Corbett vs Dempsey will be releasing (4CD & Bandcamp download) this various artists  compilation of live material from Chicago's "Empty Bottle" I'm definitely in on this one For the first time, a release of select music performed at Chicago's Empty Bottle in the heyday of the creative music boom of the 1990s. From 1996-2005, writer and producer John Corbett and musician and composer Ken Vandermark teamed up to curate a series of concerts, the Empty Bottle Jazz & Improvised Music Series. Together with annual international festivals, the series comprised more than 500 performances over its nine-year span, which was lauded in the international press and helped focus attention on Chicago as a hotspot for improvised music. The majority of the music was dutifully documented by Malachi Ritscher, from whose archives The Bottle Tapes: Selections from the Empty Bottle Jazz & Improvised Music Series, 1996-2005 is drawn. Over the course of six CDs, arranged in chronological sequence, the box set revels in the span of the music presented at the Bottle, from the hardest blown free jazz to microscopic free improvisation and other kinds of experimental music. The lineup incorporates nearly 100 international musicians, including Peter Brötzmann (who formed his Chicago Tentet at the Empty Bottle in 1997), Milford Graves (performing solo), a Bobby Bradford quartet with Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake and Wadada Leo Smith, Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble, the Dutch bands Available Jelly and Clusone 3, Von Freeman in his only performance with Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, Jim O'Rourke duetting with Cor Fuhler, Mats Gustafsson and Thurston Moore in their first face-off, Chicago Underground Quartet, Steve Lacy/Roswell Rudd Quartet, and much more. The package comes with a lavishly illustrated 64-page book, loaded with never-published photos and vintage ephemera, including Dan Grzeca's beautiful posters, as well as an in-depth essay by Corbett, with play-by-play notes on the music.   https://corbettvsdempsey.com/records/the-bottle-tapes/

I have a Japanese cd of "is" and the Groove Merchant "Sundance", so I have all but the alts. 

Glad to be social medialess  their reissues are excellent. 

Bump (this week).

Live performance at this Ann Arbor radio station releases tomorrow on Bandcamp. https://griotgalaxy.bandcamp.com/album/live-on-wuom-1979