Paul Bley, Franz Koglmann, Gary Peacock - Annette (1995)

Annette is a profoundly intimate, chamber-esque, and historically monumental avant-garde masterpiece released in 1995 by the prestigious Swiss art-jazz imprint hatOLOGY. Spanning nearly 65 minutes across 12 deeply exploratory tracks, this high-fidelity studio document captures a brilliant cross-continental summit explicitly dedicated to the radical, highly idiosyncratic compositions of vanguard songwriter and electronic pioneer Annette Peacock. Spearheaded by legendary Canadian keyboard pioneer Paul Bley and double bass icon Gary Peacock—both of whom were intimately tied to Annette's life and served as the premier historical architects of her music—the session completely strips away conventional trio setups by replacing drums with the cool, analytical brass textures of Austrian flugelhorn and trumpet master Franz Koglmann. Operating with supreme spatial clarity, intense microtonal nuances, and a profound respect for shared silence, the chordless horn-and-piano engine navigates these challenging frameworks with telepathic structural empathy. The expansive tracklist serves as a definitive overview of Annette's most iconic pieces, highlighting the shifting architectural forms of Cartoon, Albert's Love Theme, Mister Joy, and multiple fascinating, contrast-filled takes of Touching and Blood. Exceptionally preserved in pristine dual-format lossless and high-bitrate audio with full retail artwork scans, this rare European archive stands as an absolute mandatory cornerstone and a prized collector's holy grail for global purists of advanced contemporary chamber jazz, avant-garde history, and elite free-improvisation evolution.