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
Shadow Plays (Live at Konzerthaus, Wien / 2020)
Craig Taborn’s Avenging Angel album was widely praised for the fresh ideas it brought to the solo piano idiom. “It reflects Mr Taborn’s galactically-broad interests,” said the New York Times, “along with his multifaceted technique,” while the Guardian saluted Craig’s “genius (there is no other word for it)" and his “world of whispered, wide-spaced figures, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Mathias Eick is among the most immediately recognizable soloists to have emerged from the Norwegian jazz scene, and his wistful trumpet sound and strongly melodic compositions have met with a positive response around the world. When his ECM leader debut The Door was issued in 2008, US magazine JazzTimes described the ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
“Their years together have resulted in an ensemble with an utterly symbiotic creative flow,” observed Don Heckman in the Los Angeles Times, when the Marcin Wasilewski Trio was first making its presence felt on the international jazz scene. The improvisational communication among the players has continued to deepen with the ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
With Overpass, recorded in Brazil in 2018, Marc Johnson makes a decisive and intriguing contribution to ECM’s solo bass recordings. It is an album that takes note of that tradition - Johnson has said that Dave Holland’s Emerald Tears was among the solo recordings that fired his imagination almost half a century ago - and builds ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Andrew Cyrille’s album The News carries forward the story from The Declaration of Musical Independence, the 2014 ECM recording described by Down Beat as “an unabashed exploration into time, pulse space and atmosphere…ambitious yet simple, rich yet stripped-down, challenging yet infinitely satisfying.” The New York Times cited the album ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
