★ECM Records
The Jewel In The Lotus
A spiritual jazz masterpiece, Bennie Maupin’s The Jewel In The Lotus returns on vinyl. Featuring Herbie Hancock and a stellar ensemble, this ECM classic blends meditative soundscapes and collective improvisation, inviting listeners on a timeless journey of musical discovery. An unsung modernist classic from 1974 – Pitchfork
Frozen Silence
*2025 stock* Frozen Silence is the third ECM release from alto saxophonist Maciej Obara’s Polish-Norwegian quartet bringing the story forward from Unloved and Three Crowns – and perhaps its strongest musical statement to date. Alert interactivity is the hallmark of the group’s approach in a programme of new Obara compositions inspired by the starkly dramatic landscapes of the mountainous Karkonosze region in south-west Poland. All four players make decisive contributions to the music. The pieces…
Compassion
*2025 stock* Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer follows his 2021 ECM disc Uneasy — the first to showcase his trio featuring bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey — with Compassion, another album in league with these two gifted partners. The New York Times captured the special qualities of this group, pointing to the trio’s flair for playing “with a lithe range of motion and resplendent clarity… while stoking a kind of writhing internal tension. Crucial to that balance is their ability to c…
Call On The Old Wise
*2025 stock* With Call on the old Wise Nitai Hershkovits delivers an entrancing solo album. In this largely improvised solo rendering, the pianist draws from broad influences, ranging from his extensive work in jazz contexts and cutting-edge contemporary explorations to his background in classical music. This immaculate balance of idioms gives rise to an abundance of colours and timbres, explored by a pianist, who has successfully forged his very own voice as improviser and shape-designer.
Wi…
The Living Mountain
*2025 stock* Austrian composer Thomas Larcher’s new album features premiere recordings of three strongly contrasting works. The Times has hailed Larcher’s music as a world “of haunting landscapes and dreams, stylistically disparate but fused by the composer’s astonishing ear and quizzical attitude to traditional forms”, a description borne out by the compositions here. The Living Mountain, for soprano and ensemble, draws upon the memoir of the Scottish poet and nature writer Nan Shepherd. Unerzä…
Elastic Wave
*2025 stock* Drummer Gard Nilssen’s ECM leader debut follows acclaimed recordings for the label with the Maciej Obara Quartet and with Mathias Eick. Elastic Wave presents Nilssen’s powerful trio with fellow Norwegian André Roligheten on reeds and Swedish bassist Petter Eldh. The group’s dynamic interaction, dancing sense of pulse and boldly etched themes – all three players contribute compositions – make Acoustic Unity one of the most engaging bands on the circuit today, able to address fiery an…
The Blue Land
*2025 stock* For the follow-up of his ECM-leader-debut La traversée, French saxophonist Matthieu Bordenave expands his trio of German pianist Florian Weber and Swiss bassist Patrice Moret with the unique sensibilities of drummer James Maddren, whose unrelenting pulse adds deft counterpoint to the group’s already idiosyncratic sound. Besides the soulfully angular rendering of John Coltrane’s “Compassion”, the quartet tackles eight Bordenave-originals that bridge the gap between chamber-jazz dynam…
A New Day
*2025 stock* Rekindling the familiarly flowing interplay with fellow travellers Thomas Morgan and João Lobo – the trio’s musical partnership goes back over a decade at this point –, on A New Day Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi moreover expands the group’s instrumental grasp with the introduction of American saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, who makes his ECM debut here. Not only is the ensemble scope widened; with Brandon Lewis in tow, new dialects and fresh perspectives are broached, and differe…
Imaginary Cycle (Music For Piano, Brass Ensemble And Flute)
Idiosyncratic, large-scale and in its fundamental disposition one of a kind, Florian Weber’s Imaginary Cycle, conceived for the unique instrumentation of brass ensemble and piano, is a hybrid of multiple musical languages that seamlessly blends the harmonious with the oblique. Here Weber presents a cycle in four parts, plus an opening and an epilogue, in which the German pianist is joined by a group of four euphoniums, a trombone quartet as well as flautist Anna-Lena Schnabel and Michel Godard o…
Freigeweht
Released in 1981, the debut of the legendary keyboardist from Eberhard Weber’s Colours band and later the Jan Garbarek Group, Freigeweht presented Rainer Brüninghaus as a highly original and idiosyncratic sound sculptor in his own right, accompanied by ECM stalwarts Kenny Wheeler on flugelhorn and drummer Jon Christensen as well as oboist Brynjar Hoff. In a review of the album from the year of its release, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung traced Rainer’s influences and minimalist …
Amaryllis
Return of the great American jazz trio that delivered the poll-topping "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway" in 1997. Material heard on "Amaryllis" is by turns thoughtful, touching, joyous and viscerally exciting. Some of the songs are well known – almost classics of new jazz – including Crispell’s "Rounds", Peacock’s "Requiem" and "December Wings, Motian’s "Conception Vessel". There are also a number of startlingly effective free improvised ballads. As leader Marilyn Crispell says, "There’s a great depth …
Skrifum
From the very first note, Norway’s Jon Balke proposes a new sonic dimension with Skrifum, continuing a line of inquiry begun with Warp (2016) and Discourses (2020), solo piano albums which also processed the acoustic environment in which the music was heard. Skrifum (the Icelandic word for “write”) takes things a step further. With the aid of electronic audio tool the Spektrafon, which he helped develop, Balke is now able to directly manipulate ambient audio sound from the piano while playing –…
Preludes And Songs
Pianist François Couturier and violinist Dominique Pifarély, major figures in French improvisation, have played together in many projects over the last 30 years, including their duo, which made its recording debut for ECM with the remarkable Poros in 1997. Preludes and Songs, carries the story forward, with its programme including music by both players as well as pieces by Jacques Brel, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and J.J. Johnson. With sensibilities informed by jazz and contemporary composi…
Relations
Musical messages from Oslo, New York, Basel and Lugano – recorded between 2018 and 2022 – are juxtaposed and recombined on an absorbing recording that features Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen solo and in a series of duets . With such partners as Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy, the musical frame of reference is very broad. Elements from Langeland’s’s archaic-sounding folk to Potter’s post-Coltrane saxophone and Taborn’s whirlwind modernist piano each find their p…
Defiant Life
Anchored in the idea that, despite all obstacles, the human experience casts a net of possibilities, Defiant Life – Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith second duo recording for ECM – proves a profound meditation on the human condition and both the suffering and resilience it entails. An ethereal iridescence glistens between Leo Smith’s unmistakable trumpet wail and Vijay’s textural key strokes on piano and Fender Rhodes, conjuring multi-dimensional spaces of thoughtful musical conversation. “We work…
Tractus
Tractus emphasizes Arvo Pärt compositions that blend the timbres of choir and string orchestra. New versions predominate, with focused performances from the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Tõnu Kaljuste’s direction that invite alert and concentrated listening. From the opening composition Littlemore Tractus, which takes as its starting point consoling reflections from a sermon by John Henry Newman, the idea of change, transfiguration and renewal resona…
Open, To Love
After Chick Corea’s Piano Improvisations, and Keith Jarrett’s Facing You, Paul Bley’s Open, To Love was the third fabulous chapter in ECM’s quietly revolutionary solo piano manifesto, whose impact endures and continues to influence improvisers today. In the liner notes to this Luminessence vinyl edition, Bley biographer Greg Buium writes, “After more than fifty years, Open, To Love remains an imperishable gem, lodged forever in the present tense, and among the great masterpieces in ECM’s vast c…
Lullaby
For Lullaby, Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick draws on the quartet formation in a programme that includes some of his most exploratory and improvisatory qualities, with a cast of ECM familiars Kristjan Randalu and Ole Morten Vågan on piano and bass, and new arrival Hans Hulbækmo on drums. There’s a sense of abandon within these melodic songs, as the musicians flow smoothly between harmonies, collectively building momentum from within the forms. Eick’s immediately recognizable and soothing tone i…
Under The Surface
Julia Hülsmann’s quartet resurfaces with a fresh Norwegian voice on horn in tow and presents an attractive batch of originals that finds the group thoughtfully exploring common ground with a knack for adventure. As on past outings, each quartet member contributes music to the session, the leader herself being responsible for half the programme. Saxophonist Uli Kempendorff’s introduction to Julia’s trio on 2019’s Not Far From Here already brought a new dimension to the group’s interplay – this se…
After the Last Sky
Eight years after Blue Maqams, Anouar Brahem returns with a poignant project, titled after a line of verse by poet Mahmoud Darwish, which asks “Where should the birds fly, after the last sky?” Graceful chamber pieces for oud, cello, piano and bass subtly address the metaphysical question and its broad resonances in a troubled time. While drawing upon the traditional modes of Arab music, Brahem has consistently sought to engage with the wider world, too, and found inspiration in many sources from…