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New Zealand may seem like a couple of tiny, inauspicious islands to find interesting and inspiring improvised music, but there are lively enclaves of madness, bloody-mindedness and sheer tenacity in Wellington and Auckland. And if you play the “Six Degrees of Separation” game with the players in both cities, just about everything leads back to Wellington saxophonist Jeff Henderson.

Although Jeff’s main WMD is an atomic-powered baritone sax, he is also heard on alto sax, bells, whistles and, increasingly, hilarious polylingual vocalisations. Jeff has been a member of comet-busting groups such as the Ortiz Funeral Directors, Syzygy and Birchville Cat Motel, and is the creative force behind progressive “freak magnet” performance venues in Wellington. Jeff has made an enormous contribution in the past decade to expanding free improv in NZ to the point where it is arguably a far more vital, populous and interesting scene than anything happening with our straightahead jazz community.

Jeff’s solo performances are shock-and-awe projections of force into hostile territory. Fans of Peter Brötzmann will find a lot to like in these selections. All three mp3s are available for download under a Creative Commons license from Postmoderncore.

Jeff Henderson – fuck you you bureauratic fucks (parts 1 and 2)
Jeff Henderson – A