Jazz /
Out To Lunch!
Out to Lunch! remains one of the most strikingly original statements on Blue Note. Eric Dolphy marshals Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone, Richard Davis on bass, and Tony Williams on drums into a unit that treats his knotty compositions as springboards rather than straitjackets. Themes like “Hat and Beard” arrive full of angular intervals and odd accents, while the rhythm team tilts and lurches under them, propelled by Williams’ restless cymbal work and Davis’ flexible g…
Pat Metheny Group
The self‑titled Pat Metheny Group album is the moment an idea becomes a band. Emerging in the late 1970s, Pat Metheny Group arrive with a sound that feels fully sketched yet still buzzing with first‑chapter urgency. Pat Metheny’s guitar speaks in a clear, ringing voice that draws as much from Midwestern folk and rock radio as from bebop lineage, while the writing leans into expansive song forms rather than head‑solo‑head orthodoxy. The result is a music that sounds like it grew up on wide horizo…
Za Górami
Vocalist and violinist Alice Zawadzki makes her ECM leader debut with Za Górami ("beyond the mountains"), a luminous and deeply personal song-cycle that gathers melodies from across the folk traditions of Central and Eastern Europe, the Sephardic and Yiddish diaspora, Ladino balladry and her own original writing. Sung in a remarkable range of languages, the album feels less like a recital than a series of half-remembered lullabies and incantations, carried on Zawadzki's pure, weightless voice an…
Le pas du chat noir
One of ECM's best-loved albums: oud master Anouar Brahem in a hushed, nocturnal trio with piano and accordion, dissolving Arabic music, European chamber music and jazz into pure melody and space. A modern classic.
Blue Maqams
On Blue Maqams, oud master Anouar Brahem brings his instrument into the very heart of the modern jazz tradition, recording in New York with a band of genuine giants. Bassist Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette and pianist Django Bates meet Brahem's Arabic maqam vocabulary on its own terms, translating its modal subtleties into the elastic swing, deep groove and open interplay of the highest level of jazz. Holland and DeJohnette, who have decades of shared history, provide a foundation that is …
Touch of Time
Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and pianist Harmen Fraanje in a duo of whispers: fragile melodies, ghostly vocals, electronic shadows and open silence. Ambient, melancholy and deeply atmospheric.
Return To Forever
Chick Corea's luminous 1972 classic that launched a movement, with Stanley Clarke, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim and Joe Farrell. Sunlit Brazilian melody and weightless groove; a founding ECM statement.
In Praise of Dreams
Jan Garbarek crafts a brooding, electronic-tinged song without words, with violist Kim Kashkashian and drummer Manu Katché. Spacious, hypnotic and cinematic; ambient chamber music, unmistakably ECM.
Places
A cornerstone of the early Nordic ECM sound: Jan Garbarek's keening saxophone over shifting, atmospheric backdrops, with John Taylor, Bill Connors and Jack DeJohnette. Glacial, majestic, carved from northern light.
Officium
ECM's landmark cross-over: Jan Garbarek's saxophone improvising around medieval and Renaissance chant sung by The Hilliard Ensemble, recorded in a monastery. Sublime, meditative and utterly unclassifiable.
Swallow Tales
Guitarist John Scofield offers a warm and affectionate tribute to a lifelong friend and mentor on Swallow Tales, an album devoted entirely to the compositions of the great electric bassist Steve Swallow. Joined by Swallow himself and by longtime drummer Bill Stewart, Scofield revisits a songbook he has known intimately for half a century, having first studied with Swallow as a young musician. The trio recorded the whole set in a single relaxed day, and that spontaneity is audible in every track:…
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
On this absorbing recording Keith Jarrett steps away from jazz entirely to interpret the Württemberg Sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, performed on clavichord. Best known for his groundbreaking improvised concerts and his luminous jazz quartets and trios, Jarrett has long maintained a parallel life as a serious interpreter of notated keyboard music, and here he turns to one of the most adventurous composers of the eighteenth century. C.P.E. Bach's writing is famously restless and expressive,…
Facing You
Where it all began: Keith Jarrett's first ECM solo piano album (1971). Spontaneous compositions of startling melodic and rhythmic invention that foreshadow The Köln Concert. A cornerstone of jazz piano.
The Melody At Night, With You
Keith Jarrett's most tender solo album, taped at home during recovery from illness as a gift to his wife. Standards and folk songs played with disarming simplicity. Hushed, fragile and deeply moving.
Last Dance
Intimate duo standards from pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Charlie Haden, from the Jasmine sessions. Unhurried and conversational, two old friends; a poignant and beautiful farewell.
My Song
My Song is the beloved high point of the so-called "European" or "Belonging" quartet led by pianist Keith Jarrett, and one of the most cherished albums in the ECM catalogue. Recorded in 1977, it unites Jarrett with three of Scandinavia's finest musicians: saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen, a band whose chemistry was extraordinary. Where Jarrett's contemporaneous American quartet leaned toward fire and abstraction, the European group cultivated a more …
Unfolding
French clarinet master Louis Sclavis and pianist Benjamin Moussay in a spare, searching duo. Composition meets free improvisation in delicate, chamber-like dialogues. European improvised music at its most refined.
Awase
Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch and his band Ronin deliver hypnotic 'ritual groove music': interlocking minimal patterns, funk-tinged grooves and Zen-like repetition. Precise, physical and mesmerizing.
Khmer
The landmark that redefined the ECM trumpet album: Nils Petter Molvaer fuses Nordic trumpet with ambient, dub, electronics and drum'n'bass. A manifesto for future jazz; cinematic and groundbreaking.
American Garage
The Pat Metheny Group at a joyous peak, with Lyle Mays, Mark Egan and Dan Gottlieb. Bright, anthemic and melodic, led by the soaring '(Cross the) Heartland.' One of ECM's most popular records.