The grandmaster of improvised bass and the electronics-playing son of Hungary’s great contemporary composer share a deep commitment to making new music in the moment, informed by their different lives and experiences. With his subtle use of synthesizers and digital percussion, György Kurtág Jr shapes shifting spaces for Barre Phillips to ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Drummer Gard Nilssen’s ECM leader debut follows acclaimed recordings for the label with the Maciej Obara Quartet. Elastic Wave presents Nilssen’s powerful trio with fellow Norwegian André Roligheten on reeds and Swedish bassist Petter Eldh (recently heard with Kit Downes). ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Hellbound Train: An Anthology (2022 Remaster)
Hellbound Train is a double-album retrospective from Steve Tibbetts with music selected by the US guitarist from 40 years of recordings on ECM . Neatly divided into electric and acoustic chapters, the anthology juxtaposes pieces originally featured on the albums Northern Song, Safe Journey, Exploded View, Big Map Idea, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Fusion
German violinist Carolin Widmann’s imaginative solo recital spans a thousand years of music history from Hildegard vom Bingen’s antiphon Spiritus sanctus vivificans vita to Three Miniatures by George Benjamin. En route, Widman’s “little encyclopaedia” embraces compositions by Eugène Ysaÿe and George Enescu, pieces that brought new expressive ...
Composer: George Enescu (1881-1955), Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), George Benjamin (b. 1960), Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Instrumental
The Danish String Quartet's Grammy-nominated Prism project, linking Bach fugues, Beethoven quartets and works by later masters, receives its fourth installment. The penultimate volume of the series combines Bach's Fugue in G minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier (in the arrangement by Viennese composer Emanuel Aloys Frster) with Beethoven's String Quartet Op. ...
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
On his follow-up to Here Be Dragons New York-based saxophonist Oded Tzur and his collaborators apply their subtle dialect in a more intense space, exploring the nuances and colours of the saxophonist’s self-fashioned raga in a suite-like sequence of quiet meditations and powerful exclamations. Throughout Isabela a heightened sense of urgency prevails, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
John Scofield’s first guitar-solo-recording ever gives a résumé of all the influences and idioms he has cultivated over his career in performances on guitar, accompanied by his own rhythmic pulse and chordal backing using a loop machine. Besides jazz, John is known to have always also had a soft spot for the rock and roll and country music he grew up with, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Heinz Holliger’s “dream opera” Lunea which was premiered, to great acclaim, at Opernhaus Zurich, interweaves strands from the life and mind of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch (1802-1850), the Hungarian-born Austrian poet who wrote under the name Nikolaus Lenau. Lenau’s last, fragmentary writings have fired Holliger’s imagination and led to the creation of an intricately inventive work with a ...
Composer: Heinz Holliger (1939-)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Vocal
Hafla is the third album from Norwegian keyboardist-composer-arranger Jon Balke’s Siwan, launched in 2007 as a meeting point for musicians of strikingly different backgrounds and experiences. Siwan celebrates the concept of coexistence and cooperation, making the case for the positive attributes of cultural diversity, as it looks back into history and forwards towards new models for shared work. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
On the album Opening, Tord Gustavsen reveals a fresh angle to his particularly unique trio investigations into Scandinavian folk hymns, gospel, chorale and jazz, as he introduces a different voice on bass. With a new fellow-traveller on board and its recording premiere in Lugano's Auditorio Stelio Molo, the trio discovers inspired new ways to interact with each other, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Mark Turner’s writing for his quartet on Return from the Stars (titled after Stanislav Lem’s science fiction novel) gives the players plenty of space in which to move, on an album both exhilarating and thoughtful in its arc of expression. Solos flow organically out of the arrangements and, beneath the often-dazzling interplay of Turner’s tenor and Jason Palmer’s trumpet, the rhythm section of Joe Martin and Jonathan Pinson roams freely. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
There is a searching, yearning quality to Naked Truth, and a raw beauty and vulnerability in Avishai Cohen’s trumpet sound throughout. Very much music-of-the moment, found and shaped in the course of a remarkable recording session in the South of France, Naked Truth takes the form of an extemporaneous suite. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Weinberg: Sonatas for Violin Solo
The three sonatas of Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg, written in 1964, 1967 and 1979, are among the most richly creative and technically challenging 20th century works for solo violin, and their radical expressivity draws the listener in. Gidon Kremer, a key figure in the revival of interest in Weinberg’s ...
Composer: Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Instrumental
Kit Downes joins forces with long-time collaborators Petter Eldh on bass and James Maddren on drums for a carefully assorted piano trio programme that treads gentle lyricism and bold creative outbursts in equal measures. Downes, whose prior ECM offering Dreamlife of Debris was termed a “work of otherworldly beauty” by BBC Music Magazine, carves out some of his most ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Leoš Janáček: On An Overgrown Path
On An Overgrown Path, Leoš Janáček’s 15 pieces-spanning piano cycle, is here presented in a reshaped guise, arranged for string orchestra and played by the Camerata Zürich under lead violinist Igor Karsko’s direction. This is the premiere recording of the adaption, written by Daniel Rumler in 2017. ...
Composer: Leos Janacek (1854-1928)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
Jorge Rossy turns to vibraphone and marimba and delivers a trio set filled with momentous originals for his ECM leader-debut. Marked by their immediate melodic appeal, the vibraphonist’s lines are in lively interplay with his colleagues, Robert Landfermann on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums. After Jorge’s recent contribution on drums to Jakob ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Enrico Rava, long a key figure in European jazz, has been a mentor for successive generations of Italian players. His celebratory Edizione Speciale, recorded live at the Middelheim Festival in Antwerp, brings together a team of young improvisers who play his music with fire and élan, accompanying his fountain of melodic ideas, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Modern Jazz
"Subaqueous Silence", pianist Ayumi Tanaka’s leader debut for ECM – following critically acclaimed releases with Thomas Strønen (Lucus, Bayou) – is a strikingly original statement. Tanaka met bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen and drummer Per Oddvar Johansen shortly after arriving in Oslo a decade ago and they have been developing their musical ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Kurtág: Six moments musicaux; Officium breve / Dvořák: String Quintet, Op. 97
On their ECM New series debut, the Boston-based Parker Quartet, hailed by the Washington Post for “exceptional virtuosity and imaginative interpretation,” play music of György Kurtág and are joined by violist Kim Kashkashian, one of the quarter’s early mentors, to play Dvořák. ...
Composer: György Kurtág (1926), Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
J.S. Bach: Three Or One - Transcriptions by Fred Thomas
Fred Thomas is an ECM artist who studied at the Royal Academy of Music and is one of London's most sought after multi-instrumentalists and composer/arranger/producers. Here is Johann Sebastian Bach in transfigured light: with organ chorale preludes, vocal cantata movements and orchestral sinfonias 24 pieces ...
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
