Reunion: Live in New York

Reunion: Live in New York
Live album by
Released2012
RecordedMay 25, 2007
VenueMiller Theatre
Columbia University, NYC
GenreFree jazz
Length1:26:56
LabelPi Recordings
PI45
ProducerYulun Wang
Sam Rivers chronology
Trilogy
(2011)
Reunion: Live in New York
(2012)
Live in Vancouver
(2017)

Reunion: Live in New York is a live album by the Sam Rivers trio, featuring Rivers on saxophone, flute, and piano, Dave Holland on bass, and Barry Altschul on drums. It was recorded on May 25, 2007, at Columbia University's Miller Theatre in New York City, and was released in 2012 as a double-CD set by Pi Recordings.

The trio was originally active from 1972 until 1978, and was influential in the New York loft jazz scene centered around Rivers' Studio Rivbea. Although the group toured and performed widely, it was not well documented on record, with the exception of the Rivers albums The Quest (1976) and Paragon (1977), as well as Holland's Conference of the Birds (1973), which also included Anthony Braxton. In 2020, NoBusiness Records released Ricochet, a live recording of the trio from 1978, as volume 3 of the label's Sam Rivers Archive Series.

Reunion was recorded at the end of a marathon Sam Rivers festival presented by Columbia's WKCR-FM, and documents the trio's first performance in 26 years. It captures a fully-improvised performance that was presented without any prior rehearsal, with two sets that lasted nearly 1½ hours in total. In a concert review for The New York Times, Nate Chinen called Rivers, then 83 years old, "a genial and indefatigable eminence in the jazz avant-garde," and stated that the performance "confirmed the expressive power of collective improvisation," praising the trio's "jubilant strain of free jazz." Holland later reflected: "We didn't need to prepare... With Sam and Barry, it felt natural. Even though we had all been through musical changes, the focus and creative connection was still the same—essentially three friends having musical conversations."