ECM Summer Campaign
Blue Maqams
On Blue Maqams, oud master Anouar Brahem brings his instrument into the very heart of the modern jazz tradition, recording in New York with a band of genuine giants. Bassist Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette and pianist Django Bates meet Brahem's Arabic maqam vocabulary on its own terms, translating its modal subtleties into the elastic swing, deep groove and open interplay of the highest level of jazz. Holland and DeJohnette, who have decades of shared history, provide a foundation that is …
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.
In Praise of Dreams
Jan Garbarek crafts a brooding, electronic-tinged song without words, with violist Kim Kashkashian and drummer Manu Katché. Spacious, hypnotic and cinematic; ambient chamber music, unmistakably ECM.
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.
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.
Swallow Tales
Guitarist John Scofield offers a warm and affectionate tribute to a lifelong friend and mentor on Swallow Tales, an album devoted entirely to the compositions of the great electric bassist Steve Swallow. Joined by Swallow himself and by longtime drummer Bill Stewart, Scofield revisits a songbook he has known intimately for half a century, having first studied with Swallow as a young musician. The trio recorded the whole set in a single relaxed day, and that spontaneity is audible in every track:…
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
On this absorbing recording Keith Jarrett steps away from jazz entirely to interpret the Württemberg Sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, performed on clavichord. Best known for his groundbreaking improvised concerts and his luminous jazz quartets and trios, Jarrett has long maintained a parallel life as a serious interpreter of notated keyboard music, and here he turns to one of the most adventurous composers of the eighteenth century. C.P.E. Bach's writing is famously restless and expressive,…
Facing You
Where it all began: Keith Jarrett's first ECM solo piano album (1971). Spontaneous compositions of startling melodic and rhythmic invention that foreshadow The Köln Concert. A cornerstone of jazz piano.
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.
Last Dance
Intimate duo standards from pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Charlie Haden, from the Jasmine sessions. Unhurried and conversational, two old friends; a poignant and beautiful farewell.
My Song
My Song is the beloved high point of the so-called "European" or "Belonging" quartet led by pianist Keith Jarrett, and one of the most cherished albums in the ECM catalogue. Recorded in 1977, it unites Jarrett with three of Scandinavia's finest musicians: saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen, a band whose chemistry was extraordinary. Where Jarrett's contemporaneous American quartet leaned toward fire and abstraction, the European group cultivated a more …
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.
Awase
Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch and his band Ronin deliver hypnotic 'ritual groove music': interlocking minimal patterns, funk-tinged grooves and Zen-like repetition. Precise, physical and mesmerizing.
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.
American Garage
The Pat Metheny Group at a joyous peak, with Lyle Mays, Mark Egan and Dan Gottlieb. Bright, anthemic and melodic, led by the soaring '(Cross the) Heartland.' One of ECM's most popular records.
Offramp
Offramp marks a bold and pivotal step forward for the Pat Metheny Group, the album on which the band significantly expanded its sonic palette while deepening its emotional reach. The great innovation here is Pat Metheny's embrace of the Roland guitar synthesizer, whose vocal, brass-like timbres opened up entirely new textural possibilities and would become a signature element of his sound for years to come. Equally important is the arrival of the Argentine vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Pedr…
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…
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 …
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…
Ritual
Keith Jarrett and conductor-pianist Dennis Russell Davies have been friends and musicalcomrades for forty years. In the mid-70s the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, under Davies’ directionpresented Jarrett’s chamber music. In the 90s Jarrett recorded the Mozart piano concertos with Davies and the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester. Near the beginning of their association, Jarrett invited Davies to play a composition he had written for solo piano. To listen to Ritual is akin toexperiencing the core of a Jarre…