Herbert Joos

Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe / Four Men Only: Complete Recordings

by John Sharpe
January 11, 2021

It's not often that something comes along which upends accepted wisdom, but that's what the Lithuanian NoBusiness imprint has accomplished with the reissue of four albums in a three-CD box set by the now unremembered Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe (MJQK) and its successor FourMenOnly (FMO). The group, comprised of Herbert Joos, reedman Wilfried Eichorn, bassist Klaus Bühler, pianist Helmuth Zimmer and drummer Rudi Theilmann, barely merits a footnote in the current accounts of European free jazz. But ...