By Kurt Gottschalk

There's a certain statement of assuredness, importance - even marketplace dominance - in releasing two albums on the same day. It's the kind of bold-minded move a label makes with Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits or Guns N' Roses. Elektra Nonesuch even gave Bill Frisell a double whammy in 1995 with two discs of music written to accompany Buster Keaton films.

It's a move, in other words, one would expect from a label with some oomph behind it - not a tactic a fledgling label might take.

Owner Seth Rosner, however, is ambitious. Last year, his Pi Recordings label released its first two discs, the first new recordings from composer and saxophonist Henry Threadgill in five years. Rosner, however, doesn't admit to much by way of PR strategizing.

"He had two albums of music that he wanted to record with two different bands that showed his two different composing styles," Rosner said. "Hey, I would have done five albums." If not a marketing ploy, Rosner didn't see releasing the two discs - Zooid's Up Popped the Two Lips and Make a Move's Everybodys Mouth's a Book - as much of a risk, either. "The same 2-3,000 people that buy a Henry album aren't gonna go 'Oh shit, there's two, which one am I gonna buy? Eenie Meenie Minie Moe, Catch a Henry by the toe,'" he said.

The move, however, did put Pi on the map - and the oddly vivid covers, with art selected by Threadgill, made the records hard to miss.

Pi followed the Threadgill discs last month with Song for My Sister by Roscoe Mitchell and the Note Factory, and will put out The Year of the Elephant by Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet in September. It's an impressive roster for an independently run one-man operation (the 29-year-old works in real estate during the day to bankroll the operation), and one that raises a question: Is working with artists not just several decades into their careers, but who came out of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (the organization founded in the '60s that also counted Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton and Lester Bowie among its many members) a mission, or just good fortune?

"There's no way I can really express the influence the AACM has had," Rosner said. "There should be more mainstream acceptance of them. We're so overwhelmed with Miles and Coltrane - they should be more recognized for what they've contributed. It really seemed to me that the guys that were the most fertile were the AACM."

The Windy City focus, however, is not the whole of the label's mission (even if his dream release is to find tapes of the Experimental Band, the precursor to the AACM formed by Abrams in 1961). Rather, working with established musicians is a way to introduce the label and build bridges to younger musicians like Zooid guitarist Liberty Ellman and Note Factory pianist Vijay Iyer, musicians he plans to work with more as the label grows.

The fifth release, planned for October, will move the label in that direction. Fieldwork, consisting of Iyer, Elliot Humberto Kavee and Aaron Stewart, is a rollicking tenor trio, and their Your Life Flashes will mark the sort of cross-pollination within the label that Rosner says has always contributed to a label's identity, from early Blue Note to Thirsty Ear's Blue Series.

Rosner learned the ropes between 1997 and 1999 as an intern and eventually label manager at Knitting Factory Works, when the label, and the club, were steeped in financial turmoil.

"It was a very, very strange time," he said. "Everyone left the label within a year. It was a blessing in disguise. [Owner] Michael Dorf let me go on the sink-or-swim philosophy. A lot of things were falling apart, but you could sit there five nights a week and see Zorn improvs. Sex Mob was playing in the Tap Bar, Marc Ribot's Cubanos Postizos opened up the Old Office - it was still a very, very hip place to learn. Joe Morris would come in and sit down and talk for 45 minutes about Derek Bailey, then you'd get on the phone with Cuong Vu and talk about some demo tapes he sent in."

During his time with the Knit, Rosner said, he learned about marketing and distribution channels, but the label had "too many releases, it was too unfocused for what I wanted to do." He founded Pi with a plan to put out fewer discs, and to work with improvisers who are producing largely composed works.

Pi is "a number that obviously has a pattern, but nobody seems to be able to figure it out," Rosner said, drawing a parallel to the music. "It's built off what came before, it's developing without repeating. It's not chaotic."