About Us

Free = liberated from social, historical, psychological and musical constraints
Jazz = improvised music for heart, body and mind


The Free Jazz Collective is a volunteer group of passionate and adventurous listeners and musicians dedicated to spreading the gospel of improvised music. The blog is dedicated to authentic, adventurous, accurate, artistic and attention grabbing avant-garde and free jazz.

The blog was started in 2006 by Stef Gijssels who ran it single-handedly until late 2010. Paul Acquaro joined in 2011 and has since managed and expanded the site with an evolving roster of international contributors located in the USA, Europe and the Middle East. The blog currently hosts over 5500 reviews and counting, of primarily free jazz recordings, as well as festivals, concerts, video and books (See the A-Z list, updated daily).

E-mail: freejazzblog + [at] + live.be


How to get your music reviewed? Because of our international position we get a lot of material, from labels, from musicians, often well in advance of the release dates, sometimes much later. We also buy a lot of albums (we're fans!) at concerts or we buy them from download sites. In any case, we receive hundred of CDs, often not matching the profile of this blog, but luckily most are of interest. Sometimes we don't get the albums we want to have, so at times we may also be chasing both labels and musicians to be a little more promotional and send us their stuff.

It is our policy to listen to as many albums as possible, yet even that's a challenge. So please be mindful that we cannot review each and every album that we receive. To make it interesting to readers and listeners, we only review albums of which we like the music, unless it's a really bad album by a great musician, but that does not happen often. There is no point in writing a negative review about an album that most people would not have heard about in the first place. Or to put it more positively: we try to guide our listeners to music that is really worth listening to.

So, if your music is not being reviewed, it's either because we haven't had the time to listen to it (yet) or because it doesn't match our blog's profile, or because other albums are considered of more interest at that moment. 

The best way to reach our network of collaborators is to send us materials at the above email address, preferably with art work and onesheet. As they say, you will miss any shot that you don't take.