★ECM Records
Luminessence
Mysterious, dramatic and alluring, Luminessence comes from a peak period in the creative association between Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek, recorded in 1974, immediately after their vibrant Belonging album. Here, Jarrett creates shimmering orchestral frameworks to spur Garbarek to some of his most concentrated, impassioned and expressive playing. “The melodies that Jarrett writes sound like Garbarek improvisations, so great is the rapport between the two men,” wrote Ian Carr in his Keith Jarre…
Nouvelle Vague
This is the complete soundtrack – music, dialogue, sounds – of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. "In making this film," Godard said at a press conference later that year, "I heard a great deal of music; music produced by Manfred Eicher. I can well imagine how musicians are inspired and influenced by these sounds. And I too have immersed myself in this music, and I have felt,in my work, like a musician." Interviewed at the Toronto Film Festival of 19…
Songs of Ascension
“Songs of Ascension” is a major new recording from composer Meredith Monk and her vocal ensemble. Written in 2008, it is conceived as a continuous composition, a departure from Monk’s earlier collaged or episodic extended works. In recent years Meredith Monk’s been expanding into the worlds of orchestra and string quartet. On “Songs of Ascension” she teams up with a string quartet of New York players well versed in new music. With winds, percussion and two vocal groups added to her already extra…
Book Of Days
Meredith Monk is generally described as an avant-garde artist of many talents. Of her many talents there is no question, but what exactly makes her “avant-garde”? The Random House Dictionary defines the term as meaning “of or pertaining to the experimental treatment of artistic, musical, or literary material.” This raises another question: What does it mean to be experimental? The same dictionary gives us: “founded on…an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of tes…
Words Unspoken
The album title – Words Unspoken – alludes to the instant musical understanding found by the members of this nimble quartet assembled by great British reedman John Surman. „My idea was to put together some musical ideas that would offer a collective sense of purpose but still be open enough to allow each of us to suggest other ways of developing the material together. Everything fell into place immediately. But I soon realized it wasn‘t so much the musical ideas that made it work, it was the mus…
Road To Saint Ives
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* "A gentle, introspective, yet adventurous solo work... The entire album is a one-man effort, from the composition to all of the instrumentation, with Surman building strata of sound over keyboard and percussion structures using bass clarinet and the soprano and bass saxophones he is known for. The resulting work communicates a unique vision and mood, unsullied by the conflicting interpretations of other performers." - Stacia Proefrock
Miserere
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* For reasons perhaps too numerous to list here in full, Arvo Pärt’s Miserere remains my most cherished of the Estonian composer’s ever-growing book of masterworks. Suffice it to say that its magic lies in its stillness. For such an expansive piece—scored as it is for choir, soloists, organ, and ensemble—it is remarkably introspective. Its opening invocation of Psalm 51 fleshes out a corpus of spoken language made melody. A statement from the clarinet follows every w…
Te Deum
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* "Te Deum employs Pärt's signature tintinnabuli compositional style. Tintinnabuli is often described as a minimalistic compositional technique, as its harmonic logic departs from that of the tonal tradition of Western classical music, creating its own distinct harmonic system. Tintinnabulation is a process in which a chosen triad encircles a melody, manifesting itself in specific positions in relation to the melody according to a predetermined scheme of adjacency. I…
Litany
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* The starting point for Litany was a commission received from the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene, US. For this reason, Pärt selected an English text as the basis for his composition.
Arvo Pärt: “The English language lacks plasticity which is brought to music with long words. Working with a text in English, I had to make new discoveries and use melodic constructions that I normally don’t use in my music, to extract material from words and sentences. The text for Lita…
A Hilliard Songbook - New Music For Voices
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Although by now almost habitually referred to as Britain’s foremost early music vocal group, the Hilliard Ensemble (founded 1974) has long had an equal, and complementary, commitment to contemporary music. Its members have sought out new music that adapts itself to the group’s blend of voices and, where necessary, commissioned works from composers they admire. In their recitals, century-spanning leaps – from John Cage, say, to Josquin Deprez (or vice versa), from P…
Alina
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* There have been other recordings of "Für Alina" and "Spiegel im Spiegel" but none like those on this disc, realized with the participation of the composer. Here Pärt, aided by exceptional interpreters, revisits those seminally important compositions which marked the birth of a new, "prismatic" period in his work, establishing a link between compositions embodying the fundamental traits of the "tintinnabuli style." Three interpretations of the duet ‘Spiegel im Spieg…
Orient & Occident
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* “An exceptional and musically important release” – Gramophone, Editor’s Choice. The long-awaited new album by the great Estonian composer brings new colours to his unique body of work. The purity and the sense of timelessness remain; the harmonic palette is subtly expanded. These recordings of “Orient & Occident”, “Ein Wallfahrtslied” and “Como cierva sedienta” have been widely praised.
Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Fascinating and highly attractive project which returns the music of Gurdjieff (c. 1866 – 1949) to its ethnic inspirational sources. To date Gurdjieff’s compositions have largely been studied, in the West, via the piano transcriptions of Thomas de Hartmann. Armenian composer Levon Eskenian now goes beyond the printed notes to look at the musical traditions that Gurdjieff encountered during his travels, and rearranges the compositions from this perspective. Eskenian…
Hellbound Train (An Anthology)
*2024 stock* Hellbound Train is a double-album retrospective from Steve Tibbetts with music selected by the US guitarist from 40 years of recordings on ECM . Neatly divided into electric and acoustic chapters, the anthology juxtaposes pieces originally featured on the albums Northern Song, Safe Journey, Exploded View, Big Map Idea, The Fall Of Us All, A Man About A Horse, Natural Causes and Life Of. With its liquid melodies and textures and hypnotic patterns and pulsations subtly influenced by…
The Music of Stones
Tip, tip tip! *2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Listening to the music of Stephan Micus – which is as itinerant and wide ranging as his life – is one of the most profound experiences possible today. Beyond categories and labels, this German artist was already way ahead of trends when he released his first album in 1976. Fifteen recordings later The Garden of Mirrors, his first CD since the phenomenal Athos, seems on the surface to be heading in a stylistic direction pointing towards the Orient. But…
Nice Guys
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Nice Guys is an album by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded in May 1978 and released on ECM the following year—their debut for the label. The quintet features trumpeter Lester Bowie, saxophinists Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell and rhythm section Malachi Favors Maghostut and Famoudou Don Moye.
Urban Bushmen
*2024 stock* Urban Bushmen is a live double album by the Art Ensemble of Chicago recorded at the Amerika Haus in Munich over two days in May 1980 and released on ECM in March 1982. The quintet comprises trumpeter Lester Bowie, saxophonists Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell and rhythm section Malachi Favors Maghostut and Don Moye.
A German Jazz Story
**English edition. 200 pp. Hardcover** Eberhard Weber is a central figure in the evolution of European jazz. A virtuoso who revolutionized jazz bass playing - he brought his instrument from the far corner of the stage into the spotlight – and turned it into a solo force. He began his career as a jazz bassist in the 1960s, and his band Colours, with the saxophonist Charlie Mariano, became one of the most successful jazz groups in Europe. His record Colours of Chloë (made for ECM) was a cult albu…
Zartir
*Deluxe packaging* The third album from Levon Eskenian’s remarkable ensemble is its most adventurous to date. As well as reclaiming the music of esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff for folk instrumentation, Zartir situates Gurdjieff in a tradition of Armenian bards and troubadours including Ashugh Jivani, Baghdasar Tbir and the legendary Sayat-Nova. In parallel, an emphasis on pieces for sacred dance reaches its apex in The Great Prayer, an entrancing collaboration between the Gurdjieff Ensemble an…
Belonging
Tip! "Belonging is a studio album by American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, recorded over two days in April 1974 and released on ECM later that year—the debut of Jarrett's "European Quartet", featuring saxophonist Jan Garbarek and rhythm section Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen. Because Jarrett's contract with ABC/Impulse! prevented him from performing with the quartet under his own name, the group became known as the 'Belonging' quartet." - Wikipedia