Tavern Recordings

Every experimentalist needs to publish their findings; Tavern Recordings was created as the outlet for the musical breakthroughs that emerge from that upstate New York laboratory. The label releases live recordings captured at The Tavern along with studio and DIY recordings featuring music and projects generated from the space’s residency programs and improvisatory happenings.

The label’s initial slate of releases includes multiple collaborations featuring Pleninger in a variety of contexts, along with such Tavern habitués as drummer Phil Haynes and bassist Will McEvoy. Mysteries, Earth Song and Anatomy Avant Garde form a loose trilogy of lo-fi free improv excursions by Pleninger and Haynes, the latter in response to the amplified heartbeat of guitarist Jim Yanda; Rezonance reteams Haynes and Pleninger on an unexpected set of standards; Willosophy debuts the new collective composers’ trio MetaWill, with Pleninger, Haynes and McEvoy; and Tundra is a collection of solo soundscape improvisations by Pleninger approximating a modern ice age.

Pleninger established The Tavern with the encouragement and blessings of his mentor, the late percussionist, composer, herbalist, researcher and polymath Milford Graves. After growing up outside Philadelphia, where he studied with the bassist and educator Anthony Tidd and the saxophonist Steve Coleman, Pleninger had moved to the jazz mecca of New York City. He felt unsatisfied in the city, however, and started to envision a place of his own.

He explained his idea to Graves as he made daily visits to the drummer’s home during the last two years of his life, lessons that encompassed far more than music, including investigations into sound, cardiology and botany, culminating in the building of a greenhouse. “I told Milford, ‘I think the thing to do is get out of the city, get some space to spread out and work on multiple different disciplines,’” Pleninger recalls. “He just said, ‘Man, I think you should do that.’ That made it easy.”

“Easy” is a relative term, and work continues several years after Pleninger signed the mortgage on the Tavern to restore the place from the disrepair into which it had fallen over the decades. The saxophonist has undertaken the rehab himself, driven in part by Graves’ words: “If you decide you want to do something and you put your mind to it, you'll figure out how to do it.”

Community is essential to any endeavor on this scale, and The Tavern has thrived on support from the arts-rich region that surrounds it. A key case in point is the multidisciplinary artist and videographer Nina Isabelle, a neighbor who has become a close collaborator. Isabelle’s imagery adorns most of Tavern Recordings’ output and promotional material, lending the label a vibrant and cohesive visual identity, and she and Pleninger joined forces to create the annual Weirdos in the Woods festival.

In conjunction with the opening of The Tavern in the summer of 2022, Pleninger also founded The Center for Sonic and Psychospiritual Research, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit entity dedicated to exploring the intersection between the creative and healing arts. The Center sponsors artist residency programs at The Tavern, provides equipment and resources for their practice and research, and curates and presents free public events to share their discoveries with the public. The extended community that has gathered around The Center venture into studies of music, sound, vibration, sculpture, metaphysics, astrology, healing, botany, agriculture, and a continuation of Graves’ work in cardiology.

“The Tavern has fostered a lot of really incredible music and incredible modes of expression,” Pleninger says. “Now Tavern Recordings exists as a representation of the research and the music that's being created and developed here.”