Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

*2024 stock* Tribute is a live double album by the Keith Jarrett Trio recorded at the Kölner Philharmonie on October 15, 1989 and released on ECM a year later. The trio—Jarrett's "Standards Trio"—features rhythm section Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette.

Walter Fähndrich's album "Viola" is a beautiful and captivating collection of works for the viola. Fähndrich's skills as a violist are on full display as he expertly navigates through a variety of pieces, showcasing the instrument's rich and versatile sound. From hauntingly melancholic melodies to lively and energetic compositions, "Viola" takes listeners on a journey through a range of emotions. Fähndrich's impeccable technique and emotional depth make this album a must-listen for any classical…

"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.

Collaborators for two decades, Marcia Basssett (guitar) and Samara Lubelski (violin) play electric improvisation. This is their 8th duo release and first on CD and streaming.

This is the first collaboration between Australian improvisor Chloë Sobek who plays the Renaissance precursor to the double bass, the violone and New York saxophonist Time Berne.

*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…

*2024 stock* Terje Rypdal’s Waves (recorded 1977) announced the beginning of the Norwegian guitarist’s association with Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, which continues to this day. The album also introduced one of Terje’s most enduringly popular pieces, “Per Ulv.” “Rypdal’s album is a series of sonic excursions ranging from the expressionist to the impressionist…” wrote Record World. “Rypdal’s guitar and Mikkelborg’s trumpet are well-matched, with Manfred Eicher’s typically superb production …

*2024 stock* The Survivors’ Suite, recorded in 1976, is the crowning achievement of Keith Jarrett’s “American Quartet” with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, and one of the all-time enduring masterpieces in the ECM catalogue. Melody Maker: “The Survivors’ Suite is a brilliantly organized and full-blooded work which provides the perfect setting for all four talents. This is a very complete record. It creates its own universe and explores it thoroughly, leaving the listener awed and sat…

*2024 stock* “I consider this one of my most richly lyrical and consistently inspired works,” wrote Keith Jarrett of “Mirrors”, the almost half-hour long concluding piece on Arbour Zena. “Jan Garbarek’scontribution is irreplaceable and ecstatic.” It is easy to agree that Arbour Zena as a whole is one of Jarrett’s most exceptional albums. Evocative writing for strings, beautiful playing by Keith and Jan and by Charlie Haden at his most soulful, and a glowing panoramic production make this 1975 re…

*2024 stock* John Abercrombie’s ECM debut Timeless (recorded 1974) has proven to be exactly that. This fiery session with Jack DeJohnette and Jan Hammer still sounds as fresh as the year it was released. “Timeless comes as a major surprise in terms of its depth, scope and inventiveness,” wrote Tim Buckley’s guitarist Lee Underwood in the L.A. Free Press. "[It] indicates that John Abercrombie is a major musical voice of tomorrow.”

*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.

*2024 stock* Charles Lloyd’s sixth ECM album is both a departure and a homecoming for the Memphis-born and California-based tenorist, introducing new music and revisiting archive favourites (including the epic "Forest Flower"), and featuring an all-star line-up. With his "Scandinavian" band currently on hold,this is Lloyd’s first all-American album in a long while – Dave Holland qualifies as an honorary American by now – with all the differences of cultural emphasis that this implies. ECM vetera…

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, recorded at Stu…

The great saxophonist Joe Lovano has appeared on a number of ECM recordings over the last four decades, including much-loved albums with Paul Motian, Steve Kuhn and John Abercrombie. Trio Tapestry is his first as a leader for the label, introducing a wonderful new group and music of flowing lyricism, delicate texture, and inspired interplay. Lovano and pianist Marilyn Crispell are in accord at an advanced level inside its structures. “Marilyn has such a beautiful sound and touch and vocabulary,”…

*2024 stock* “There is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth,” observed London Jazz News about Danish guitarist Jakob Bro’s trio with two kindred-spirit Americans: bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Joey Baron. This poetically attuned group follows its ECM studio album of 2016, Streams – which The New York Times lauded as “ravishing” – with what Bro calls “a dream come true,” an album recorded live in New York City, over two nights at the Jazz Standard. Bay of Rainbows rolls on waves o…

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, folk music,…

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, an emotion, a …

Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick’s expressive playing, which according to the New York Times radiates a “pristine yet penetrating tone”, is remarkably well complemented in the company of his gifted supporting players and fellow travelers. Violinist Håkon Aase, one of the outstanding improvisers of his generation, shadows the leader with lines that draw upon folk traditions as well as jazz. Drummers Helge Andeas Norbakken and Torstein Lofthus mirror their exchanges, as they interact with purring …

A striking album of new music from pianist/composer Carla Bley, whose trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow is now in its 25th year. Individual associations among the players go back much further: bassist Swallow first recorded music by Carla in 1961. So when Bley says “Life Goes On”, a lot of life is alluded to. The album, realized in the Auditorio Stelio Molo Studio in Lugano in May 2019, with Manfred Eicher producing, takes the form of three suites. The title piece begins as a stoical blu…

“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 Variations. …

*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…

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, and that be…

The debut album of Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry was one of 2019’s most talked-about releases. The trio’s musical concept – the Boston Globe spoke of “utterances of hushed assurance, lyricism and suspense” –  is taken to the next level on its second album, Garden of Expression, a recording distinguished by its intense focus.  Lovano, a saxophonist whose reach extends across the history of modern jazz and beyond, plays with exceptional sensitivity in Trio Tapestry.  And the music he writes for this …

180gr pure virgin vinyl LP in Gatefold packaging. Open Sesame was the first album Freddie Hubbard (1938-2008) made as a leader. Before that LP, however, he had participated on many albums as a sideman beginning with his debut recording on The Montgomery Brothers and Five Others, taped in his home town of Indianapolis on December 30, 1957. Open Sesame was the trumpeter’s first project with pianist McCoy Tyner, who during the same month would perform his first gig ever with the John Coltrane Quart…

2024 stock 180gr pure virgin vinyl LP in Gatefold packaging. "Mingus Ah Um", featuring an all-star group including Jimmy Knepper, John Handy, Booker Ervin and Curtis Porter (aka Shafi Hadi), was Charles Mingus’ first LP for Columbia. The Penguin Guide to Jazz called this album “an extended tribute to ancestors” and awarded it one of their rare crowns. Reception was also good when "Mingus Ah Um" was first issued. Leonard Feather gave the album a five-star rating in Down Beat, stating: “First let’…

This bundle includes the following LPs recently re-issued by Souflle continu: FFL083 - Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra - L'Inter CommunalFFL084 - Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra - Le Musichien The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by an “old hand” of French free jazz, François Tusques. Free Jazz, was also the name of the recording made by the pianist and other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charl…

CD digipack "Why would I sing in French? I have Breton culture, I speak Breton, I live in Brittany, and the Breton language is the language of this country..." So explained Kristen Noguès, of whom this is the first of the (rare) albums that she recorded Marc'h Gouez, is a fabulous voyage in space on each listening. Noguès learned the Breton language as a child, at the same time as the Celtic harp, -- taking lessons with Denise Mégevand, who would go on to teach others, notably Alan Stivell. At t…

*Edition Of 100 Hand-Numbered Copies* Obras Portuenses da Década de 20 is a project developed by Sonoscopia for Cultura em Expansão, a Porto City Council programme that seeks to decentralise and diversify the city's cultural offer. Since 2021, four commissions have been made each year to composers from Porto, or with a strong connection to the city, who portray their vision and listening to the city in a unique way. Given the territorial specificities of Cultura em Expansão, each composer is ass…

"The outsized sounds emerging from the Excelsior Mill organ captured here constitute a unique chapter in the Sun Ra story, a dizzying phantasmagoria that offers a whole new view on what Ra could do - It might thrill you; it might unnerve you; it might strum your heartstrings; it might spook the living daylights out of you. Most likely you'll experience all of the above before the jolting musical jeremiad is done. Pressed on violet vinyl! When you're Sun Ra, you don't need synthesizers to evoke a…

*2024 stock* 180-GRAM SOLID BLUE VINYL " Ahmad Jamal’s sometimes reputation – now mercifully long since put to bed – as a cocktail pianist suggests only the most superficial listening to his work. Take the effective title track of this album “But Not For Me”. Jamal and drummer Vernel Fournier give the theme considerably more rhythmic dynamism than the original score suggests and with the implicit hint of a Latin beat already running through the music, Jamal sets up a propulsive series of musical …

*2024 stock* "This Is Our Music" features Ornette Coleman’s (1930-2015) wonderful piano-less quartet with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. The group consisted of modern players working with the same concept: a freer way of playing jazz, which transcended the strict confines of melody, harmony and rhythm. They would create a whole new idiom by constructing music via the interplay of simultaneous collective improvisation. Coleman had made his debut on records in February/March 1958 with…

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…

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…

** 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…

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, …

Souffle Continu Records present the first ever vinyl reissue of Perception's self-titled album, originally released in 1971. The story of Perception takes root in a series of chance meetings, which seem at first glance unlikely, between musicians from differing horizons, be they geographic or esthetic. Jazz Magazine was spot on with an article from the period entitled, "Perception, four conceptions", before detailing the origins of the musicians (Hungarian for saxophonist Yochk'O Seffer, German …

Souffle Continu Records present the first ever vinyl reissue of Perception & Friends, originally released in 1973. After their first album which came out in 1971 on Futura Records (FFL 051LP), Perception wanted to rapidly record a second, but Gérard Terronès did not want to produce another, especially so soon after the first. Therefore, the only solution was to produce it themselves. It is thus completely logical that it came out on the label of the Association for the Development of Improvised …

** First ever LP reissue. Carefully remastered from the master tapes. 4-page booklet with rare and unpublished photos ** Heavyweight 180 gr.In October 1974, the first number of “L'Indépendant du Jazz”, a small self-produced magazine DIY -before punk supposedly invented the concept- was launched by Jef Gilson, Gérard Terronès, Jean-Jacques Pussiauand a few other specialists of a different kind of jazz in France, it looked at the already long career of Jef Gilson and in detail at the album with sa…

** First ever standalone vinyl reissue. Carefully remastered. 4 page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. Heavyweight 180 gr. LP ** In May 1972, the wave of anger and the thirst for freedom that had swept the world in 1968 arrived in Madagascar. The Malagasy youth took the opportunity to exile in search of a brighter future. Several of them, all jazz musicians and often polyintrumentalists, came to Paris with their afro hair and bellbottoms. Their names were Sylvin Marc, his cousin Ange "Zi…

* Deluxe reissue, with obi strip + 8 page booklet, 180g vinyl *To write these few lines, we spoke to saxophonist François Jeanneau, an old friend of Jacques Thollot who also played on several of his albums, including the “Watch Devil Go” which interests us here. He told us a story which, according to him, sums up the personality of Thollot. A noted studio had reserved three days for a Thollot recording session. The first morning was devoted to sound checks and putting some order in the score sh…