Lecture: Listen to This! Free Jazz on the ESP-Disk Label

Among the most fascinatingly mysterious and audaciously forward-thinking of all record labels is New York’s ESP-Disk.

By Steven Rosen on Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 11:16 am

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Steve Kemme

Among the most fascinatingly mysterious and audaciously forward-thinking of all record labels is New York’s ESP-Disk, which in the 1960s was in the forefront of recording the New Thing/avant-garde musicians who would eventually change Jazz as we know it. Its now-classic releases included albums by Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman and Pharaoh Sanders. Wednesday, local Jazz devotee and record collector Steve Kemme will play and discuss those recordings in a presentation called “Listen to This! Free Jazz on the ESP-Disk Label.”

7 p.m. Wednesday. Free. Main Library, 800 Vine St., Downtown, cincinnatilibrary.org.

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