Ralph Alessi’s fourth appearance as a leader for the label follows a singular album run that’s been met with nothing but praise from The New York Times to The Guardian. The latter lauded Ralph’s previous recording Imaginary Friends (2019) for its “elegant balance ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Harmonious sounding extravagances: In this inspired collaboration with conductor and baroque violinist Stefano Montanari, the masterful Italian reedman Gianluigi Trovesi extends the line of musical enquiry posited on his Prufumo di violetta album. Supported by a cast of players well-versed in the ancient sounds of period instruments and the art of historical performance practice, Trovesi ...
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
This powerful New Series album represents “a résumé and a departure” for Thomas Zehetmair, a summing up of his work with the Royal Northern Sinfonia. In his years as Music Director of the British chamber orchestra, Zehetmair was noted both for bringing compelling new music into the repertoire and for ...
Composer: Bella Bartók (1881-1945), John Casken (1949), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Orchestral
This “short diary (of loss)”, as drummer Sebastian Rochford calls it, is offered as “a sonic memory, created with love, out of need for comfort.” It is dedicated to Rochford’s father, Aberdeen poet Gerard Rochford, 1932-2019, and to his family. Seb, one of ten siblings, wrote most of the music shortly after Gerard’s death ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
After Mette Henriette’s critically acclaimed, self-titled first recording comes Drifting – an album pervaded by trio conversations of idiosyncratic and original expression. Mette: “Drifting vividly captures a moment in time. I can hear everything still growing – in motion – on the record and how present my imagination is. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
The creative partnership of bassist Anders Jormin and singer/violinist/violist Lena Willemark has brought forth special music over the last two decades. Near the beginning of their association, first given exposure in 2004 with the album In Winds, In Light, Jormin observed, “How Lena Willemark manages to preserve her local musical ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
In a continued balancing act of combining inventive contemporary works with traditional classical repertoire on ECM New Series, this time the duo of Italian sisters Gazzana – violinist Natascia and pianist Raffaella – ventures back to the 19. century for impassioned interpretations of Robert Schumann’s sonata op. 105 and Edvard Grieg’s sonata ...
Composer: Tonu Korvits (1969), Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian
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 ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre:
In November 2021, bassist Arild Andersen brought his new quartet with saxophonist Marius Neset, pianist Helge Lien and drummer Håkon Mjåset Johansen to Oslo’s Rainbow Studio. Norway’s pandemic travel restrictions having ruled out the participation of Manfred Eicher on this occasion, the musicians were on their own, ostensibly to ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Evgueni Galperine’s ECM New Series debut 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 ...
Composer: Evgueni Galperine (1974)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
German-American pianist Benjamin Lackner makes his ECM debut with a star-studded quartet of Manu Katché on drums, trumpeter Mathias Eick and Jérôme Regard on bass. Mathias and Manu share a longstanding association with the label and their respectively unique instrumental signatures can be traced across this set of exclusively original material – eight pieces by Benjamin, one ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Bordeaux Concert documents a solo performance, the last that Keith Jarrett would give in France, at the Auditorium de l'Opéra National de Bordeaux on July 6, 2016, and finds the pianist at a creative high point. ...
Genre: Instrumental
Subgenre: Piano
Ruins and Remains, a suite for piano, string quartet and percussion, was composed by Wolfert Breferode in 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Over time, however, it has come to embody meanings broader and more personal, with wide-ranging ...
Composer: Wolfert Breferode
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Piano Sonatas
The first complete recording of W.A. Mozart’s piano sonatas on the composer’s own fortepiano, performed by American pianist and Mozart-scholar Robert Levin. This comprehensive, 7-album-set also comprises unfinished fragments by the Austrian composer, here completed by Levin ...
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 –1791)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Instrumental
Their collaboration has been hailed as a summit meeting of two jazz masters. Enrico Rava, trumpeter from Trieste, and Fred Hersch, pianist from Cincinatti, share a deep affection for the tradition and a profound sense for melodic invention. In this recording, with flugelhorn and piano glowing in the superb acoustic of the Lugano studio, Rava and Hersch explore some much-loved standards: ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
On ars moriendi Paul Giger looks at life’s flowing patterns, at death and renewal, as he brings together compositions by Bach and new music drawing inspiration from the work of painter Giovanni Segantini and Swiss folk traditions. The album was recorded in Maloja, where Segantini spent the last years of his life. ...
Composer: Paul Giger (1952), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
On The Next Door Julia Hülsmann returns with the quartet from 2019’s Not Far From Here, and presents her unique pianistic voice in a varied programme of almost exclusively original music, composed by herself and her colleagues – tenor saxophonist Uli Kempendorff, Marc Muellbauer on double bass and drummer Heinrich Köbberling. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre:
Heiner Goebbels: A House of Call - My Imaginary Notebook
A cycle of invocations, prayers, poems and songs for large orchestra, A House of Call incorporates recordings of sounds and voices from all over the world collected by Heiner Goebbels during his travels, research, and chance encounters. The cycle is a response to the history of these recordings and to their complexity, rawness and radiance. ...
Composer: Heiner Goebbels (1952)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Orchestral
The grandmaster of improvised bass and the electronics-playing son of Hungary’s great contemporary composer share a deep commitment to making new music in the moment, informed by their different lives and experiences. With his subtle use of synthesizers and digital percussion, György Kurtág Jr shapes shifting spaces for Barre Phillips to ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Drummer Gard Nilssen’s ECM leader debut follows acclaimed recordings for the label with the Maciej Obara Quartet. Elastic Wave presents Nilssen’s powerful trio with fellow Norwegian André Roligheten on reeds and Swedish bassist Petter Eldh (recently heard with Kit Downes). ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
