Since its formation in 1999, Enzo Favata’s Atlantico quintet has explored a musical space where Mediterranean roots, Latin American echoes and African influences merge. Probing the musical space where jazz, chamber music dynamics and improvisation meet, the group, never predictable, proves to have a strong sense of direction grounded in vast musical backgrounds, including the ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
After an ECM debut recording with a quintet (Movements in Colour, 2009), a critically lauded release with his Trio Libero, successful quartet recordings (Surrounded By Sea, 2015, Romaria, 2018) and an internationally acclaimed trilogy of albums in a trio with Carla Bley and Steve Swallow, on Salt Catchers English saxophonist Andy Sheppard presents a new trio with Italian ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Samuel Beckett: Stirrings Still (with music by Trevor Bača)
Stirrings Still was Samuel Beckett’s last message in prose, completed in 1987, and first published the following year. More monologue than story, it comes from a narrator on the edge between life and what lies beyond, which might be a vast wheatfield seen in black-and-white, or might be a swirl of stumbling memories. Beckett cherished music, in particular the songs and string quartets of Franz Schubert. His writing is musical, in its meticulous phrasing, its use of repetition, and often its form. Stirrings Still is an example: a composition of interweavings and developments. ...
Composer: Trevor Baca (1975)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
Windflower introduces a new trio, with the Japanese pianist Ayumi Tanaka, the US bassist Thomas Morgan and the Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen. Three players well-known to followers of musical directions at ECM, they shape their music together, weaving abstract and lyrical ideas in pieces whose flow and energy are influenced by chamber music and jazz, and by sensibilities of East, West and North. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Für A Sun That Never Sets erweitert Ralph Alessi die Quartettbesetzung um einen fünften Musiker für ein Set aus elf neuen Kompositionen, die Alessis komplexe Schreibweise aus Reflektion und Lust am Abenteuer weiter ausführen. Das letzte Mal arbeitete Alessi in einem Quintett mit dem Saxophonisten Ravi Coltrane in seinem Ensemble This Against That zusammen, festgehalten auf dem gefeierten Album Imaginary Friends von 2019. Anstelle eines Saxophonisten tritt diesmal der ... #!EN!#> On A Sun That Never Sets, Ralph Alessi expands the quartet configuration with a fifth player for a set of eleven new compositions that elaborate on Alessi’s intricate writing with deep thought and a fresh sense of adventure. The last time Alessi operated with a quintet was alongside saxophonist Ravi Coltrane in his This Against That ensemble, captured on 2019’s acclaimed Imaginary Friends, among several other recordings from that outfit. However instead of a ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
For Winter Songs, Steve Swallow’s first true leader date in over a decade (Into The Woodworks, 2013) and his first recorded appearance on the label after John Scofield’s Swallow Tales and Carla Bley’s Life Goes On in 2020, the master-bassist has gathered together a group of close confidants to accompany him through some of the most intrinsic and melodically immediate music he has ever written. With the expert but subtly applied horn section of Chris Cheek on sax and Mike Rodriguez on trumpet, ....
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Feebles, Fables and Ferns captures a rare one-time coming together of luminaries Mick Goodrick and Fred Hersch, both active in Boston at the time, recorded in Hersch’s studio in New York, in August 1988. Looking back at the session almost four decades later, Hersch notes how “the highlight to me is just the level of ensemble playing. There was a lot of profound listening ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
The “Paramount” in Joe Lovano’s new quartet can be interpreted as a statement of intent. “I feel like at this point I’m on the rise,” Joe says, seemingly unaware of the decades of experience and several dozens of leader-recordings under his belt. “We've arrived at this unique place with this quartet – It’s very special. It's a new thing. Recording this with Manfred [Eicher] in the studio, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
“Few contemporary jazz-influenced singers manage to sound so intensely like themselves while drawing on such a variety of genres, languages, and cultural backstories as the Albania-born vocalist Elina Duni,” The Guardian has noted, and Reaching for the Moon once again casts a wide net. It’s Duni’s third recording with UK guitarist Rob Luft, and where Lost Ships and A Time To ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Their last album with works by Robert Schumann, Edvard Grieg and Tõnu Kõrvits saw the Gazzana sisters Natascia and Raffaella “achieve the highest levels of instinctive expression”, according to the French daily paper Le Monde, and one could argue that this holds even more true for their new recording with music by Sergei Prokofiev, Arvo Pärt and Alfred ...
Composer: Serge Prokofieff (1891-1953), Arvo Pärt (1935), Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Instrumental
Judith Berkson, mezzo-soprano, pianist, composer and improviser returns on ECM with a compelling new album. “I view the pieces on this recording as a natural extension of my solo work,” says Judith Berkson. “This idea of songs that are quite intimate and personal, informed by jazz with pockets of improvisation but also drawing from song ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Vocal
Mountain Call is a peak achievement in Miroslav Vitous’s music, presenting the masterful bassist in varying ensemble configurations that prominently include the late French clarinetist Michel Portal and American drummer Jack DeJohnette, among others. Persuasively bringing together several tendencies and streams in Vitous’s work, the album bears testimony to his multiple skills as dynamic improviser, jazz composer, arranger and creative sampling pioneer. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Memento, the first duo release from US pianist Marilyn Crispell and Swedish bassist Anders Jormin, is an album of lyrical and subtle music-making, with compositions and improvisations that circle around ideas of memory and loss. Crispell previously appeared on Jormin’s cycle of sacred songs, In Winds, In Light (2004), and has long credited the Swedish bassist as an influence on her own musical thinking. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Patternmaster captures Mark Turner’s quartet at its most adventurous, sophisticated and hard-hitting. In his review of the West Coast-based saxophonist’s last quartet effort for ECM, 2022’s Return From The Stars, the Swiss daily Weltwoche’s Peter Rüedi spoke of “the leanest, most concentrated, and most inspired improvised chamber music imaginable.” It’s a fitting description of the tenor saxophonist’s powerful quartet endeavours ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
The release of con slancio, with premier recordings of music written by Swiss composer and nonpareil oboist Heinz Holliger, marks 40 years of collaboration with ECM New Series. Threaded throughout the album are strongly contrasting pieces dedicated to Holliger over the years by fellow composers. A spirit of vigor and enthusiasm animates both new pieces and tributes. ...
Composer: Heinz Holliger (1939-), Toshio Hosokawa (1955-), Jürg Wyttenbach (1935), György Kurtág (1926), Heinrich Sutermeister (1910-1995)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Instrumental
The Jewel In The Lotus (Remastered)
The Jewel in the Lotus is the debut album by jazz woodwind player Bennie Maupin, recorded in March 1974 and released on ECM later that year. The sextet's rhythm section consists of pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Buster Williams and percussionists Billy Hart, Freddie Waits and Bill Summers, with guest appearances from trumpeter Charles Sullivan. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Free Jazz
The upright bass is, of course, a fixture of many jazz ensembles, in which it often “solos” but only over or surrounded by other instruments. Strange, then, that the thought of it on its own should be such a difficult one to swallow (no pun intended). Where most musicians might have fallen back on the comfort of overdubbing and other postproduction trickery, Dave ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Avantgarde Jazz
Old And New Dreams (Remastered)
Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell came together to celebrate the work of mentor Ornette Coleman, but the repertoire of their Old and New Dreams quartet soon blossomed into a project of much wider scope, addressing also the musical experiences the players had made ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
One look at my other Keith Jarrett reviews is enough to confirm that I have been guilty of separating his skills as performer and improviser from those of his role as composer. After listening to an album such as In The Light, however, I begin to suspect that for him they are one and the same. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
Ruta and Daitya is jazz album by pianist Keith Jarrett and drummer Jack DeJohnette, recorded in May 1971 and released on ECM Records in 1973—one of Jarrett's rare performances on electric keyboard. Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette, who continue their formidable partnership to this day, join forces for an early and unique collaboration. This being the tail end of Jarrett’s electric period with Miles Davis, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
