Artist: Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler ( July 13, 1936 – November 25, 1970) was an American avant-garde jazz  saxophonist, singer and composer. 

After early experience playing R&B and bebop, Ayler began recording music during the free jazz era of the 1960s. His innovations have inspired subsequent jazz musicians. 

His trio and quartet records of 1964, such as Spiritual Unity and The Hilversum Session, show him advancing the improvisational notions of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman into abstract realms where whole timbre, and not just mainly  harmony  with melody, is the music's backbone. 

In 1958, after graduating from high school, Ayler joined the United States Army, where he switched from alto to tenor sax and jammed with other enlisted musicians, including tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine. Ayler also played in the regiment band, along with future composer Harold Budd. In 1959 he was stationed in France, where he was further exposed to the martial music that would be a core influence on his later work.

After his discharge from the army, Ayler tried to find work in Los Angeles and Cleveland, but his increasingly iconoclastic playing, which had moved away from traditional harmony, was not welcomed by traditionalists. 

Ayler relocated to Sweden in 1962, where his recording career began, leading Swedish and Danish groups on radio sessions and jamming as an unpaid member of Cecil Taylor's band in the winter of 1962–63. The album My Name Is Albert Ayler is a session of standards recorded for a Copenhagen radio station with local musicians including Niels-Henning Ørsted