Wadada Leo Smith! Michael Sarian! Leo Records Reissues!

Support local media! Burning Ambulance was written up in our local paper, the Bigfork Eagle. It’s a really nice piece that I think captures what we’re trying to do, including how important it is (to us) that we’re doing it from Montana. Check it out.

Guess what? It’s Bandcamp Friday, the day on which that site forgoes its usual share of sales revenue and passes all monies directly to artists and labels, and we’ve got a bunch of records for you to check out!

On September 25, we’ll be releasing Constellations and Hemispheres, the latest studio album from the legendary Wadada Leo Smith (I know, I can’t believe it either). It features tracks by four different ensembles: a trio with pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and drummer Marcus Gilmore; and a quintet, sextet and octet including, in various combinations, vibraphonist Bobby Naughton, electric guitarist Lamar Smith, bassists Melvin Gibbs and Bill Laswell, percussionists Mauro Refosco and Brian Jawara Gray, and drummer Pheeroan akLaff. CDs are en route from the printer, so pre-order now!

Also on September 25, we’ll be releasing In This Desert, the sixth album by trumpeter Michael Sarian and his quartet with keyboardist Santiago Liebson, bassist Marty Kenney, and drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell. It’s Sarian’s (and our) first-ever double CD, a beautiful collection of psychedelic electric jazz that blurs the line between ’70s Miles and ’90s trip-hop. (Sarian’s last album included a version of Portishead’s “Glory Box,” so you know I’m not off base with this comparison.) Again, CDs are in production, so pre-order now!

These are our last two releases of 2026, but it’s been a hell of a year. We started out in May with these two titles:

Joel Futterman and William Parker’s Transcendent Universe is a rapturous hour of free jazz piano-bass action that’ll leave your head swimming. Get it here.

Ava Mendoza’s Alive Alone, Alive Together is a ripping, shredding live album that features legendary drummer Hamid Drake on four of its eight tracks and sounds better the louder you play it. Get it here.

Then, in July, we unleashed:

Cecil Taylor Orchestra Humane, At Iridium 2004: a massive digital archive of 14 complete performances by this 15-member big band, recorded the week of his 75th birthday. Taylor’s mid ’00s orchestras manifested his artistic vision in a way none of his other ensembles did, and that music has never been available like this before. It’s a must-hear for any Taylor fan. Get it here. (And if $75 for the whole set seems like too much, you can buy any one of the 14 sets by itself, as a taster.)

We also handle the legendary UK avant-garde label Leo Records’ Bandcamp presence, and 19 new titles have just gone up there. They include titles led by or featuring artists like pianist John Wolf Brennan; bassist William Parker; reeds players Carlo Actis Dato, Frank Gratkowski, Wally Shoup, and Gebhard Ullmann; pianists Alexander von Schlippenbach and Aki Takase (joined by their son, DJ Illvibe); and more. There are well over 400 titles on the Leo Records Bandcamp page now, with more coming every month. Dive in!

Author, trumpeter, and Burning Ambulance Music artist Nate Wooley has written a superb essay on the late Sonny Rollins for N+1. Read it. “Rollins’s defining feature as a musician and a man was his attitude. A liberating feeling of I don’t give a fuck charged everything he did. From his tendency to disappear at the peaks of his career to his showing up to the Village Gate sessions in a bespoke suit and a mohawk haircut, Rollins played what he wanted, how he wanted, when he wanted. That might mean reinventing a Bing Crosby novelty tune as a tenor-sax juggernaut, as on ‘I’m an Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande),’ from Way Out West (1957). Or it might mean pushing the limits of a minimal melody like ‘East Broadway Run Down’ until the band is audibly uncomfortable. But Rollins wasn’t trying merely to provoke. He was chasing the music in his head, being true to his ‘voice’ — a practice all jazz musicians strive for, but which few of us are committed or brave enough to lay down on record.”

Paying subscribers: stick around for thoughts on the latest book from Colson Whitehead.