Steve Kuhn is the all-purpose element: his presence heightens any musical concoction. Like no jazz pianist I know, he is aware of the negative spaces between his notes and shapes those spaces to suit the emotional needs of the tune. And what a set of tunes we have in Non-Fiction, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
La misteriosa musica della Regina Loana
This hugely enjoyable and highly inventive album is dedicated to the late Umberto Eco, a lifelong friend of accordionist Gianni Coscia and an ardent champion of this particular duo. Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna, a meditation on the nature of memory, inspires ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Mainstream Jazz
The album title is the programme in this meeting of remarkable artists brought together to arrange and interpret traditional music of Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Armenia, and to play original songs by Anatolian saz player Cihan Türkoğlu and lyricist Agathi Dimitroukas. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Vocal
Led by nyckelharpa virtuoso Marco Ambrosini – first heard on ECM with Rolf Lislevand – Ensemble Supersonus applies its unique instrumental blend, capped by the otherworldly overtone singing of Anna-Maria Hefele, to very wide-ranging repertoire. Building bridges between cultures and traditions, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Mainstream Jazz
J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I (Live in Troy, NY / 1987) (Remastered)
“These are performances in which tempos, phrasing, articulation and the execution of ornaments are convincing,” wrote Gramophone of Jarrett’s first recorded account of The Well-Tempered Clavier. “Both instrument and performer serve as unobtrusive media through which the music ...
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Instrumental
Lost River is an evocative post-ambient, richly textured sonic event, and one of the outstanding beyond-category recordings of recent ECM history. Drummer Michele Rabbia and guitarist Eivind Aarset had played many duo concerts, and Rabbia had also worked with trombonist Gianluca Petrella ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Modern Jazz
‘Northbound’ is the second album from Norway’s Eivind Austad Trio, following 2016’s ‘Moving’ (Ozella). Once again, a handful of compositions by the bandleader are developed and given their final shape by the joint efforts of pianist Eivind Austad, double bass player Magne ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Modern Jazz
Zwiegespräche is a meeting of spirits. “We compose the same way,” said György Kurtág to Heinz Holliger on hearing this recording, which emphasises works for oboe by these two major composers. Both of them reference the entire history of music in their pieces, both incorporate dedications ...
Composer: György Kurtág, Heinz Holliger (1939)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
In this imaginatively shaped and sensitively played album –her third for ECM -Russian pianist Anna Gourariexplores musical connections and influences extending across the arts.Three suites of contemporary music are heard here.Alfred Schnittke'sFive Aphorisms(1990) draw impulses from ...
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), Giya Kancheli (1935-), Rodion Shchedrin, Arvo Pärt, Wolfgang Rihm
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Instrumental
Sphere is the 3rd album from Finnish pianist, Alexi Tuomarila and his trio comprising bassist Mats Eilertsen and drummer Olavi Louhivuori. The trio are joined by guest trumpeter Verneri Pohjola. Alexi Tuomarila has built a reputation as a fine jazz pianist and was described by Jazz Times as ‘...one of the next big deals on jazz piano’. ...
Composer: Alexi Tuomarila
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Reto Bieri’s solo album Contrechant, released in 2011, was widely praised for the Swiss clarinettist’s beauty of tone and his uncommon expressiveness with extended instrumental techniques. Quasi Morendo begins with a new exploration of one of the pieces featured on Contrechant, ...
Composer: Johannes Brahms (1833–1887), Gérard Pesson (1958), Salvatore Sciarrino (1947)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
Improvising vocalist, folk singer, storyteller, pianist: on her ECM debut Areni Agbabian focuses the range of her skills in music that casts a quiet spell. A sparse music in which voice, piano and the subtle percussion of Nicolas Stocker (last heard on ECM with Nik Bärtsch’s Mobile ensemble), ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Vocal
Franz Schubert: Sonatas & Impromptus
In the latest chapter in András Schiff’s ongoing documentation of Franz Schubert’s music, the great pianist plays the Four Impromptus D 899, and compositions from 1828, the last year of Schubert’s too brief life: The Three Pieces D 946 (“impromptus in all but name” notes Misha Donat ...
Composer: Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Instrumental
Epistrophy (Live At The Village Vanguard, New York, NY / 2016)
Like the duo’s acclaimed ECM release Small Town of 2017 – which The Guardian called “wistful and mesmerizing… tonally ingenious and haunting” – the new Epistrophy by guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan was recorded at New York City’s Village Vanguard. The album once again captures ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
“Avec Le Temps” is the new exciting Giovanni Guidi’s project: the band has recorded an album for ECM that will be released on March 2019 and it is composed by the most talented italian musicians: Francesco Bearzatti on tenor sax/clarinet (the most important italian sax player of ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
The Transitory Poems (Live At Liszt Academy, Budapest / 2018)
Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn, two of creative music’s most resourceful players, learned to meld and mesh their artistic approaches inside Roscoe Mitchell’s Note Factory ensemble (as documented on Mitchell’s 2007 recording Far Side). Since then, Iyer and Taborn have continued ...
Genre: Instrumental
Subgenre: Piano
Four years after the critically lauded Eight Winds the Athens-based Sokratis Sinopolous Quartet returns with the aptly-named Metamodal. A unique band, the quartet subtly sifts a vast pool of influence, its music informed by the players’ experience of folk forms, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre:
Christy Doran's Sound Fountain Trio (with Franco Fontanarrosa on Bass and Lukas Mantel on Drums) explores the musical territories pushing to the limits the capabilities of the standard guitar trio. In his 70th year of age, the guitarist now wants to immerse himself in a fountain of youth ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Mainstream Jazz
Imaginario: De un libro de música de vihuela
The brilliant soprano María Cristina Kiehr, together with lutenist-vihuelist Ariel Abramovich, presents her first solo album devoted to Renaissance music. With her broad experience in sixteenth-century polyphonic repertoire (in La Colombina and Ensemble Daedelus, among others), ...
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Vocal
With Absinthe, his second release for ECM, guitarist Dominic Miller has created an album colored by a distinct atmosphere. “The first thing that came to me before I wrote any tunes was the title,” he says. “Living in the South of France, I am fascinated by Impressionism. Sharp light and witchy mistrals, combined with strong alcohol and intense hangovers must have ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
