Jazz /
Lucus
*2024 stock* Norwegian drummer/composer Thomas Strønen presents a revised edition of his acoustic collective Time Is A Blind Guide, now trimmed to quintet size, and with a new pianist in Wakayama-born Ayumi Tanaka. Tanaka has spoken of seeking associative connections between Japan and Norway in her improvising, a tendency Strønen seems to be encouraging with his space-conscious writing for the ensemble, letting in more light. As on the group’s eponymously-titled and critically-lauded debut album…
Romaria
*2024 stock* Andy Sheppard’s quartet extends the musical explorations begun on the 2015 release Surrounded By Sea, an album praised by Télérama for its “poignant serenity.” In this new programme of compositions by Sheppard (plus the title track by Brazilian singer-songwriter Renato Teixeira), the drones and washes of Eivind Aarset’s guitar and electronics – aided by the generous acoustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI – help to establish a climate in which improvisation can take place. T…
The Dreamer Is The Dream
*2024 stock* or his third ECM release as a leader, Chris Potter presents a new acoustic quartet that naturally blends melodic rhapsody with rhythmic muscle. The group includes superlative musicians well known to followers of ECM’s many recordings from New York over the past decade: keyboardist David Virelles, bassist Joe Martin and drummer Marcus Gilmore, who each shine in addition to the leader on multiple horns. The Dreamer Is the Dream features Potter on tenor saxophone – the instrument that …
Streams
*2024 stock* On his second leader album for ECM – following on from the prizewinning Gefion – Danish guitarist Jakob Bro continues to refine his trio project, with its emphases on melody, sound, space, layered textures and interaction. The rapport between Bro and Thomas Morgan (Bro calls him “my musical soul mate”) has become something extraordinary, and often guitarist and bassist develop improvisational ideas in parallel. There’s an historical aptness, too, in the choice of Joey Baron as the b…
Spirit
2025 stock! Spirit is the debut album of Brede Sørum Quartet, with Sørum himself as the frontman. The young quartet offers acoustic music that blooms with pure youth, but with a maturity and musical excess that will make even the most experienced jazz listeners open their ears. The written music is based on the band's ability to create and maintain energy over time with strong musical passion and an energetic interaction. The music opens up, and in good jazz tradition this allows the musicians t…
Temporary Kings
*2024 stock* With Temporary Kings two of the most distinct voices on today’s jazz scene present their debut on record as a duo. Engaging in inspired dialogue Mark Turner and Ethan Iverson here explore aesthetic common ground in the atmosphere of a modernist chamber music-like setting at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano. The saxophonist and the pianist had begun their association in the Billy Hart Quartet, where the two players featured sympathetically on two ECM albums by that band.
The ne…
Angular Apron
It's unreleased Oxley & Stabbins & Sirone & Thomas & Schoof!
Wave Of Sorrow
*2024 stock* "An evocative, lyrical recording.... The two draw heavily on Slavic folk influences, even as they mine the kind of airy, contemplative jazz harmonies associated with the ECM school." - David R. Adler, AllMusicWave of Sorrow is an album by Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail Alperin and Russian brass player Arkady Shilkloper recorded in July 1989 and released on ECM the following year.
Miroslav Vitous Group
*2024 stock* Between 1979 and 1982, the Miroslav Vitouš Group was the primary outlet for the abundant improvisational skills of leader Vitouš and John Surman. They made three ECM albums: this eponymously-titled disc from 1980 is the middle one. Vitouš and Surman were well-matched in lots of ways, with roots and influences that extended beyond jazz, a love of playing freely, a commitment to using all the sound potential of their respective instruments: Surman singing at the top of the baritone sa…
Skala
*2024 stock* Mathias Eick’s intensely melodic trumpet occupies the centre-stage in this album of self-penned tunes which will appeal to an audience beyond “jazz”. Against the powerful backdrops offered by his sleek, modern band, driven by two drummers, he delivers richly lyrical soliloquies.
Where The River Goes
*2024 stock* Where The River Goes carries the story forward from Wolfgang Muthspiel’s highly-acclaimed Rising Grace recording of 2016, reuniting the Austrian guitarist with Brad Mehldau, Ambrose Akinmusire and Larry Grenadier, heavy talents all, and bringing in the great Eric Harland on drums. Much more than an “all-star” gathering, the group plays as an ensemble with its own distinct identity, evident both in the interpretation of Muthspiel’s pieces and in the collective playing. The album, re…
Bayou
*2024 stock* A fresh and open music, delicate and space-conscious, is shaped as drummer Thomas Strønen and Ayumi Tanaka, previously heard in the ensemble Time Is A Blind Guide on Lucus, resurface in a new trio with clarinettist/singer/percussionist Marthe Lea. The group first came together at Oslo’s Royal Academy of Music, where for two years the players would meet each week for exploratory music making. Strønen: “We always played freely- drifting between elements of contemporary classical music…
Characters On A Wall
*2024 stock* Louis Sclavis’s 13th ECM recording finds the French clarinetist drawing inspiration from two sources – the street art of Ernest Pignon-Ernest, and the interpretive originality of a splendid new quartet. Pignon-Ernest’s works were previously the subject of Sclavis’s highly acclaimed 2002 recording Napoli’s Walls. This time Sclavis looks at a broader range of the artist’s in situ collages from Ramallah to Rome, in search of “a dynamic, a movement that will give birth to a rhythm, a…
En Attendant
*2024 stock* “There’s a galaxy of piano trios in today’s jazz universe,” the BBC Music Magazine has noted, “but few shine as bright as Marcin Wasilewski’s”. On its seventh ECM album the multifaceted Polish group illuminates a characteristically wide span of music. On En attendant, collectively created pieces are juxtaposed with Wasilewski’s malleable “Glimmer of Hope”, Carla Bley’s timeless “Vashkar”, The Doors’ hypnotic “Riders On The Storm” and a selection from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg…
Playing The Room
*2024 stock* Playing The Room bears testimony to the long musical friendship of Avishai Cohen and Yonathan Avishai. They began to explore jazz as teenagers in Tel Aviv, and have continued to play together over many years, with Yonathan making important contributions to Avishai’s group albums Into The Silence and Cross My Palm With Silver on ECM. Their first duo album begins with music composed by the trumpeter and by the pianist and concludes with a touching interpretation of Israeli composer Al…
Big Vicious
*2024 stock* Charismatic trumpeter Avishai Cohen launched his exuberant, home-grown band Big Vicious six years ago, after relocating from the US to his native Israel, rounding up players to shape the music from the ground up, and co-authoring much of its newest material together with them. The group is an association of old friends. “We’re all coming from jazz, but some of us left it earlier”, Avishai says, summing up the stylistic reach of his cohorts. “Everyone’s bringing in their backgrounds…
Live at Le Stadium
Seven years of effervescent activity: few free jazz groups can be proud of such longevity, especially with a line-up as stable as that of Perception. Yes, there would be several guest musicians, including Kent Carter and Jean-Charles Capon, on the second album... Yes the "existential problems" of Siegfried Kessler would necessitate him being temporarily replaced by Manuel Villaroel... But for the most part, it was the core quartet of the first album which would tour Europe, through concerts from…
La Chasse de Shirah Sharibad
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Workshop De Lyon's La Chasse De Shirah Sharibad, originally released in 1975. In France, in the years 1960-1970, musicians pondered over how to transpose the political struggle of free jazz onto a completely different political terrain. One of the first to do so was pianist François Tusques (agitator, theorist and militant) who recorded 1965's Free Jazz (CACK 020LP), and then continued with Le Nouveau Jazz (1967), French equivalents to th…
Madagascar Now - Maintenant 'Zao
** First ever standalone vinyl reissue. Carefully remastered. 4 page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. Heavyweight 180 gr. LP ** While he was working on the repertoire for the new version of his group Malagasy, with young Malagasy musicians he had met in Paris in 1972 (and who can be heard on the album "Malagasy At Newport-Paris"), Jef Gilson realised that two of his new discoveries, in addition to being established polyinstrumentalists (who both had sharpened their skills in the legenda…
Solaire
Reissue, originally released in 1971. Solaire, Siegfried Kessler, that is the least you can say! Aged four: learns piano. Aged six: his first concert. After this: studies classical music like everyone else... until the jazz of Jack Diéval and Stan Kenton turned everything upside down. So, it was goodbye to Bach... And hello to Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Ted Curson, and Archie Shepp (who he would accompany over a long period). In 1969, with Yochk'o Seffer, Didier Levallet, and Jean-My Truong, …