Free Music Production (FMP) is a German record label founded by Jost Gebers, Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald, and Alexander von Schlippenbach in 1969, specializing in free improvisation and free jazz, usually by European, often German musicians.
For most of its history, Jost Gebers was the principal figure at FMP. Starting in 2000, he was just the producer. In 2007 he became the owner of its legal successor, FMP-Publishing.
The first release was European Echoes by Manfred Schoof. Among the best known European musicians who have made records for FMP are Brötzmann, Kowald, Schlippenbach, Hans Reichel, Irene Schweizer, Han Bennink, Alfred Harth and Wolfgang Fuchs. Prominent American musicians such as Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, Steve Lacy, Bill Dixon, and Charles Gayle have also recorded for the label.
FMP has a large back catalog of LP's, all of which have been unavailable since 1992. Only a small fraction of these have ever been reissued on CD, though more and more are now coming out on CD through Atavistic Records' FMP Archive Edition subseries of the Unheard Music Series, curated by John Corbett.
Famous quotes containing the words free, music and/or production:
“... that phrase of mischievous sophistry, “all men are born free and equal.” This false and futile axiom, which has done, is doing, and will do so much harm to this fine country ...”
—Frances Trollope (1780–1863)
“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)