Michael Mantler, Bjarne Roupé, Bob Rockwell, Pedro Carneiro, Roswell Rudd, Majella Stockhausen, Nick Mason, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Roland Kluttig

Concertos collects seven one-movement concertos by the Viennese composer and trumpeter Michael Mantler, each written for a single soloist and a chamber ensemble. Four decades after his work with the Jazz Composer's Orchestra, Mantler returns to the idea of joining free jazz playing to classical structures. The soloists come from new music, from rock and from jazz, and the pieces are some of his most dramatic since that period.

Each concerto is named after its solo instrument. Mantler plays the trumpet piece himself. Bjarne Roupé takes the guitar, Bob Rockwell the tenor saxophone, and Pedro Carneiro marimba and vibraphone. Roswell Rudd plays trombone, Majella Stockhausen piano, and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason percussion. Roland Kluttig, last heard on ECM conducting the music of Eberhard Weber, leads the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin. The ensemble was recorded in November 2007 at rbb Radio Studio 2 in Berlin as an ECM and rbb co-production. Mantler's own part was added in January 2008 at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, and Rudd's in February 2008 at Kaleidoscope Sound in Union City, New Jersey. Mantler produced the album himself and wrote liner notes, with an essay by Bert Noglik.

The writing aims at the particular sound of each soloist rather than at virtuoso display, and the solo instruments resurface inside the ensemble textures. Trombone, over ten minutes, gives the most room to Rudd, a long-time companion of Mantler's, whose part was improvised and recorded separately, as was the composer's own trumpet. Piano, for Stockhausen, is the longest piece at twelve minutes. It and Carneiro's MarimbaVibe appear to be fully written out. Percussion, the shortest of the seven, closes the album with Mason set against the full ensemble.

In Gramophone, Richard Whitehouse credited Kluttig's ensemble with ensuring "there is never a lack of expressive context" across the hour-long programme, and recommended the disc warmly. Ray Comiskey gave it five stars in The Irish Times in January 2009, finding that "the album has a consistent authorial voice throughout". In Jazz'n'More, Reinhard Köchl pointed to the subtle connections Mantler finds between improvising and non-improvising musicians.

CD edition, ECM 2054, first released in November 2008.