Jazz /
Return From The Stars
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. Although Turner has been a frequent presence on ECM in c…
Lonely Shadows
After critically-acclaimed ECM recordings with the Maciej Obara Quartet (Unloved, Three Crowns), Polish pianist Dominik Wania delivers a solo album recorded in November 2019 in Lugano. Wania’s sensitivity to touch, tone and texture is informed by his classical background. But he also has the in-the-moment instincts of a great improviser, acutely focused on the unfolding details of the music in the responsive interior of the Auditorio Stelio Molo studio. The balancing of influences from both disc…
Human
In its review of pianist Shai Maestro’s ECM leader debut The Dream Thief, All About Jazz spoke of “a searching lyrical atmosphere, emotional eloquence and communal virtuosity that serves the music.” All of which also applies to Human, where Maestro’s outgoing, highly-communicative band with fellow Israeli Ofri Nemya on drums and Peruvian bassist Jorge Roeder becomes a quartet with the inspired addition of US trumpeter Philip Dizack. Shai’s expansive pianism is well-matched by Dizack’s alert, …
Uneasy
Vijay Iyer presents a powerful new trio, in which he is joined by two key figures in creative music, Tyshawn Sorey and Linda May Han Oh. “We have an energy together that is very distinct. It has a different kind of propulsion, a different impulse and a different spectrum of colours”. Repertoire on UnEasy, recorded at Oktaven Audio Studio in Mount Vernon, New York in December 2019, includes Iyer originals written over a span of 20 years, plus Geri Allen’s “Drummer’s Song” and a radical recasting…
Entendre
A fascinating solo album from the Swiss pianist, composer and conceptualist best known as leader of the bands Ronin and Mobile, Entendre offers deeper insight into Nik Bärtch’s musical thinking. As the album title implies Entendre is about hearing as a creative process, referencing the patient unfolding of Bärtch’s modular polymetric pieces, with alertness to the dynamics of touch, finding freedom in aesthetic restriction, serving the flow of each piece’s development while also taking the music …
Vermillion
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 compendious pieces to date on Vermillion. Replete with subtle twists and turns, the trio offers its idiosyncratic take on the piano …
It's Always Now
Ralph Alessi’s fourth appearance as a leader for the label follows a singular album run that’s been met with nothing but praise from The New York Times to The Guardian. The latter lauded Ralph’s previous recording Imaginary Friends (2019) for its “elegant balance of poignant, playful original compositions and gracefully probing improv” and declared it “his best album yet”. It’s Always Now however brims with arguments that there is a new contender for that title. On his new album, Alessi’s unique…
John Scofield
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, revealed here in unencumbered renditions of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and Hank Williams’ “You Win Again”. Between elegant and personal re…
Last Decade
German-American pianist Benjamin Lackner makes his highly melodious ECM debut with an all-star quartet of trumpeter Mathias Eick, the esteemed Manu Katché on drums and bassist Jérôme Regard. Mathias and Manu share an extensive recording history with ECM and their respectively unique instrumental signatures can be traced across this set of exclusively original material – eight pieces by Benjamin, one by Jérôme. The bassist and the leader’s partnership goes all the way back to 2002, when, in New Y…
Naked Truth
There is a searching, yearning quality to Naked Truth, and a raw beauty and vulnerability in Avishai Cohen’s trumpet sound on his most improvisational ECM recording to date. 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. For most of its length the Israeli trumpeter painstakingly leads the way, closely shadowed by his long-time comrades – pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassi…
Lebroba
Andrew Cyrille’s title Lebroba is a contraction of Leland, Brooklyn and Baltimore, birthplaces of the protagonists of an album bringing together three of creative music’s independent thinkers. Each of them made his first ECM appearance long ago: drummer Andrew Cyrille on Marion Brown’s Afternoon of a Georgia Faun (1970), trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith on his own classic Divine Love (1978), and guitarist Bill Frisell on Eberhard Weber’s Fluid Rustle (1979); these are, of course, players of enduring …
Circle - Paris Concert
When Circle took the stage in Paris in 1971, they weren't just performing - they were igniting a musical revolution. This extraordinary quartet, featuring Chick Corea (piano), Dave Holland (bass), Anthony Braxton (reeds), and Barry Altschul (drums), represented the cutting edge of jazz experimentation at its most vital.
Fresh from their tenure with Miles Davis, Corea and Holland were eager to push boundaries in an entirely improvised context. They found the perfect collaborators in Braxton - who…
Free At Last - Extended Edition
Revisited and remastered, with additional takes, texts and photos, here is the very first ECM session, recorded in Ludwigsburg in November 1969, featuring the great American pianist Mal Waldron, whose resume included work with Coltrane, Mingus, Dolphy and Billie Holiday. In his original liner notes, Mal wrote: “This album represents my meeting with free jazz. Free jazz for me does not mean complete anarchy… You will hear me playing rhythmically instead of soloing on chord changes.” As Jazz Journ…
Bordeaux Concert
Bordeaux Concert is a special document from Keith Jarrett’s last European tour. Each of Jarrett’s 2016 solo piano concerts had its own strikingly distinct character, and in Bordeaux the lyrical impulse is to the fore. In the course of this improvised suite, many quiet discoveries are made, and there is a touching freshness to the music as a whole, a feeling of intimate communication. Reviewing the July 2016 performance, the French press spoke of hints of the Köln Concert and Bremen-Lausanne in t…
The Song Is You
Their collaboration has been hailed as a summit meeting of two jazz masters. Enrico Rava, trumpeter from Trieste, and Fred Hersch, pianist from Cincinatti, share a deep affection for the tradition and a profound sense for melodic invention. In this recording, with flugelhorn and piano glowing in the superb acoustic of the Lugano studio, Rava and Hersch explore some much-loved standards: Jerome Kern’s “The Song Is You”, Thelonious Monk’s “Mysterioso” and “’Round Midnight”, Jobim’s “Retrato em Bra…
Affirmation
Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, an ECM musician for more than fifty years, is a masterful player who has always welcomed a challenge. His first recording with his new quartet – including rising stars Marius Neset and Helge Lien (both bandleaders in their own right)– is almost entirely improvised. The players make the leap of faith together and find and develop forms at the moment, an object lesson in spontaneous group creativity. Affirmation was recorded in November 2021 at Oslo’s Rainbow Stud…
Sphere
The Bobo Stenson Trio’s ability of covering far-reaching idioms and wide-ranging repertoire within the scope of their personal diction has become both hallmark and custom, inspiring the New York Times to say the pianist “makes sublime piano-trio records without over-playing. It’s pulsating, with long improvised phrases; it’s alive.” Sphere is primarily comprised of works by 20th and 21st century composers including Per Nørgård, Sven-Erik Bäck, and Jean Sibelius and offers two originals by Jormin…
Our Daily Bread
The third album from Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry finds the group continuing to extend its spacious and lyrical approach, with deep listening and intense focus. “Our Daily Bread is fueled by the rhythm spirit of expression that projects the mysterious world of music that lies ahead,” says master saxophonist Lovano in his liner note, and these elegantly fluid pieces and free-floating ballads indeed feel like songs of the soul. “The intensity comes not from ferocity but from depth of feeling,” wrote…
Plays The Music Of Carla Bley
Original 1990 LP edition. Experience the vibrant and soulful sounds of Sicily with Orchestra Jazz Siciliana's latest album, "Plays The Music Of Carla Bley." This dynamic ensemble pays tribute to the iconic composer and pianist Carla Bley, with their own unique jazz interpretations of her compositions. The album features a fusion of traditional Sicilian melodies and Bley's avant-garde jazz influences, creating a dynamic and captivating listening experience. Led by renowned saxophonist and conduct…
The Complete Fingers Remember Mingus
For the first time ever, the complete recording sessions for the Spotlite vinyl album ‘Fingers Remember Mingus’ expanded with bonus tracks. The original album sessions, and the extra tracks, were all recorded between 1979 and 1983. Co-produced by Jazz In Britain with Dave Green, who formed and led the Fingers quartet and who provided most of the recordings from his own tape archive and wrote new notes to complement the 24 page booklet which compiles contemporary reviews and articles about Finger…