Jazz /
Viola
*2024 stock* "Walter Fähndrich's album "Viola" is a beautiful and captivating collection of works for the viola. Fähndrich's skills as a violist are on full display as he expertly navigates through a variety of pieces, showcasing the instrument's rich and versatile sound. From hauntingly melancholic melodies to lively and energetic compositions, "Viola" takes listeners on a journey through a range of emotions. Fähndrich's impeccable technique and emotional depth make this album a must-listen for…
Wave Of Sorrow
*2024 stock* "An evocative, lyrical recording.... The two draw heavily on Slavic folk influences, even as they mine the kind of airy, contemplative jazz harmonies associated with the ECM school." - David R. Adler, AllMusicWave of Sorrow is an album by Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail Alperin and Russian brass player Arkady Shilkloper recorded in July 1989 and released on ECM the following year.
Indexical/Rhizome
Collaborators for two decades, Marcia Basssett (guitar) and Samara Lubelski (violin) play electric improvisation. This is their 8th duo release and first on CD and streaming.
Burning Up
This is the first collaboration between Australian improvisor Chloë Sobek who plays the Renaissance precursor to the double bass, the violone and New York saxophonist Time Berne.
Miroslav Vitous Group
*2024 stock* Between 1979 and 1982, the Miroslav Vitouš Group was the primary outlet for the abundant improvisational skills of leader Vitouš and John Surman. They made three ECM albums: this eponymously-titled disc from 1980 is the middle one. Vitouš and Surman were well-matched in lots of ways, with roots and influences that extended beyond jazz, a love of playing freely, a commitment to using all the sound potential of their respective instruments: Surman singing at the top of the baritone sa…
Waves
*2024 stock* Terje Rypdal’s Waves (recorded 1977) announced the beginning of the Norwegian guitarist’s association with Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, which continues to this day. The album also introduced one of Terje’s most enduringly popular pieces, “Per Ulv.” “Rypdal’s album is a series of sonic excursions ranging from the expressionist to the impressionist…” wrote Record World. “Rypdal’s guitar and Mikkelborg’s trumpet are well-matched, with Manfred Eicher’s typically superb production …
The Survivors' Suite
*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…
Arbour Zena
*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…
Timeless
*2024 stock* John Abercrombie’s ECM debut Timeless (recorded 1974) has proven to be exactly that. This fiery session with Jack DeJohnette and Jan Hammer still sounds as fresh as the year it was released. “Timeless comes as a major surprise in terms of its depth, scope and inventiveness,” wrote Tim Buckley’s guitarist Lee Underwood in the L.A. Free Press. "[It] indicates that John Abercrombie is a major musical voice of tomorrow.”
Skala
*2024 stock* Mathias Eick’s intensely melodic trumpet occupies the centre-stage in this album of self-penned tunes which will appeal to an audience beyond “jazz”. Against the powerful backdrops offered by his sleek, modern band, driven by two drummers, he delivers richly lyrical soliloquies.
Voice In The Night
*2024 stock* Charles Lloyd’s sixth ECM album is both a departure and a homecoming for the Memphis-born and California-based tenorist, introducing new music and revisiting archive favourites (including the epic "Forest Flower"), and featuring an all-star line-up. With his "Scandinavian" band currently on hold,this is Lloyd’s first all-American album in a long while – Dave Holland qualifies as an honorary American by now – with all the differences of cultural emphasis that this implies. ECM vetera…
Where The River Goes
*2024 stock* Where The River Goes carries the story forward from Wolfgang Muthspiel’s highly-acclaimed Rising Grace recording of 2016, reuniting the Austrian guitarist with Brad Mehldau, Ambrose Akinmusire and Larry Grenadier, heavy talents all, and bringing in the great Eric Harland on drums. Much more than an “all-star” gathering, the group plays as an ensemble with its own distinct identity, evident both in the interpretation of Muthspiel’s pieces and in the collective playing. The album, re…
Trio Tapestry
*2024 stock* 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…
Bay of Rainbows
*2024 stock* “There is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth,” observed London Jazz News about Danish guitarist Jakob Bro’s trio with two kindred-spirit Americans: bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Joey Baron. This poetically attuned group follows its ECM studio album of 2016, Streams – which The New York Times lauded as “ravishing” – with what Bro calls “a dream come true,” an album recorded live in New York City, over two nights at the Jazz Standard. Bay of Rainbows rolls on waves o…
Bayou
*2024 stock* A fresh and open music, delicate and space-conscious, is shaped as drummer Thomas Strønen and Ayumi Tanaka, previously heard in the ensemble Time Is A Blind Guide on Lucus, resurface in a new trio with clarinettist/singer/percussionist Marthe Lea. The group first came together at Oslo’s Royal Academy of Music, where for two years the players would meet each week for exploratory music making. Strønen: “We always played freely- drifting between elements of contemporary classical music…
Characters On A Wall
*2024 stock* Louis Sclavis’s 13th ECM recording finds the French clarinetist drawing inspiration from two sources – the street art of Ernest Pignon-Ernest, and the interpretive originality of a splendid new quartet. Pignon-Ernest’s works were previously the subject of Sclavis’s highly acclaimed 2002 recording Napoli’s Walls. This time Sclavis looks at a broader range of the artist’s in situ collages from Ramallah to Rome, in search of “a dynamic, a movement that will give birth to a rhythm, a…
When We Leave
*2024 stock* Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick’s expressive playing, which according to the New York Times radiates a “pristine yet penetrating tone”, is remarkably well complemented in the company of his gifted supporting players and fellow travelers. Violinist Håkon Aase, one of the outstanding improvisers of his generation, shadows the leader with lines that draw upon folk traditions as well as jazz. Drummers Helge Andeas Norbakken and Torstein Lofthus mirror their exchanges, as they interact …
Life Goes On
*2024 stock* 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 …
En Attendant
*2024 stock* “There’s a galaxy of piano trios in today’s jazz universe,” the BBC Music Magazine has noted, “but few shine as bright as Marcin Wasilewski’s”. On its seventh ECM album the multifaceted Polish group illuminates a characteristically wide span of music. On En attendant, collectively created pieces are juxtaposed with Wasilewski’s malleable “Glimmer of Hope”, Carla Bley’s timeless “Vashkar”, The Doors’ hypnotic “Riders On The Storm” and a selection from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg…
Playing The Room
*2024 stock* Playing The Room bears testimony to the long musical friendship of Avishai Cohen and Yonathan Avishai. They began to explore jazz as teenagers in Tel Aviv, and have continued to play together over many years, with Yonathan making important contributions to Avishai’s group albums Into The Silence and Cross My Palm With Silver on ECM. Their first duo album begins with music composed by the trumpeter and by the pianist and concludes with a touching interpretation of Israeli composer Al…