Greene played during the 1960s on New York's
free jazz scene, gigging with musicians including
Alan Silva and
Marion Brown, among others. With Alan Silva he formed the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble in 1963. He joined
Bill Dixon's and
Cecil Taylor's
Jazz Composers Guild in 1964, and also performed with
Rashied Ali,
Albert Ayler,
Gato Barbieri,
Byard Lancaster,
Sam Rivers,
Patty Waters, and others. During this time, he recorded two albums under his own name for
ESP-Disk. He moved to Europe in 1969, initially to Paris. Later, he lived in Amsterdam and played with such Dutch musicians as
Maarten Altena and
Willem Breuker. During the late 1980s, he began exploring the
Klezmer tradition in his groups
Klezmokum (along with
Perry Robinson),
Klez-thetics, and a later group called
Klez-Edge with vocalist Marek Balata. Klez-Edge has a recording
Ancestors, Mindreles, NaGila Monsters (2008) on
John Zorn's
Tzadik label. A duet with
Perry Robinson, also on the Tzadik label,
Two Voices in the Desert was released in January 2009. From the mid-1990s, Greene performed and recorded in New York and along the East Coast. Greene's performance and recorded groups based in New York from this time include a duet with bassist
Mark Dresser; a quartet with trumpeter
Roy Campbell Jr., Lou Grassi and Adam Lane; a trio with Ed and George Schuller on bass and drums (recorded on the CIMP label); and a quintet with the Schuller brothers, Russ Nolan on saxes and flute and
Paul Smoker on trumpet. His autobiography written over 20 years,
Memoirs of a Musical Pesty-Mystic, was published in 2001 (Cadence Jazz Books). Greene died on his boat in
Amsterdam. ==Discography==