ECM Summer Campaign
Za Górami
Vocalist and violinist Alice Zawadzki makes her ECM leader debut with Za Górami ("beyond the mountains"), a luminous and deeply personal song-cycle that gathers melodies from across the folk traditions of Central and Eastern Europe, the Sephardic and…
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…
Unfolding
French clarinet master Louis Sclavis and pianist Benjamin Moussay in a spare, searching duo. Composition meets free improvisation in delicate, chamber-like dialogues. European improvised music at its most refined.
Life Goes On
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 …
Touch of Time
Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and pianist Harmen Fraanje in a duo of whispers: fragile melodies, ghostly vocals, electronic shadows and open silence. Ambient, melancholy and deeply atmospheric.
Garden Of Expression
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 alb…
Andando El Tiempo
Andando el Tiempo features new music of wide emotional compass by Carla Bley, and underlines her originality and resourcefulness as a jazz composer. “Saints Alive!” sets up animated conversations between the three musical participants with striking …
The Melody At Night, With You
Keith Jarrett's most tender solo album, taped at home during recovery from illness as a gift to his wife. Standards and folk songs played with disarming simplicity. Hushed, fragile and deeply moving.
Places
A cornerstone of the early Nordic ECM sound: Jan Garbarek's keening saxophone over shifting, atmospheric backdrops, with John Taylor, Bill Connors and Jack DeJohnette. Glacial, majestic, carved from northern light.
Le pas du chat noir
One of ECM's best-loved albums: oud master Anouar Brahem in a hushed, nocturnal trio with piano and accordion, dissolving Arabic music, European chamber music and jazz into pure melody and space. A modern classic.
Officium
ECM's landmark cross-over: Jan Garbarek's saxophone improvising around medieval and Renaissance chant sung by The Hilliard Ensemble, recorded in a monastery. Sublime, meditative and utterly unclassifiable.
Khmer
The landmark that redefined the ECM trumpet album: Nils Petter Molvaer fuses Nordic trumpet with ambient, dub, electronics and drum'n'bass. A manifesto for future jazz; cinematic and groundbreaking.
Compassion
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 c…
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 Jaz…
Trio Tapestry
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…
En Attendant
“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…
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 Thinki…
Characters On A Wall
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 subj…
Strands (Live At The Danish Radio Concert Hall)
"When we walked out on stage it felt like a homecoming,” says Jakob Bro of this texturally spacious and emotionally charged live recording from Copenhagen, on which three of the defining protagonists of improvisation in Denmark, leading musicians fro…
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), …