Music from United States

Andando el Tiempo features new music of wide emotional compass by Carla Bley, and underlines her originality and resourcefulness as a jazz composer.  “Saints Alive!” sets up animated conversations between the three musical participants with striking statements from Steve Swallow’s bass guitar and Andy Sheppard’s soprano sax.  The stately “Naked Bridges/Diving Brides” draws inspiration from Mendelssohn and the poetry of Paul Haines.  And the powerful three part title composition – which addresses…

"The Recursive Tree features a rather remarkable trio consisting of John Blum on piano, tenor-saxophonist David Murray, and Chad Taylor on drums. Although the three musicians had never before recorded together, they sound very much like a working trio. The title is inspired by a concept in mathematics that explains the architecture in nature arising from systematic growth over time. This algorithmic expression also illustrates the growth of Jazz through the art form’s incremental expansion of id…

We maneuver through woody sounds created by individual movements and decisions. Our cello playing is free from classical patterns, a real achievement! It is not natural to develop one's own approach to this high culture instrument. In this trio there are three multi-layered variations of personal expressive will and power.

*2024 stock* The Survivors’ Suite, recorded in 1976, is the crowning achievement of Keith Jarrett’s “American Quartet” with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, and one of the all-time enduring masterpieces in the ECM catalogue. Melody Maker: “The Survivors’ Suite is a brilliantly organized and full-blooded work which provides the perfect setting for all four talents. This is a very complete record. It creates its own universe and explores it thoroughly, leaving the listener awed and sat…

*2024 stock* “I consider this one of my most richly lyrical and consistently inspired works,” wrote Keith Jarrett of “Mirrors”, the almost half-hour long concluding piece on Arbour Zena. “Jan Garbarek’scontribution is irreplaceable and ecstatic.” It is easy to agree that Arbour Zena as a whole is one of Jarrett’s most exceptional albums. Evocative writing for strings, beautiful playing by Keith and Jan and by Charlie Haden at his most soulful, and a glowing panoramic production make this 1975 re…

The great saxophonist Joe Lovano has appeared on a number of ECM recordings over the last four decades, including much-loved albums with Paul Motian, Steve Kuhn and John Abercrombie. Trio Tapestry is his first as a leader for the label, introducing a wonderful new group and music of flowing lyricism, delicate texture, and inspired interplay. Lovano and pianist Marilyn Crispell are in accord at an advanced level inside its structures. “Marilyn has such a beautiful sound and touch and vocabulary,”…

A striking album of new music from pianist/composer Carla Bley, whose trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow is now in its 25th year. Individual associations among the players go back much further: bassist Swallow first recorded music by Carla in 1961. So when Bley says “Life Goes On”, a lot of life is alluded to. The album, realized in the Auditorio Stelio Molo Studio in Lugano in May 2019, with Manfred Eicher producing, takes the form of three suites. The title piece begins as a stoical blu…

The debut album of Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry was one of 2019’s most talked-about releases. The trio’s musical concept – the Boston Globe spoke of “utterances of hushed assurance, lyricism and suspense” –  is taken to the next level on its second album, Garden of Expression, a recording distinguished by its intense focus.  Lovano, a saxophonist whose reach extends across the history of modern jazz and beyond, plays with exceptional sensitivity in Trio Tapestry.  And the music he writes for this …

180gr pure virgin vinyl LP in Gatefold packaging. Open Sesame was the first album Freddie Hubbard (1938-2008) made as a leader. Before that LP, however, he had participated on many albums as a sideman beginning with his debut recording on The Montgomery Brothers and Five Others, taped in his home town of Indianapolis on December 30, 1957. Open Sesame was the trumpeter’s first project with pianist McCoy Tyner, who during the same month would perform his first gig ever with the John Coltrane Quart…

2024 stock 180gr pure virgin vinyl LP in Gatefold packaging. "Mingus Ah Um", featuring an all-star group including Jimmy Knepper, John Handy, Booker Ervin and Curtis Porter (aka Shafi Hadi), was Charles Mingus’ first LP for Columbia. The Penguin Guide to Jazz called this album “an extended tribute to ancestors” and awarded it one of their rare crowns. Reception was also good when "Mingus Ah Um" was first issued. Leonard Feather gave the album a five-star rating in Down Beat, stating: “First let’…

**250 copies** Mastered by Scott Konzelmann, cover art and letterpress printing by Patrick Barber, label art put into form by John Hubbard. "When Small Cruel Party was active in the early 90s (before going on a long hiatus), there were several 7" releases, a format William Ransone seemed to enjoyed for his somehwat conceptual releases. Now there is a new 7" and in both pieces he uses sounds from a radio. First there is 'Qui se poursuit dans le vide et substitue à son accomplissement une horrible…

"The outsized sounds emerging from the Excelsior Mill organ captured here constitute a unique chapter in the Sun Ra story, a dizzying phantasmagoria that offers a whole new view on what Ra could do - It might thrill you; it might unnerve you; it might strum your heartstrings; it might spook the living daylights out of you. Most likely you'll experience all of the above before the jolting musical jeremiad is done. Pressed on violet vinyl! When you're Sun Ra, you don't need synthesizers to evoke a…

*2024 stock* "This Is Our Music" features Ornette Coleman’s (1930-2015) wonderful piano-less quartet with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. The group consisted of modern players working with the same concept: a freer way of playing jazz, which transcended the strict confines of melody, harmony and rhythm. They would create a whole new idiom by constructing music via the interplay of simultaneous collective improvisation. Coleman had made his debut on records in February/March 1958 with…

Sounding as fresh today as it did in 1973, Seven Songs places the Gary Burton Quartet in an orchestral context, with compositions of Michael Gibbs – inspired by Messiaen and Charles Ives as well as Miles and Gil Evans – and exceptional soloing by Mick Goodrick, Steve Swallow and Burton himself. The production is exemplary: Seven Songs set a new standard for recordings of orchestral jazz. While there is still a handful of ECM titles from vibraphonist Gary Burton that remain unreleased on CD, perh…

Vijay Iyer presents a powerful new trio, in which he is joined by two key figures in creative music, Tyshawn Sorey and Linda May Han Oh.  “We have an energy together that is very distinct. It has a different kind of propulsion, a different impulse and a different spectrum of colours”. Repertoire on UnEasy, recorded at Oktaven Audio Studio in Mount Vernon, New York in December 2019, includes Iyer originals written over a span of 20 years, plus Geri Allen’s “Drummer’s Song” and a radical recasting…

When Circle took the stage in Paris in 1971, they weren't just performing - they were igniting a musical revolution. This extraordinary quartet, featuring Chick Corea (piano), Dave Holland (bass), Anthony Braxton (reeds), and Barry Altschul (drums), represented the cutting edge of jazz experimentation at its most vital. Fresh from their tenure with Miles Davis, Corea and Holland were eager to push boundaries in an entirely improvised context. They found the perfect collaborators in Braxton - who…

Revisited and remastered, with additional takes, texts and photos, here is the very first ECM session, recorded in Ludwigsburg in November 1969, featuring the great American pianist Mal Waldron, whose resume included work with Coltrane, Mingus, Dolphy and Billie Holiday. In his original liner notes, Mal wrote: “This album represents my meeting with free jazz. Free jazz for me does not mean complete anarchy… You will hear me playing rhythmically instead of soloing on chord changes.” As Jazz Journ…

Bordeaux Concert is a special document from Keith Jarrett’s last European tour. Each of Jarrett’s 2016 solo piano concerts had its own strikingly distinct character, and in Bordeaux the lyrical impulse is to the fore. In the course of this improvised suite, many quiet discoveries are made, and there is a touching freshness to the music as a whole, a feeling of intimate communication. Reviewing the July 2016 performance, the French press spoke of hints of the Köln Concert and Bremen-Lausanne in t…

Experience the vibrant and soulful sounds of Sicily with Orchestra Jazz Siciliana's latest album, "Plays The Music Of Carla Bley." This dynamic ensemble pays tribute to the iconic composer and pianist Carla Bley, with their own unique jazz interpretations of her compositions. The album features a fusion of traditional Sicilian melodies and Bley's avant-garde jazz influences, creating a dynamic and captivating listening experience. Led by renowned saxophonist and conductor, Francesco Cafiso, Orch…

So excited and honored to finally release the vinyl document of my realization of John Cage’s Rozart Mix. Back in the extremely strange year of 2020, I was approached by Wave Farm and John Cage Trust to stage a performance of this seldomly performed piece that Cage wrote for Alvin Lucier. The piece is comprised of 88 tape loops (one for each key of a piano), spliced together with multiple non-musical sounds played back on 12 reel to reel machines. In January 2021 I spent a wonderful and intense …