ECM News: J.S. Bach und Jazz des Monats

 

On Fred Thomas's album Three Or One, Bach’s idiom is respectfully explored by Kazakh violinist Aisha Orazbayeva and British cellist Lucy Railton. It was hailed by German daily newspaper Frank- furter Allgemeine as "moments of musical bliss. If we want to carry something positive from the past year into the new one, these contemplative readings of 24 chorales are just the thing. The shortest lasts less than a minute, the longest not even five minutes. Yet there is something purifying about their unassuming beauty."

 

In its newest issue, BBC Music Magazine gave Ayumi Tanaka and her trio album Subaqueous Silence the coveted five star rating and made it Jazz choice this month. "If there's some kind of fantastical Venn diagram involving Monk, the Wandelweiser Group and Morton Feldman, then her first album as a leader for ECM demonstrates that pianist Ayumi Tanaka, whose rarefied approach to the instrument is a perfect fit for label founder Manfred Eicher's production style, surely belongs in the overlap."