Despite the Odds, a Jazz Label Finds a Way to Thrive

By NATE CHINEN / NY Times
Steve Coleman and Five Elements were deep into one of their horizonless, hypnotic inventions at the Newport Jazz Festival this month, and the tent-sheltered crowd seemed duly absorbed. Mr. Coleman’s alto saxophone slashed through the air, often in off-kilter counterpoint with the vocalist Jen Shyu. The shifting rhythmic base was punctuated by the drummer Tyshawn Sorey, who called to mind an octopus, limbs moving in steady flow. It was all a vivid barometer reading from Mr. Coleman’s pressure system and, by extension, a reflection on Pi Recordings, his current label home.

Small but significant, with a recent track record that includes some of the most acclaimed releases in jazz, Pi is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, in typical style. “The Mancy of Sound,” Mr. Coleman’s sharp new album with Five Elements, was released in late July; “Synastry,” a chamberlike duo outing by Ms. Shyu and the bassist Mark Dresser, is due out next week; and Mr. Sorey will make his label debut as a bandleader in September, with “Oblique 1,” a state-of-the-art quintet album. And from Wednesday through the end of August, Pi has programmed the Stone in the East Village, featuring artists either on the label’s roster or just one degree of separation away.

“I don’t think there’s any other label — major, indie, mainstream or otherwise — that has had such a consistent string of recordings widely considered, at least among critics, to be among the most important releases of the year,” said Steve Lehman, a saxophonist whose 2009 octet album, “Travail, Transformation, and Flow,” was one example. (Along with Mr. Sorey and the pianist Vijay Iyer, Mr. Lehman is also a member of Fieldwork, the collective trio that will kick things off at the Stone on Wednesday and Thursday.)

Avant-garde jazz is notoriously marginalized music, and the afflictions now plaguing the recording industry are well known. But through a selective release schedule, a careful eye on the budget, a thoughtful approach to promotion and, crucially, a sense of cultivation and commitment to its artists, Pi has not only survived but has also managed to thrive. In the process its catalog has gradually influenced the sound of jazz over the past decade, at least among younger musicians on the forward edge.

Pi is run by two partners, Seth Rosner and Yulun Wang, who share an energetic enthusiasm and a body of musical knowledge but can otherwise suggest a classic odd couple. Mr. Rosner, 38, works in his family’s business — coordinating marketing services for the real estate industry — but conveys the laid-back air of Brooklyn’s creative class. He formed Pi initially as an outlet for the multireedist composer Henry Threadgill, whom he had met while serving as the label manager for Knitting Factory Works. Pi’s first two albums, simultaneously released, were both by Mr. Threadgill: “Everybodys Mouth’s a Book,” featuring his long-running band Make a Move, and “Up Popped the Two Lips,” with a new group he called Zooid.

Mr. Wang joined the operation about a year later. “I was coming off 18 years in finance, mostly in investment banking,” he said during a joint interview with Mr. Rosner at a Greenwich Village pub. “I had essentially said, ‘Enough of this.’ ” Seeking a more fulfilling career, he began cold calling around the jazz scene, which he had long followed as a fan.

“I owned the two Threadgill records, and thought, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” Mr. Wang recalled, referring to Mr. Rosner. “ ‘This label kind of came out of nowhere, and this guy has the exact same taste as I do.’ ” They met, hit it off and soon fell into what both describe as an intuitive, equal division of labor.

“I tend to be more of a taskmaster,” Mr. Wang, 45, said. “But we split things right down the middle.”

From the start Pi had both a competitive advantage and an aesthetic guideline in its affiliation with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a self-sustaining, artist-run organization formed in 1965. Mr. Threadgill was among its earliest members, as were the next two artists to record for Pi, the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith.

“I was very interested, as we still are, in the A.A.C.M.,” Mr. Rosner said of the organization. “It embodied everything I thought was positive in an alternative to the mainstream.”

Pi has since released albums by other members of the association, including its patriarch, the pianist Muhal Richard Abrams. Its roster has also come to include other artists pursuing some compatible ideal. (Mr. Coleman isn’t affiliated with the association, and neither is the guitarist Marc Ribot, who has three albums in the Pi catalog.)

There are also younger Pi artists working within an association lineage: Fieldwork landed at the label because of Mr. Iyer, who had appeared on that first Roscoe Mitchell release. Then the alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa came aboard through Mr. Iyer.

“When my relationship with Pi started, there was no label interested in what I was doing,” Mr. Mahanthappa wrote in an e-mail. About his albums for the label — including “Kinsmen” (2008), a vital engagement with South Indian music, and “Apex” (2010), an intergenerational exchange with the cult-hero saxophonist Bunky Green — he added: “I saw my work as being traditionally based while maintaining a progressive and modern vision. Pi thought so too. They see a clear line between the past and the potential future manifestations of jazz and improvised music as a global art form.”

There are other labels that espouse a similar philosophy, in the United States and in Europe. Among the characteristics that differentiate Pi are the deliberate pace of its release schedule — typically just four or five a year, so that each can receive due support — and the hands-on style of Mr. Rosner and Mr. Wang, not so much in the studio as during the slow arc of development.

“Where we’re most important is green-lighting a project,” Mr. Wang said. “And we do talk about it for a long time with all of our artists. We’ll go out and see the music. Under the best of circumstances we want to see the music multiple times. We want to see how it develops, we want to see where it might be going.”

Mr. Sorey and Ms. Shyu, speaking in a dressing-room trailer after their Newport Jazz Festival set with Five Elements, said they valued that close attention, along with the financial support.

“We’re in an industry now where the artists basically have to pay for everything: for the mixing, for the mastering, for the musicians,” Mr. Sorey said. “And Pi helps to take care of all of that, which is rare.”

The label doesn’t sign its artists to exclusive contracts, which generally works in everyone’s favor. Not always, though: Mr. Mahanthappa recently decamped for the German label ACT, which has had considerable success with Mr. Iyer’s albums. But his departure points to the success of the label’s investment in its artists, and in the development of an audience.

“Obviously, we want every jazz fan to buy all of our records,” Mr. Wang said. “But really where we gauge our success is how we’re able to reach out beyond that. How we’re able to get not even a casual jazz fan, but a culture consumer who may just say: ‘You know what? I don’t own a single jazz record, other than some Miles Davis and some Duke Ellington. But this sounds interesting.’ That’s always what makes the difference for us.”

Pi Recordings’ programming runs through Aug. 31 at the Stone, Avenue C and Second Street, East Village; thestonenyc.com.