The Globe Unity Orchestra is a free jazz

Free jazz

Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...

 ensemble.

Globe Unity was formed in autumn 1966 with a commission received by Alexander von Schlippenbach

Alexander von Schlippenbach

Alexander von Schlippenbach is a German jazz pianist and composer.-Biography:...

 from the Berlin Jazz Festival

JazzFest Berlin

JazzFest Berlin is a jazz festival based in Berlin, Germany. Originally called the "Berliner Jazztage" , it was founded in 1964 in West Berlin by the Berliner Festspiele. It is considered one of the world's premier jazz festivals...

. It had its debut at the Berliner Philharmonie

Berliner Philharmonie

The Berliner Philharmonie is a concert hall in Berlin, Germany. Home to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the building is acclaimed for both its acoustics and its architecture....

 on 3 November combining Gunter Hampel

Gunter Hampel

Gunter Hampel is a German jazz vibraphonist, clarinettist, saxophonist, flautist, pianist and composer born in Göttingen, Germany, perhaps best-known for his album "The 8th of July 1969" that included fellow musicians Anthony Braxton, Willem Breuker and Jeanne Lee...

's quartet with Manfred Schoof

Manfred Schoof

Manfred Schoof is a German jazz trumpet player.He studied music in Kassel and Cologne.He is a founder of European free jazz and collaborated with Albert Mangelsdorff, Peter Brötzmann, Mal Waldron, and Irène Schweizer...

' s quintet and Peter Brötzmann

Peter Brötzmann

Peter Brötzmann is a German artist and free jazz saxophonist and clarinetist.Brötzmann is among the most important European free jazz musicians. His rough, lyrical timbre is easily recognized on his many recordings.-Early life:...

's trio : Hampel (bcl,fl); Willem Breuker

Willem Breuker

Willem Breuker was a Dutch jazz bandleader, composer, arranger, saxophonist, and bass clarinetist....

 (bs,ss); Schoof (tp) with Gerd Dudek

Gerd Dudek

Gerd Dudek is a German jazz tenor saxophonist, soprano saxophonist, clarinetist and flautist.Dudek studied clarinet privately and attended music school in the 1950s before joining a big band led by his brother Ossi until 1958...

 (ts); Alexander von Schlippenbach

Alexander von Schlippenbach

Alexander von Schlippenbach is a German jazz pianist and composer.-Biography:...

 (p); Buschi Niebergall

Buschi Niebergall

Buschi Niebergall was a German free jazz musician. His given name was Hans-Helmut, and late in life, his friends called him Johannes....

 (b) and Jaki Liebezeit

Jaki Liebezeit

Jaki Liebezeit is a drummer probably best known as a founding member of Can who has been called "one of the few drummers to convincingly meld the funky and the cerebral"....

 (d) on one side, Brötzmann (saxophones), Peter Kowald

Peter Kowald

Peter Kowald was a German free jazz musician.A member of the Globe Unity Orchestra, and a touring double-bass player, Kowald collaborated with a large number of European free jazz and American free-jazz players during his career, including Peter Brötzmann, Irène Schweizer, Karl Berger, Fred...

 (b, tuba), Sven-Åke Johansson

Sven-Åke Johansson

Sven-Åke Johansson is a Swedish drummer and composer associated with free jazz and free improvisation. He was in the Globe Unity Orchestra and played with German reedist Alfred Harth and Belgian pianist Nicole Van den Plas in E.M.T..- External links :*...

 (d) on the other.

During the next years this core group was completed by other European and American musicians: Johannes Bauer (tb), Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...

 (as, cl), Willem Breuker

Willem Breuker

Willem Breuker was a Dutch jazz bandleader, composer, arranger, saxophonist, and bass clarinetist....

 (ts), Rüdiger Carl (as, ts), Günter Christmann (tb), Gunter Hampel

Gunter Hampel

Gunter Hampel is a German jazz vibraphonist, clarinettist, saxophonist, flautist, pianist and composer born in Göttingen, Germany, perhaps best-known for his album "The 8th of July 1969" that included fellow musicians Anthony Braxton, Willem Breuker and Jeanne Lee...

 (bcl), Toshinori Kondo

Toshinori Kondo

Toshinori Kondo is an avant-garde jazz and jazz fusion trumpeter. He resides in Tokyo, New York City, and Amsterdam....

 (tp), Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy , born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone....

 (ss), Paul Lovens

Paul Lovens

Paul Lovens is a musician. He plays drums, percussion, singing saw and various selected and unselected cymbals. He has also performed with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra and Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra....

 (drums), Paul Lytton

Paul Lytton

Paul Lytton is an English free jazz percussionist.Lytton began on drums at age 16. He played jazz in London in the late 1960s while taking lessons on the tabla from P.R. Desai. In 1969 he began experimenting with free improvisational music, working in a duo with saxophonist Evan Parker. After...

 (drums), Albert Mangelsdorff

Albert Mangelsdorff

Albert Mangelsdorff was one of the most accredited and innovative trombonists of modern jazz who became famous for his distinctive technique of playing multiphonics.-Biography:...

 (tb), Evan Parker

Evan Parker

Evan Shaw Parker is a British free-improvising saxophone player from the European free jazz scene.Recording and performing prolifically with many collaborators, Parker was a pivotal figure in the development of European free jazz and free improvisation, and has pioneered or substantially expanded...

 (ss, ts), Michel Pilz (bcl, cl, bars), Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (as, cl, fl), Enrico Rava

Enrico Rava

Enrico Rava , is a prolific jazz trumpeter and arguably one of the best known Italian jazz musicians. He originally played trombone, changing to the trumpet after hearing Miles Davis. His first commercial work was as a member of Gato Barbieri's Italian quintet in the mid-1960s; in the late 1960s...

 (tp), Paul Rutherford

Paul Rutherford

Paul Rutherford is the former backing vocalist, dancer and occasional keyboardist with 1980s pop band Frankie Goes to Hollywood , one of the group's two openly gay singers....

 (tb), Heinz Sauer (ss, ts), Bob Stewart (tuba), and Kenny Wheeler

Kenny Wheeler

Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, OC is a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. since the 1950s....

 (tp).

The Orchestra has been described as providing "the most remarkable assemblies of outside jazz talent since the AACM big bands".

They performed in New Delhi, India for the Jazz Yatra in late 1970s

The final concert in the group's main lifetime was at the Chicago Jazz Festival

Chicago Jazz Festival

The Chicago Jazz Festival is a popular and well-known four day free celebration of jazz at Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park in downtown Chicago. It is run by the Jazz Institute of Chicago during Labor Day weekend, integrating both world-famous and local artists...

 in 1987.

The 40th anniversary line-up for the 2006 concerts and recordings were the saxophone players Evan Parker, E.-L. Petrowsky, G. Dudek, Rudi Mahall

Rudi Mahall

Rudi Mahall is a contemporary jazz bass clarinetist.While studying classical clarinet, Mahall shifted towards contemporary music, improvisation and jazz.He is, or was a member of following bands:...

 (bcl)), the trumpets Kenny Wheeler, M. Schoof, Axel Dörner, Jean-Luc Cappozzo and trombonists P. Rutherford, George Lewis

George Lewis (trombonist)

George E. Lewis is a trombone player, composer, and scholar in the fields of jazz and experimental music. He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians since 1971, and is a pioneer of computer music.- Biography :Lewis graduated from Yale University with a...

, Jeb Bishop

Jeb Bishop

Jeb Bishop is an American jazz trombone player.He grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has studied music at Northwestern University, engineering and philosophy at North Carolina State University, and philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Arizona,...

, J. Bauer) with Alexander von Schlippenbach (p), and drummers P. Lovens und P. Lytton.

Discography

• 1966: Alexander Schlippenbach: Globe Unity, Saba/MPS
• 1967/70: Globe Unity 67 & 70, Atavistic/Unheard Music Series
• 1973: Live in Wuppertal, FMP 0160
• 1973: For example, FMP R123 (one track)
• 1974: Der alte Mann bricht ... sein Schweigen, FMP S4 (single)
• 1974: Hamburg '74, FMP 0650
• 1975: Bavarian Calypso/Good bye, FMP S6 (single)
• 1975: Rumbling, FMP CD 40
• 1975/1976: Jahrmarkt/Local Fair, Po Torch PTR/JWD 2
• 1977: Improvisations, JAPO 60021
• 1977: Pearls, FMP 0380
• 1979: Compositions, JAPO 60027
• 1982: Intergalactic Blow, JAPO 60039
• 1986: 20th anniversary, FMP CD45
• 2002: Globe Unity 2002, Intakt CD 086