If you want to understand what happened to European jazz after the Americans stopped being the only story, start with Schlippenbach. He studied classical composition, came up through conventional jazz piano, and then around the mid-1960s decided the whole thing needed to be rebuilt from scratch. In 1966 he put together the Globe Unity Orchestra, a big band of improvisers that basically announced Germany had its own version of what Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor were doing in America, except louder and more argumentative.

The thing people actually reach for, though, is the trio. Schlippenbach, Evan Parker on saxophones, and Paul Lovens on drums started playing together in the early 1970s and kept going for decades, which in free improvisation is basically a miracle of patience. Pakistani Pomade (1972) is the record to hear first — three musicians who don't resolve anything, don't settle into grooves, and somehow still sound like they're having a conversation instead of three monologues happening at once. It's dense, it's demanding, and it rewards you for sticking with it.

What's funny about Schlippenbach is that underneath all the abstraction he's a serious Monk obsessive. He eventually recorded every single Thelonious Monk composition — all of them, including the obscure ones nobody plays — on Monk's Casino (2005). That project tells you something: this isn't a guy allergic to melody or structure. He knows exactly what the rules are. He just prefers to break them on purpose rather than by accident.

He's also been in a long musical partnership with pianist Aki Takase, his wife, and the two of them playing four hands together is a different animal entirely — playful where the trio is confrontational. If you're coming to Schlippenbach cold, don't start with the orchestra stuff, it's a lot. Start with the trio records, let your ears adjust to music that refuses to tell you where it's going, and then go backward to Globe Unity once you've got your bearings.