For generations, in high schools across the country, the nerdiest mathletes have battled over who can recite Pi to the longest decimal. Because the mathematical constant never ends, such duels are ultimately contests of memorization and dedication. Harmless fun, certainly, but they can also obscure the significance of what Pi actually represents. Pi is more than just a number equal to 3.1415926 – you get the idea. It is a central actor in the mathematical description of the world around us. Best known as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, Pi appears far beyond the geometry of circles. It is embedded in the Gaussian integral, which calculates the total area beneath a bell-shaped curve stretching infinitely in both directions. It is fundamental to Euler’s formula and the mathematics of rotation, as well as to the mathematics of waves, from sound and electromagnetism to quantum mechanics. After twenty-five years, the contemporary creative music scene has something of the same relationship with a record label founded by Seth Rosner and Yulun Wang: Pi Recordings.

When Pi started in 2001, “jazz” was in a bit of an identity crisis. The puritanical crusades of figures like Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis were past their apex but the landscape left by their scorched earth policies were still smoldering. The forest of avant-garde/free/creative expression remained untinged artistically but arson left little of the surrounding commercial and critical acreage. Remember, this is the same period that birthed Ken Burns’ propaganda series, Jazz (PBS, 2001). Pi never set out to right these wrongs. At least not initially. 

Instead, Rosner and Wang simply sought to release a few albums by the brilliant Henry Threadgill. First came Make a Move’s Everybody’s Mouth’s a Book (Pi, 2001) and Zooid’s Up Popped Two Lips (Pi, 2001). Then there was Roscoe Mitchell & The Note Factory’s Song for My Sister (Pi, 2002). Looking back, a startup label’s first releases being by two of the heaviest thinkers of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is, honestly, an insane thought. But it also reflects how already marginalized art was pushed even further to the edges during the era. 

Rather than accept those arbitrary boundaries –  often set by someone like Crouch who already showed he lacked the talent to play this music –  Rosner and Wang pushed yet further. They knew meaningful art would find its audience regardless of what some of the loudest mouths had to say on the subject. Recordings of those not adhering to artificial norms could nevertheless prove economically viable if handled correctly. And what likely seemed like a gamble to an outsider has paid off tenfold.

Even in the most burnt scenery, resilient pioneer saplings grow. At Pi, a new crop of creators – Tyshawn Sorey, Steve Lehman, Vijay Iyer Dan Weiss, and Anna Webber among them – sprouted to continue the language of creativity forward. And now, a quick look at the critical landscape of jazz over the last decade and one cannot help but sense that the Crouchian puritanical witch hunt failed miserably. Critics’ polls, Pulitzer Prize nominations, MacArthur Genius grants, and impressive residencies all continually show names of artists who have recorded for Pi or collaborated with those who did. But, again, Rosner and Wang never necessarily envisioned all of this. They simply dedicated themselves to the artists whose work they love and tried to present it honestly and respectfully in the way it deserved.

From October 8th to 11th, 2026, the label will be at The Jazz Gallery celebrating its silver anniversary by presenting performances by Jonathan Finlayson’s Quartet, Weiss’s Quartet, and Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio+. The three day series is more than a chance to listen to great artists at work. It is an opportunity to reflect upon and honor the modern institution that helped get creative music some of the recognition it has long deserved. 

PostGenre: When you started Pi twenty-five years ago, the landscape for creative music/avant-garde music was so different than it is today. It was the end of the neotraditionalist narrative being writ large in the jazz press. But now, it seems that creative music has come mainstream to some extent. Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, and Andrew Cyrille are NEA Jazz Masters now. Threadgill, Tyshawn Sorey, and Wadada Leo Smith have either won or been nominated for Pulitzer Prizes for Music. The last several DownBeat Artists of the Year have also been creative-music artists. Pi has been at the center of a lot of that change. At what point did you realize the label was doing more than simply putting out albums and instead actually changing the conversation about the music?

Yulun Wang: Wow, that’s a good question. 

Seth Rosner: I think it was a progressive development, to be honest. When we put out [Steve] Lehman’s Travail, Transformation and Flow (Pi, 2009), we got a lot of attention. And even more when we put out Rudresh [Mahantappa]’s Apex (Pi, 2010) not long after. But the shift was especially noticeable with Lehman. It felt like people were seeing his album as a huge step forward for music. Many people saw his use of spectral harmony as a forward progression for improvised music. There were also other moments that stood out. Vijay [Iyer] getting a MacArthur [Fellowship in 2013] was a big moment. So was when David [Virelles] got his own week at the [Village] Vanguard [in 2012]. Certainly when Threadgill got a Pulitzer in 2016, it was significant. But by that point, we had already been around for fifteen years. And it was before then that I felt like we had become more than just like a little record label and were actually making a lasting imprint. But I would say Travail was really the turning point. It was clear that people would look back at that album as something that was more than just a good album; it was changing the trajectory of the music. 

YW: I would add that there are probably two other releases right around that same time that were especially significant too. 

Certainly, there was the third Fieldwork album, Door (Pi, 2008) with Lehman, Vijay, and Tyshawn. I believe that was the first time we worked with Tyshawn. And I think that album created a little bit of a stir. So, too, did Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Kinsman (Pi, 2008), his collaboration with Kadri Gopalnath. And then, as Seth said, soon after came Travail, Transformation and Flow.

And right after Travail, Threadgill, who had taken a little bit of a hiatus from recording, came back with This Brings Us To, Vol. 1 (Pi, 2009). And right before that we had done some work with Muhal [Richard Abrams]. So, we had really started to solidify ourselves as the guys who were documenting the first generation of AACM artists. But with the albums we just mentioned by Fieldwork, Rudresh, and Steve, we started thinking about how we were now doing more than documenting music. We started to think about the label as more about canon building rather than just putting out one release after another.

PG: So do you see Pi as more like an institution or archive than a record label at this point?

YW: We put out somewhere between four and six releases a year and are incredibly selective. Part of our being selective ties directly into the fact that we are trying to be something more than just a record label. It has always been very important to us that the label not be all over the place and instead have the feel of a community.  That is not to say that we never go out in left field and do oddball things. But building that community is incredibly important to us. In the beginning of the label, that community was very much tied to the AACM. I don’t think that was part of some grand plan, but rather was a gestalt that we had around the label. And that is still part of what we have, but we have also expanded a lot since then. 

SR: Yulun has, I think, a better sense of it than I do but as we look back at the record labels that we all admire – whether it’s something like Impulse! [Records] or Blue Note [Records] – their best runs were shorter than twenty-five years. Our run has, by a large margin, exceeded the period of time that those labels were releasing what is considered their classic output. I don’t want to call what we have a winning streak, but it seemed like we were doing something that hadn’t been done before. I’m not trying to say that we’ve innovated a curatorial approach to a label, but it was incredible to be in league with the other labels that we so deeply, deeply admire. It’s an honor to even be mentioned in the same breath as them. I can’t say that in the beginning, we necessarily were thinking about that. It happened progressively. But it is very important to us to continue to honor what we have done and recognize that our purpose is probably a little larger than serving as a record label. 

PG: Do you feel the increased recognition and shift towards Pi being more than a record label over the years has actually made your job more difficult because you now have more eyes on you?

YW: I can’t speak for other labels. Every label runs things very differently. But I do feel like we put more pressure on ourselves to get it right than other labels. Because if we were doing twenty or thirty releases a year like some labels, we wouldn’t necessarily be putting as much thought into each single release as we currently do. For one, when we are considering whether to bring a new artist onto the label, Seth and I will agonize over it in long discussions about what makes sense. We place a lot of urgency on every relationship. 

SR: To your question, I don’t know if the increased recognition made our job “more difficult.” If Yul and I are nothing else, we’re a weird combination of stupid and stubborn. That’s probably the worst combination you can have, but it also means we are less concerned about the outside world. I think, in a strange way, when things like the Pulitzer, MacArthur Fellowships, or other recognitions have come up, they have only strengthened our resolve. They are a positive affirmation that we know what we’re doing and tell us to double down. Now, we get even more stubborn. [laughing]. Now we get even stupider. [laughing]. In some ways, recognition has made things easier for us.

I think what makes things  more difficult is that we have extremely lofty goals. Since we started from our associations with the AACM, there was always a lot for us to explore. Then a group of younger artists –  Lehman, Vijay, Tyshawn, Rudresh, whoever – gave us more to explore. Same with [Steve] Coleman and people who have learned from M-Base, taken its concepts, and made them their own. And now we also have artists who have been called the New Brooklyn Complexity: people like Matt Mitchell, Kim Cass, Anna Webber, Dan Weiss, and others. All these opportunities  kind of appeared before us and we were fortunate enough to be able to explore the music and work with those musicians. What is out of our control is when something like those opportunities may happen again. But we’re fortunate to have an incredibly full roster of artists who are super prolific and never repeat themselves. 

PG: Five years ago, in an interview with WBGO celebrating the label’s twentieth anniversary, you were asked why the name Pi. Your response was that the number Pi represents growth without a set pattern. Do you feel it’s solely a testament to the artists you work with that the music keeps changing, or do you have a role in facilitating those changes?

YW: When we end up in a relationship with an artist, we always view that relationship as one that will last forever, or at least until the label goes away or the artist steps away. We don’t do one-off records. We look not only for something in their next release but also try to get a sense of where they will be going after that. I think a lot of the initial meetings with artists begin with us seeing them perform live. We’re very lucky to be in New York and out seeing music all the time. I can’t emphasize how important that is. But seeing an artist live gives us an idea of who has the potential to expand. And once we’re working with an artist, we just go along with them for the ride. 

SR: We’ve not really associated ourselves with people who are complacent to just sit there and repeat themselves. Or people who lack ideas. I think their natural development is just part and parcel with the people we’ve chosen to associate ourselves with. 

YW: And you also know at some point when an artist has a personality to push. You can tell if someone is likely to be artistically complacent. Or whether they will continue to hone their craft until they’re masters of it. Or whether you are talking to someone who will always push themselves to be uncomfortable all the time. 

PG: So is there any artist or project that you really wanted to work on and it never worked out for some reason? 

YW: Ornette [Coleman].

SR: Yeah, in the first ten years or so of the label, I used to think that if we could ever work with Ornette, I could happily call it a day right after that. That to me, working with him was the pinnacle. It was the greatest thing that I could have imagined accomplishing. And if we ever did that, I would have been cool with walking away because it couldn’t have gotten any better than that. I think my perspective has probably changed now because of things that have occurred for Pi that I couldn’t have imagined happening. But yeah, Ornette. 

YW: I can certainly drop a ton of names of artists who are of a certain generation and it would have been unbelievable to have worked with. Ornette comes to mind but another is Andrew Hill. 

SR: I was just about to say Andrew, too. 

YW: I remember having a couple of conversations with Andrew at one point. I don’t think they ever got very serious, but we were definitely interested in working with him. But I don’t think we have those types of names anymore, partly because many of those people are not around anymore. 

Part of it is also that we have established our own world and are no longer just tapping into some illustrious history that was made thirty or forty years earlier even though both of those artists were still completely creative all the way to the end. We can certainly drop names in terms of younger – though they are in their forties and fifties now – people who are out there today. My guess is that if you looked at all of the top critical darlings who are out there, we have at one point or another had conversations with every single one of them which, for one reason or another, simply hadn’t worked out.  And those conversations continue to be had. There are younger people coming up who we continue to have conversations with  and who, maybe twenty years from now, will also be at the top of those lists. 

PG: How does focusing on those relationships, including some that may not prove financially fruitful for many years, square with needing to run Pi as a business? With creative music already financially marginalized, it would seem like it might be difficult to keep the label running when not every record by any given artist is necessarily going to meet its operating costs. 

SR: I think that partly goes back to the stubbornness and stupidity I mentioned earlier. I will say, though, that we don’t lose money on the majority of our releases. We generally break even or make a profit within the first year or so. There are times when we release something because, frankly, we feel incredible about it and maybe it doesn’t find an audience or at least finds a smaller one than we expected. 

Some people just want to put art out into the world without thinking of the business side. But we’re a business. It’s important to us to actually operate like a business because that means we can pay royalties to the artists. We help artists find their audience. I think every artist wants an audience, they just want one on their terms. They want people to come to their art instead of changing their art to find an audience. It’s very important to us that the label succeed in that way. Otherwise, we’re not delivering on our end for the artists. It’s their job to create the art. It’s our job to get it out there and have it find the audience. And one of the ways for us to recognize whether we’ve done that successfully is whether we are making money and paying royalties.

To go back to your first question, a lot has changed in the quarter century Pi has been around. We’re really fortunate that we put together our system. We have an extremely solid international distribution system, for instance. I don’t know that we could have replicated that if we started today. We’ve established a name for ourselves with both journalists and the music-buying public such that even if they’re not familiar with an artist on an album we are releasing, they’re familiar with our label. They know the work we’ve done. I see that, in a way, as somewhat similar to ECM Records. You may not be familiar with every artist on ECM, but you are familiar with the quality of ECM’s releases and may take a chance on a record by that alone.

PG: And that recognition of quality may come in part because, while you run the label as a business, the music comes first 

YW: Seth and I don’t have weekly sales meetings. We don’t even have annual sales meetings. Because we run the show, we don’t have pressure coming from above to put out a certain number of releases each year to fulfill a quota, to feed the sausage maker. When you do have things like that, it can’t help but water things down. You start doing things because you have to do it to meet certain numbers. We don’t do that. We didn’t intentionally design Pi to avoid those things, it just naturally worked out that way.  We never say we will put out a certain release to make bank. That’s simply not part of a discussion we have ever had. Does that make us more artistically pure? Probably not. But it does mean that we can be more selective and truer to our vision, whatever that vision might be. 

We’ve also been incredibly lucky in terms of when we started the label. We started at a time when so many labels were starting to cut back because the CD reissue boom was essentially over by the early 2000s. The fact that we came along during the heyday of jazz coverage at The New York Times, when both Nate [Chinen] and Ben [Ratliff] were actively at it, having their bylines in the paper three, four, or five times a week was also a huge boost. 

Our consistent quality also may come in part from our power over crafting the narrative of our albums. Seth, as you know, does our publicity. We don’t farm it out to somebody else. And when we write press releases, we try to convey a narrative that comes from us. I think there’s a certain consistency to that which has helped us a lot over the years. 

PG: So, with twenty-five years behind you, where do you see the voice of the label headed over the next twenty-five years?

YW: I don’t know how to answer that. I can’t say that twenty-five years ago I would have had any idea where we are today. I can’t even tell you what will happen five years from now. And even the trends in technology are a bit unpredictable. CDs are making a massive comeback. I don’t think most people would have predicted it. But the point is that I don’t know what will happen twenty-five years from now. Any answer I could come up with would ultimately make no sense. 

SR: I can’t say that I’ve thought about it that way, but I’ve looked at a couple of examples of people who are working in music and have had long runs. For some reason, I think about George Wein sometimes. He started the Newport Jazz Festival as just a music festival. But at some point, it started to represent something bigger. I could only hope something like that could happen with Pi.  

YW: The guiding star we can all point to is Manfred Eicher at ECM. The guy’s been at it for almost sixty years. While he has other people working with and for him, that label is ultimately his show. Blue Note has not been a one-man show. And I don’t think Eicher has ever cut corners. I don’t think he has ever compromised. I don’t personally love everything he’s done, and the label puts out a ton of stuff every year. But he has a vision and he’s stuck with his vision. There’s a whole lot to be said for that. 

Seth and I are a little different, I think. To take Seth’s example of George Wein, Wein’s longevity is admirable. He was truly a businessman and tried to grow his business in every possible direction. I don’t think Seth and I are realists. We’re not looking to scale this business. It used to be that the “right way” to run a label was to establish a distribution system, create a name for your label, and then start feeding that pipeline. And under that system, you make more money by putting out more releases. The only way to really grow your revenue is to sell more of each title or sell many, many more titles. And that’s how record labels grew. 

I think Seth and I were, from the get-go, very much of the mind that we would never do that. Partly that comes from our decision to curate the label. That has made every decision in terms of what we put out and what artists we sign more difficult. So I don’t see a world where we’re like, “oh, you know, we’re doing great. Let’s put out ten, fifteen, or twenty albums next year.” We’re not looking to conquer the world in that way. A lot of people see how Pi’s albums end up so well represented in year-end critics’ polls and assume that because three of our records are listed that we must be releasing twenty or so each year and those are the best of them. But no, those three come out of the four or five we released. 

SR:  We’re not running Pi to line our bank accounts. If at some point our passion is not there anymore, we will step back. We’ve already accomplished a tremendous amount. But I have always viewed us like great directors. People like [Quentin] Tarantino or [Martin] Scorsese are not putting out films every year. They’re not the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They only release extremely curated, well-thought-out works of art that are part of a larger body. I’ve always admired that. And we’ll keep trying to create at the highest level possible as long as we can.

Pi Recording’s Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Celebration featuring the Johnathan Finlayson Quartet, the Dan Weiss Quartet, and Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio + will take place at The Jazz Gallery from Thursday October 8th to Saturday October 10th, 2026. You can learn more about the event on The Jazz Gallery’s website. More information on Pi is available from the label’s website.