Kenny Wheeler (1930-2014) was an unassuming giant of modern jazz, a daring improviser, and a writer of many beautiful and slyly unorthodox tunes. His recorded legacy includes albums now regarded as contemporary jazz ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Break Stuff features Vijay Iyer's long-running and widely-acclaimed trio with bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore, a band in existence for eleven years now. 'We keep learning from each other and from experiences ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Modern Jazz
The music of Souvenance, by turns graceful, hypnotic, austere, and starkly dramatic, follows Tunisian oud-master Anouar Brahem’s last ECM album, The Astounding Eyes of Rita after a five-year gap. “It took a long time to write this ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
Trio Mediæval – three Scandinavian women whose singing produces “a sound of extraordinary and consoling beauty,” says the Boston Globe – offer a collection of polyphony from the medieval to the modern titled after the North Wind ...
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
Hamburg ‘72 (Live at NDR Funkhaus, Hamburg)
The legendary Keith Jarrett Trio, playing live at NDR Funkhaus, Hamburg in July 1972, is captured at the very apex of its creativity on an album released for the first time by ECM. From the first notes, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Modern Jazz
RADHE RADHE: Rites of Holi By Prashant Bhargava
Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi is a vivid multimedia collaboration by composer-pianist Vijay Iyer and filmmaker Prashant Bhargava, who were inspired by the centennial of the Stravinsky-Nijinsky Le Sacre du Printemps to explore ...
Genre: Soundtrack
Subgenre: Film
Jazz Composers Orchestra Update
In 1968, composer-trumpeter Michael Mantler recorded The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra. Released on the JCOA label (and subsequently distributed by ECM), this classic, groundbreaking album of composition and improvisation ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Fusion
Nine years on from the widely-acclaimed Iron Stone recording, Scottish singer-songwriter, harpist and guitarist Robin Williamson returns with a new album of self-penned pieces – thoughtful and touching meditations on love, ...
Composer: Robin Williamson
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
Pianist Anna Gourari’s ECM debut, 2012’s Canto Oscuro, earned praise far and wide. Gramophone declared her version of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne “one of the most riveting on record,” while The Absolute Sound judged the entire disc ...
Composer: Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), Nicolai Karlovich Medtner (1880-1951), Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Piano
Ketil Bjørnstad’s passion for the English metaphysical poet John Donne (1572-1631) is a lifelong affair. His settings of Donne’s verse have led to recordings including The Shadow, Grace and the ECM album The Light. “After working with the texts of John Donne for more than twenty years, I still find ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
The Norwegian trio Jøkleba was formed in 1990, establishing itself as one of the most unpredictable groups on the Scandinavian scene. The present disc – the fifth Jøkleba album, but the first for ECM – finds old friends Jørgensen, Balke and Kleive working with pulse and colour and texture ...
Composer: Per Jørgensen, Jon Balke, Audun Kleive
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Avantgarde Jazz
Mbókò (Sacred Music for Piano, Two Basses, Drum Set and Biankoméko Abakuá)
With Mbókò, pianist-composer David Virelles – based now in New York but born and bred in Cuba – has taken the folkloric rhythms of Afro-Cuban religious ritual and transmuted them into a 21st-century music resonating with mystery and ...
Composer: David Virelles
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
The fourth ECM album for the Wasilewski Trio adds a special guest, the lyrical Swedish saxophonist Joakim Milder, whom the Poles came to know through performances with Tomasz Stanko’s Litania project. Amongst other affinities, the ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Having recorded more than 20 albums for ECM since the mid-’80s, The Hilliard Ensemble caps its discography before retirement with a final release: Transeamus, a collection of polyphony – in two, three and four parts – from 15th ...
Composer: William Cornysh (1502), Walter Lambe (1450-1504), John Plummer (1418-1484), Sheryngham (1500)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Choral
Konstantia Gourzi: Music For Piano And String Quartet
Athens-born and Munich-based composer Konstantia Gourzi makes her ECM New Series label debut. “What historical voices commingle in the current idiom of a composer whose cultural roots lie in the birthplace of rhetoric, but who ...
Composer: Konstantia Gourzi (1962-)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
Dances and Canons is the debut ECM recording of both composer Kate Moore and pianist Saskia Langhoorn. Moore was born in England in 1979 and lives now in the Netherlands (where she studied with Louis Andriessen).
Composer: Kate Moore (1979-)
Genre: Instrumental
Subgenre: Piano
Playground is the spiritual successor to drummer Manu Katché’s auspicious ECM leader debut: Neighbourhood. Auspicious, because said debut practiced just the communal sort of sharing it preached. The lineup here replaces ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Modern Jazz
The unique expressiveness of the work of Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) speaks to the listener with directness and nuanced layers of sound, the powerful, rhythmic stringency of the music testifying to the relentlessness of her vision.
Composer: Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006)
Genre: Classical
Tre Voci: Takemitsu / Debussy / Gubaidulina
On this compelling first release it revolves around Debussy’s 1915 Sonata for flute, viola and harp and its influence, most directly felt in Takemitsu’s shimmering ‘And then I knew ‘twas wind’. Debussy himself had been profoundly moved by his ...
Composer: Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), Claude Achille Debussy (1862-1918), Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
