone drawn from the same well as John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, and Sonny Rollins — but throws a lot of curve balls, recording with two bassists or with electronics or just solo. Back in 2018, he added guitarist Nir Felder to his long-running trio (bassist Gregg August, drummer Rudy Royston) for the ballads album Love Stone, and now he's done something similar, adding pianist Brandon McClure to his current bass-drums team of Ian Kenselaar and Nic Cacioppo and recording a bunch of beautiful ballads. "Don't Go To Strangers" is a standard; the best-known version is probably Etta Jones', which was a top 40 hit in 1960. Allen's version is a softly swinging blues; his solo hugs the curves of the melody until it doesn't, and all the flourishes are brilliantly conceived and apposite. (From Love Letters (The Ballad Sessions), out now via Savant.)
Anna Högberg Attack - "Ensamseglaren/Inte Ensam"
Swedish saxophonist Anna Högberg made two brilliant albums in 2016 and 2020 with her sextet Anna Högberg Attack, then went off to train as a nurse. Now she's back, with a 12-member Attack that only features two members from previous incarnations, trumpeter Niklas Barnö and saxophonist Elin Forkelid. The music is totally different, too, with doomy, Sunn O)))-esque guitar from Finn Loxbo and ultra-abstract turntablism (more crackle than scratch) from Dieb13. Moments of old-school free jazz multi-horn blare are succeeded by much more abstract passages where everything is fluttering and burbling, before a quiet, almost folky melody played on tuba, eventually joined by more horns, with bass and subtle electronics in the back, winds things down. This is a limited edition LP, and each side is constructed as a seamless medley — two parts on Side A, three on Side B. Get comfortable and let it take you on its journey. (From Ensamseglaren, out now via Fönstret.)
The Necks - "Causeway"
I like Australian trio the Necks' music, but their hardcore fans' rapturous devotion is weird to me. Their stuff is (not always, but often) so chilled-out and meditative that it's impossible to focus on; it seems to waver right at the edge of perception, like a heat mirage on a highway. And that's deliberate; their albums typically consist of single 45-60 minute tracks. Disquiet is different only in quantity; it's a three-CD set. The first piece, "Rapid Eye Movement," runs 57:07 and sounds like the beginning of Miles Davis' "Shh/Peaceful" from In A Silent Way, before everything really gets started, stretched out for an hour. (It may also remind you of the Doors.) The more assertive "Ghost Net" runs 74:01. The third disc has two tracks, "Causeway" and "Warm Running Sunlight." The former is the "single," and has some really nice piano laid over a reverberating, precisely repeated guitar figure. (From Disquiet, out now via Northern Spy.)
Mark Turner - "Movement 4. New York"
Saxophonist Mark Turner's latest album is inspired by James Weldon Johnson's novel about a biracial man's life passing for white after the Civil War. It features several of his regular collaborators: Jason Palmer on trumpet, Matt Brewer on bass, and Nasheet Waits on drums, plus David Virelles on piano, organ and synthesizer. Turner reads short passages from the novel on a few tracks, in a soft voice that gives the text a weird kind of melancholy, but for the most part this is a 73-minute suite of tightly composed music. "Movement 4. New York" starts out with a keyboard intro from Virelles, but then the band is off and running, Palmer and Turner taking extended solos over a somewhat blocky but propulsive beat from Brewer and Waits. In its final moments, the drummer takes a powerful solo as Virelles lays down a piano vamp. (From Reflections On The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man, out now via Giant Step Arts.)
Tomas Fujiwara - "Dream Up"
Dream Up is credited to drummer Tomas Fujiwara, but it's Patricia Brennan's album. The vibraphonist is the clear lead instrument in what Fujiwara calls his Percussion Quartet, which also features Kaoru Watanabe on various Japanese drums (and flute) and Tim Keiper on percussion instruments from around the world. The interlocking rhythms all three players create behind Brennan are just this side of too much, rattling and tumbling and clashing, but she floats there in the middle of it all, serene and melodic. Sometimes, as on "Ritual Pace," the music has gamelan-esque qualities, and "Recollection Of A Dance" has the kind of martial rhythm Fujiwara favors, but on the opening title piece, the mood is indeed dreamlike, with Brennan sculpting the music patiently as a repetitive figure from Keiper, not exactly a bass line but the suggestion of one, loops behind her. This is a nice, often quite soothing record. (From Dream Up, out now via Out Of Your Head.)
Jerome Sabbagh - "Lone Jack"
Saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh had a long-running quartet with guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Ted Poor. Their first album, North, was released in 2004; Pogo followed in 2007, and The Turn in 2014. I saw them at the Jazz Gallery in 2014, with Jochen Rueckert subbing in on drums. Now, they've made their first studio album since The Turn, and Nasheet Waits is behind the kit. The music has the same feel it always did; Sabbagh writes mellow, memorable melodies rooted in blues with a slight country feel (surprising, since he's originally from France and has been living in Brooklyn forever) and the band plays them with patient grace. Monder is an excellent foil/co-leader, knowing when to shift gears from Bill Frisell-esque gentleness to bursts of almost metallic noise. Martin bobs along imperturbably no matter what else is happening, and Waits' sharp, taut drumming is the perfect anchor. (From Stand Up!, out now via Analog Tone Factory.)
Chip Wickham - "Nara Black" (Feat. PEACH.)
Reeds player Chip Wickham, mostly playing flute here, occupies an interesting space that's equal parts neo-soul, spiritual jazz, and chilled-out breakbeat music of the Mo'Wax/Ninja Tune school. He claims influences from artists like Alice Coltrane, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Lonnie Liston Smith (he released an EP of three Smith tunes in 2022), and/but I can also hear echoes of 1970s albums by drummer/producer Norman Connors, who worked with Pharoah Sanders, and of Idris Muhammad and even Grover Washington, Jr.'s early Kudu recordings. Basically, there's a long tradition of this kind of music, and the way the core backing band — George Cooper on Fender Rhodes, Simon "Sneaky" Houghton on bass, and Luke Flowers on drums — is recorded gives it a deliberately analog/retro sound. There's also trumpet from Eoin Grace, and percussion and strings that bring to mind '70s Marvin Gaye. On "Nara Black," mellow post-Winehouse vocalist PEACH. makes an appearance. (From The Eternal Now, out now via Gondwana.)
Jakob Bro/Wadada Leo Smith/Marcus Gilmore - "Sonic Mountains"
Danish guitarist Jakob Bro joins forces with two Americans — trumpter Wadada Leo Smith and drummer Marcus Gilmore — on this beautiful, blissed-out, at times almost ambient album. The label is from Denmark, so that's probably why Bro, who also records for ECM, gets top billing, despite being the quietest element in the mix most of the time. Honestly, Gilmore should be named first, since the record opens and closes with drum solos called "Winnowing One" and "Winnowing Two." It's a relatively short album, seven tracks in 42 minutes, and it flows like a suite, each individual track adding to the whole. "Sonic Mountains" is the first piece after that opening drum solo, and it's a showcase for Smith's pure, crackling energy on the trumpet. His piercing single notes and gentle, meditative phrases come at you like lasers through darkness, as Bro emits soft pings and Gilmore taps and rattles his kit. (From Murasaki, out now via Loveland Music.)
Webber/Morris Big Band - "Just Intonation Etudes For Big Band – Pulse"
The Webber/Morris Big Band is led by saxophonists Anna Webber and Angela Morris; it features four more saxophonists, four trumpet players, four trombonists, guitar, vibes, piano, bass and drums. The music the pair have composed for their ensemble is a lot more vivid and fun than the track titles would indicate; let's face it, when you start your album with four pieces called "Just Intonation Etudes For Big Band," you're extending an invitation to a small but exclusive audience, and absolutely no one else. ("Just intonation" is a tuning system. I have no idea how it works; when I read the Wikipedia entry, my eyes glaze over.) But when you stop thinking and listen, the music is beautiful. "Pulse" does exactly that, kicking off with blatting and tooting horns, staccato foundational phrases interrupted by an abstract swirl of a trumpet solo. From there, it becomes a high-energy romp. Dive in. (From Unseparate, out now via Out Of Your Head.)
Pharoah Sanders - "The Creator Has A Master Plan"
Saxophonist Pharoah Sanders died a little over three years ago, in September 2022, and in that time there have been some very interesting explorations of the lesser-known corners of his catalog. In 2023, his 1977 album Pharoah, originally released on India Navigation and long out of print, was remastered and reissued with two bonus live tracks. This year, his album Izipho Zam — recorded in 1969, while he was signed to Impulse!, but not released until 1973, on Strata-East — was also remastered and reissued. Pharoah is an interesting transitional release, bridging the gap between his world-music/free-jazz work and the more toned-down music he'd make in the late '70s and 1980s. Izipho Zam is a masterpiece, featuring Sanders at the height of his powers and an 11-member ensemble that included guitarist Sonny Sharrock, vocalist Leon Thomas, drummer Billy Hart, and three percussionists. More recently, Mosaic Records put out a seven-disc box, The Complete Pharoah Sanders Theresa Recordings, which gathered up six albums (four studio, two live) and some scattered guest appearances. I wrote about that box at length on Substack, if you want to read it, but the TL;DR version is: the first few albums are great, the last two are a very mixed bag, and Sanders' version of Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love Of All" (yes, really) is not something you need in your life. Between 1974 (the release of his final Impulse! album, Love In Us All) and 1977, Sanders was without a label, doing what he could to stay on the road and thereby in the public eye. And a concert from that era, recorded at the ORTF studio in Paris in November 1975, has just been released by Elemental Music. Edited versions of some of these performances were available before, but the full show runs almost two hours and some of the music is genuinely revelatory, even for listeners familiar with Sanders' work. He's joined by Danny Mixon on piano and organ, Calvin Hill on bass, and Greg Bandy on drums. And when I say organ, I don't mean a Wurlitzer or a Vox; I mean a pipe organ. The first, untitled track on this set is a nine-minute improvisation with Mixon on pipe organ, going full High Church as Hill bows his bass and Sanders and Bandy push the music all the way up and out. He sticks to piano for most of the rest of the concert, but midway through the nearly 13-minute version of "The Creator Has A Master Plan" streaming here, he returns to the organ, giving the vamp that anchors the piece a kind of prog-rock intensity. I feel like people have a very narrow impression of Pharoah Sanders, thinking of him as a free jazz screamer and nothing more. But his discography holds a lot of surprises and wonders, and this live recording is definitely one. (From Love Is Here – The Complete Paris 1975 ORTF Recordings, out now via Elemental Music.)
