Leo Records is a British record company and
label
A label (as distinct from signage) is a piece of paper, plastic film, cloth, metal, or other material affixed to a container or product. Labels are most often affixed to packaging and containers using an adhesive, or sewing when affix ...
, founded in 1979, which releases
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
from Russian, American and British musicians. It concentrates on
free jazz
Free jazz, or free form in the early to mid-1970s, is a style of avant-garde jazz or an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventi ...
.
This label is different from the Leo Records that was formed by
Edward Vesala in Helsinki, Finland, in 1978.
History
Leo Records was founded in 1979 by Leo Feigin (also known under his broadcasting name Aleksei Leonidov), a Russian immigrant to Britain. The label was particularly associated with establishing the world reputation of the
Ganelin Trio during the 1970s and 1980s.
In its first ten years, releases from Leo included albums by musicians from the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
such as
Sergey Kuryokhin,
Sainkho Namtchylak and
Valentina Ponomaryova.
By the end of 1986, Leo had released more than 20 albums by musicians from Communist countries, including the Soviet Union. In 1987, a ''
DownBeat
''DownBeat'' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm that it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1 ...
'' reviewer commented that Leo had been "the main conduit for the Soviet avant garde's recorded output anywhere, East or West." Leo's promotion of Soviet jazz musicians helped secure concerts for some of them spread over a week at the 1989 Zurich jazz festival; recordings from the concerts were released as ''Conspiracy: Soviet Jazz Festival, Zurich 1989''.
By the mid-1990s, Leo had introduced the Leo Lab series, "as an imprint for emerging and unknown artists". Leo has released more than 50 recordings by saxophonist
Ivo Perelman.
By 2019, Feigin had ceased being actively involved in production, instead concentrating on "handling administrative tasks while the musicians themselves record and design artwork."
In 2024, he reached an agreement with Phil Freeman, a writer and owner of a record label, to make some of Leo's back catalogue available via
Bandcamp
Bandcamp is an American online music distribution platform founded in 2008 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with an office and record store in Oakland, California. Acquired by Epic ...
.
Noted artists
*
Aardvark Jazz Orchestra
*
Art Ensemble of Chicago
The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz group that grew out of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, AACM) in the late 1960s. The ensemble integrates many jaz ...
*
Anthony Braxton
*
John Wolf Brennan
*
Jaki Byard
*
Eugenio Colombo
*
Marilyn Crispell
*
Carlo Actis Dato
*
Patrick Defossez
*
Joe Fonda
*
Satoko Fujii
*
Vyacheslav Ganelin/Ganelin Trio
*
Katsuyuki Itakura
*
Italian Instabile Orchestra
*
Sergey Kuryokhin
*
Joëlle Léandre
*
Keshavan Maslak
*
Phil Minton
*
Amina Claudine Myers
*
Joe Morris
*
Don Moye
*
Simon Nabatov
*
Sainkho Namtchylak
*
Mark Nauseef
*
Maggie Nicols
*
Evan Parker
*
Ivo Perelman
*
Umberto Petrin
*
Valentina Ponomaryova
*
Sun Ra
*
Ned Rothenberg
*
Wadada Leo Smith
*
Miroslav Tadić
*
Aki Takase
*
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet.
Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in comple ...
*
Gebhard Ullmann
*
Matthew Welch
*
Reggie Workman
Reginald "Reggie" Workman (born June 26, 1937) is an American avant-garde jazz and hard bop double bassist, recognized for his work with both John Coltrane and Art Blakey, in addition to Alice Coltrane, Mal Waldron, Max Roach, Archie Shepp, Tri ...
*
Yuri Yukechev
References
Further reading
* Leo Feigin. ''all that jazz'' Sankt Petersburg:
АМФОРА, 2009 ()
External links
Leo Records website
{{Authority control
British jazz record labels