J.S. Bach: Three Or One - Transcriptions by Fred Thomas
Fred Thomas is an ECM artist who studied at the Royal Academy of Music and is one of London's most sought after multi-instrumentalists and composer/arranger/producers. Here is Johann Sebastian Bach in transfigured light: with organ chorale preludes, vocal cantata movements and orchestral sinfonias 24 pieces ...
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
Shadow Plays (Live at Konzerthaus, Wien / 2020)
Craig Taborn’s Avenging Angel album was widely praised for the fresh ideas it brought to the solo piano idiom. “It reflects Mr Taborn’s galactically-broad interests,” said the New York Times, “along with his multifaceted technique,” while the Guardian saluted Craig’s “genius (there is no other word for it)" and his “world of whispered, wide-spaced figures, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Mathias Eick is among the most immediately recognizable soloists to have emerged from the Norwegian jazz scene, and his wistful trumpet sound and strongly melodic compositions have met with a positive response around the world. When his ECM leader debut The Door was issued in 2008, US magazine JazzTimes described the ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
“Their years together have resulted in an ensemble with an utterly symbiotic creative flow,” observed Don Heckman in the Los Angeles Times, when the Marcin Wasilewski Trio was first making its presence felt on the international jazz scene. The improvisational communication among the players has continued to deepen with the ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
With Overpass, recorded in Brazil in 2018, Marc Johnson makes a decisive and intriguing contribution to ECM’s solo bass recordings. It is an album that takes note of that tradition - Johnson has said that Dave Holland’s Emerald Tears was among the solo recordings that fired his imagination almost half a century ago - and builds ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Andrew Cyrille’s album The News carries forward the story from The Declaration of Musical Independence, the 2014 ECM recording described by Down Beat as “an unabashed exploration into time, pulse space and atmosphere…ambitious yet simple, rich yet stripped-down, challenging yet infinitely satisfying.” The New York Times cited the album ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Return To Forever (Remastered)
Return to Forever is one the defining jazz albums of all time. Even after his stint with Miles Davis, and his increasingly inventive solo albums, nothing could have prepared listeners for the jaw-dropping beauty of this album. Chick, behind the electric keyboard, leads a brand-new band through four of his compositions, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Fusion
Tales of Another is an album by American bassist Gary Peacock featuring Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette recorded in 1977 and released on the ECM label. The album marks the first recording by the group who later became well known as Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Along with the work of CODONA, Magico is perhaps a forerunner in what would come to be known as “world music,” and a pinnacle among ECM’s fruitful productions of the 1970s. Although the talents assembled could hardly be more geographically disparate, their musical heartbeats trace the same calm graph across the EKG paper that is our ...
Along with the work of CODONA, Magico is perhaps a forerunner in what would come to be known as “world music,” and a pinnacle among ECM’s fruitful productions of the 1970s. Although the talents assembled could hardly be more geographically disparate, their musical heartbeats trace the same calm graph across the EKG paper that is our ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Free Jazz
Take one look at the thoughtful cover art of this seminal Keith Jarrett release, and you’ll gain immediate insight into what makes his trio click. Each curvaceous line brings a lifetime of movement, of study, and of passion to bear on the music at hand. And with these six standards resurrected to ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Sun Bear Concerts Live (Remastered)
Sun Bear Concerts - documenting five complete solo performances by Keith Jarrett in Japan - counts as a milestone achievement in the history of jazz recording. As Down Beat wrote, on the occasion of the original release, Jarrett’s improvisations are “the inventions of a giant, overpoweringly intimate in the way they can ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Extending the concept initiated with his critically-acclaimed Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update album, described by Down Beat as “pretty fantastic”, Michael Mantler radically reworks music from several phases of his career. On Coda he shapes favourite pieces – a personal “best-of” ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
Arnold Schoenberg called him 'Brahms the Progressive'. Whilst Johannes Brahms's musical language and formal cosmos were deeply rooted in the past, by burrowing into the music of Bach and Beethoven he brought forth compositional fabrics of a tight-knit perfection that pointed far into the future. ...
Composer: Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Concertos
Anájikon, the second ECM album by Athens-born and Munich-based Konstantia Gourzi, incorporates her chamber and orchestral music of the past decade. The composer also conducts the Lucerne Academy Orchestra here: "I see composing and conducting as a whole, as an inseparable relationship," ...
Composer: Konstantia Gourzi (1962)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
Singer Cymin Samawatie and percussionist Ketan Bhatti from the Berlin-based group Cyminology apply their poetic musical language on a larger scale with the Trickster Orchestra. Under Cymin and Ketan's artistic direction, the orchestra interprets their characteristic blend of transcultural ...
Composer: Ketan Bhatti
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Vocal
Vijay Iyer presents a powerful new trio, in which he is joined by two key figures in creative music, Tyshawn Sorey and Linda May Han Oh. “We have an energy together that is very distinct. It has a different kind of propulsion, a different impulse and a different spectrum of colours”. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Wolf Rune, the first solo recording in Sinikka Langeland’s ECM discography, sheds new light on the multifaceted work of the Norwegian folk singer and kantele player. Few artists embody the spirit of place as resolutely as Sinikka and her songs, compositions, poem settings and arrangements reflect, ...
Genre: Folk
Subgenre: Traditional Folk
A fresh and open music, delicate and space-conscious, is shaped as drummer Thomas Strønen and Ayumi Tanaka, previously heard in the ensemble Time Is A Blind Guide on Lucus, resurface in a new trio with clarinettist/singer/percussionist Marthe Lea. The group first came together at Oslo’s Royal ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
A fascinating solo album from the Swiss pianist, composer and conceptualist, Entendre offers deeper insight into Nik Bärtsch’s musical thinking, illuminating aspects of his playing and the nature of his modular pieces. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
The third volume of the Danish String Quartet’s ongoing Prism series, which shows how the radiance of Bach’s fugues is refracted through Beethoven’s quartets to illuminate the work of later composers. “Beethoven had taken a fundamentally linear development from Bach,” the Danes note, ...
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
