ECM special
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…
Arbour Zena
*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…
Continuum
Following three studio albums (Stoa, 2006; Holon, 2008; and Lyria, 2010) plus a double live album (2012) with his electric band Ronin, Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch now unveils a new release with his original ensemble, Mobile – whose lineup partially overlaps with the current Ronin formation.
Originally formed in 1997, Mobile (here enhanced on three tracks by a string quintet) represents the foundation of Bärtsch's ritualistic approach to music-making. This distinctive style has been sh…
Once Around The Room (A Tribute To Paul Motian)
2025 stock On Once Around The Room ECM recording artists and key jazz musicians from several generations unite in a small ensemble to celebrate the musical legacy of drum icon Paul Motian in a big way. Joe Lovano and Jakob Bro lead a party of seven through fiery originals that recall the idioms and idiosyncrasies which Motian brought to light over six influential decades behind the drums. Lovano and Motian had been intimate colleagues for many years with their most notable collaboration being th…
The New Quartet
The New Quartet stands as a landmark in modern jazz, capturing Gary Burton at a creative peak and introducing a band of extraordinary new voices. Recorded in March 1973 at Aengus Studios and now reissued in ECM’s “Luminessence” series, this album features Burton’s radiant vibraphone alongside guitarist Mick Goodrick, bassist Abraham Laboriel (in his debut recording), and drummer Harry Blazer.
The album’s repertoire is a showcase of jazz’s evolving language, with compositions by Chick Corea, Keit…
After The Requiem
Original 1991 LP edition Stepping into the territory of Gavin Bryars is like coming home, so familiar are the morphemes with which he composes his musical language. One of the most significant recordings in the Bryars catalogue, this disc offers a fine condensation of his spirited and nostalgic sensibilities.
After the Requiem dates from 1990 and follows his Cadman Requiem of the previous year. After completing the latter, which was written for the Hilliard Ensemble in memory of Bryars’s friend…
The Finnish/Swiss Tour
A landmark in avant-garde jazz, The Finnish / Swiss Tour captures the irrepressible energy and inventiveness of the Hal Russell NRG Ensemble live in Europe. Recorded in November 1990 at the Tampere Jazz Happening (Finland) and the Internationales Jazz Festival Zürich (Switzerland), this album documents the group’s first European tour and was originally released by ECM in 1991.
Led by multi-instrumentalist Hal Russell (tenor & soprano saxophones, trumpet, vibraphone, drums), the NRG Ensemble feat…
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…
Saudades
Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos’s Saudades album, recorded in March 1979, was the culmination of a dream for a musician who had long yearned to hear the berimbau in an orchestral context. This ‘concerto’ for an innovative player of a traditional instrument was made possible with the creative input of Egberto Gismonti, here the arranger of the material for strings, as well as co-composer and supporting soloist. The Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart was conducted by Mladen Gutesha (who h…
End To End
*2024 stock* Barre Phillips was the first musician to record an album of solo double bass, back in 1968, and he has always been an absolute master of the solo idiom. In March 2017, Barre recorded what he says will be his last solo album, the final chapter of his “Journal Violone”: it is a beautiful and moving musical statement. All the qualities we associate with Barre’s playing are here in abundance – questing adventurousness, melodic invention, textural richness, developmental logic, and dee…
Theory Of Becoming
The ECM New Series debut of Evgueni Galperine is one of the most strikingly original and evocative albums of the year. A composer of Russian and Ukrainian heritage, living in Paris since 1990, Galperine is working with sound, texture and dynamics in new and powerfully expressive ways. As he explains, the sound world of Theory of Becoming represents an “augmented reality of acoustic instruments, created from recordings made with real and virtual instruments. The numerous transformations the inst…
Sonatas For Viola / Piano And Viola Alone
*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…
Movies
This vinyl album by Micheal Mantler is new old stock from Ecm archives. For light relief from his darker, more existential works, Michael Mantler assembled two fine ensembles at the end of the 1970s to play music that might be described as the Thinking Man’s Answer to Fusion. Imagine walking into an art house cinema where the projector runs without film - the stories unfolding purely through Michael Mantler's haunting trumpet and the alchemy of his stellar ensemble. That's the experience of Movi…
Silence
This vinyl album by Micheal Mantler is new old stock from Ecm archives. Original first pressing – printed in the USA in 1977. The record has never been played and the vinyl is in mint condition. However, the sleeves are sealed but may have slight marks and ringwear on the cover and signs of aging. In 1977, Michael Mantler and Carla Bley's WATT label unleashed a quietly revolutionary take on Silence that still resonates today. This wasn't just a reissue - it was a complete reinvention, stitched …
80/81
Widely regarded as one of Pat Metheny's most inspired recordings and now considered a classic of instrumental and improvised music, *80/81* unveiled a bold new dimension of the then-26-year-old guitarist's sonic world. Released in 1980, this groundbreaking album marked Metheny's first collaboration with jazz luminaries from multiple generations, including bassist Charlie Haden, saxophonists Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker, and drummer Jack DeJohnette.
Drawing equally from the freewheeling spiri…
Budapest 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…
Travels
Over the years, Pat Metheny Group's Grammy-winning double live album Travels has earned a singular reputation among jazz aficionados as one of the most distinctive and impeccably recorded live jazz albums of all time. Upon its initial release, it appeared on numerous year-end best-of lists, with The Wire hailing it as simply "remarkable" and "superbly recorded."
The album captures the Pat Metheny Group during their 1982 US tour, a period when Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos had become a…
Ravensburg
*2024 stock* One of the pleasures of Mathias Eick’s Midwest album was hearing his vaulting trumpet supported by violin, an instrumental combination further developed on Ravensburg. The new violinist in Eick’s ensemble is Håkon Aase, one of the up-and-coming players of the Norwegian scene, whom attentive ECM listeners will already know from his work with Thomas Strønen’s group. The core Eick road band is further shored up by the addition of Helge Andreas Norbakken, who interacts excitingly with f…
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…
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…