Collected on our travels and taught to us by our friends, these are songs we have learnt and loved together. Gathered from Argentina, France, Venezuela, Poland and the deep well of Sephardic culture, these folk tales speak to the moon, the mountains, the rain, the madness of humans and the prophecies of birds. – Alice, Fred and Misha ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
The Danish String Quartet’s new album is a “retracing of musical pathways across the North Sea, a journey through the sounds of traditional music from Northern Europe, taking us from Denmark and Norway to the Faroe Islands, and to Ireland and England.” It follows on from Last Leaf, the Danish String Quartet’s much-loved 2017 release, which was Classical Album of the Year at NPR ...
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
On their second ECM duo album Romanian pianist Lucian Ban and US violist Mat Maneri find fresh inspiration as they follow the trail of Béla Bartók, revisiting the folk music that spurred the imagination of the great Hungarian composer who, in the early 20th century, collected and transcribed numerous pieces from Transylvania. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
Rekindling the familiarly flowing interplay with fellow travellers Thomas Morgan and João Lobo – the trio’s musical partnership goes back over a decade at this point –, on A New Day Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi moreover expands the group’s instrumental grasp with the introduction of American saxophonist James Brandon ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Outpost of Dreams introduces a new duo. Norma Winstone, as always quietly innovative as jazz singer and lyricist, brings her vocal subtlety and poetic sensibility to new pieces by Kit Downes, and to compositions by Carla Bley, Ralph Towner, and John Taylor. The programme is completed with fresh ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Vocal
This concert recording from Munich’s Schwere Reiter performance space features improvisation with an expanded palette of possibilities. “To work with these colours is a great challenge and joy!” says bassist Barry Guy of the glowing and ever-changing tints, timbres and tones radiating ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Recorded at Munich’s Muffathalle in September 2004, this previously-unreleased live album of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet is a fascinating document, capturing a developmental chapter in the group’s music: between the song forms of the Suspended Night repertoire and the improvised areas that the Polish players would explore on Lontano. The Munich show was a highlight in a ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Named after a lyric from the first piece in Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben song cycle, the Delian Quartett’s programme of Im wachen Traume combines said cycle – in a new arrangement for soprano and string quartet by the late Aribert Reimann – with music by Renaissance composer William Byrd and Baroque composer Henry Purcell. ...
Composer: William Byrd (1543–1623), Robert Schumann (1810-1856), Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Vocal
Paul Hindemith – Alfred Schnittke
In a programme that combines Alfred Schnittke’s Concert for piano and string orchestra with Paul Hindemith’s Symphony Mathis der Maler and the composer’s The Four Temperaments, pianist Anna Gourari together with the Lugano-based Orchestra della Svizzera italiana under Markus Poschner shines in powerful ...
Composer: Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Concertos
There’s a cunning intensity that inhabits this freshly etched programme of five extensive pieces plus an introductory miniature, presenting saxophonist Oded Tzur in a light that balances the extremes: bright inflections of fiery refrains go hand in hand with long passages of ruminative and deeply felt interplay. In the process, the saxophonist exhibits some of ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Silent, Listening is both a highly individual musical offering and an important contribution to ECM’s line of innovative solo piano recordings. It finds US pianist Fred Hersch, one of jazz’s most outstanding soloists, putting a poetic emphasis on alert, open improvisation while also embracing original compositions and a ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
“It has always fascinated me hearing from people the many different images and messages that any one piece of music can conjure up in their imaginations,“ says the British reedman John Surman in the liner note for his new quartet album. “Quite often the impressions and stories can be widely varied, and yet somehow seem ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer follows his acclaimed 2021 ECM disc Uneasy — the first to showcase his trio featuring bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey — with Compassion, another creative leap in league with these two gifted partners. The New York Times captured the distinctive qualities of this group, pointing to the trio’s flair for playing “with a lithe range of motion and resplendent clarity…
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
For the follow-up of his ECM-leader-debut La traversée, French saxophonist Matthieu Bordenave expands his trio of German pianist Florian Weber and French bassist Patrice Moret with the unique sensibilities of drummer James Maddren, whose unrelenting pulse adds deft counterpoint to the group’s already idiosyncratic sound. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Mysterious tunes and soundscape: A striking musical rapport between Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and Dutch pianist Harmen Fraanje is palpable in the duo’s quietly lyrical investigations on Touch of Time. These are delicate melodies and textures, flowing between two musicians, who are deeply in tune with nuances of tone-shadings and the ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Poetic nuances: “Gidon Kremer has perhaps never before revealed himself as intimately and as existentially focused as on this recording”, observes Wolfgang Sandner in his liner note accompanying the Latvian violinist’s new album Songs of Fate. Together with his Kremerata Baltica chamber ensemble ...
Composer: Raminta Šerkšnytė (1975), Giedrius Kuprevičius (1944), Jēkabs Jančevskis (1992), Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Vocal
With his inspired arrangements for folk instrumentation, Levon Eskenian has brought about a re-evaluation of the music of G.I. Gurdjieff (ca. 1877- 1949) and given us many new insights into the sources that inspired the Armenian-born esoteric teacher, philosopher and composer. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
Strands (Live at the Danish Radio Concert Hall)
“When we walked out on stage it felt like a homecoming,” says guitarist Jakob Bro of this texturally spacious and emotionally charged live recording from Copenhagen, on which three of the defining protagonists of improvisation in Denmark, leading musicians from three generations of Danish jazz, come together. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Tractus emphasizes Arvo Pärt compositions that blend the timbres of choir and string orchestra. New versions predominate, with focused performances from the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Tõnu Kaljuste’s direction that invite alert and concentrated listening. From the opening composition Littlemore ...
Composer: Arvo Pärt (1935)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Choral
Call on the Old Wise is Nitai Hershkovits’ first record for ECM, presenting his powerful pianistic ingenuity in a largely improvised solo setting. Nitai’s improvisations unfold like compositions being created in real-time: “It’s like I’m playing with several periods of music at once, but in a sort of augmented-reality-environment,” ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
