Neues von ECM

Enrico Rava, long a key figure in European jazz, has been a mentor for successive generations of Italian players. His celebratory Edizione Speciale, recorded live at the Middelheim Festival in Antwerp, brings together a team of young improvisers who play his music with fire and élan, accompanying his fountain of melodic ideas, while also taking advantage of the free space that the extensive musical forms open up. The group’s repertoire includes material from the trumpeter/flugelhornist’s early recording Enrico Rava Quartet (1978) and Wild Dance (2015), plus a rendition of “Once Upon a Summertime” – the English version of Michel Legrand’s “La valse des lilas” – as well as the universally known Cuban song “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás”. 

Subaqueous Silence, pianist Ayumi Tanaka’s leader debut for ECM – following critically acclaimed releases with Thomas Strønen (Lucus, Bayou) – is a strikingly original statement. Tanaka met bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen and drummer Per Oddvar Johansen shortly after arriving in Oslo a decade ago and they have been developing their musical language together, exploring the implications of Ayumi’s compositions. Deep interest in the work of Norwegian improvisers prompted Tanaka’s move to the West, but she also speaks of a growing awareness of her own cultural roots; there is an ascetic rigour in her playing, as well as a sense of space suggesting affinities with Japanese classical music.

Neues von ECM: Rousilvo von Dine Doneff

Rousilvo Dine Doneff A polyphony of seven women’s voices, interspersed with extracts from numerous authentic field recordings, complete a narration of expanding rhythmic and melodic forms. Rousilvo is the old, Slavic name of the village of Xanthogeia, in north-western Greece. The village’s name, and its Slav-Macedonian speaking community, fell victim to the policy of the Greek state to forcibly “Hellenize” the land and its people.... Learn more

Neues von ECM: Nach der Sommerpause, Part I

Im Juli kam es zu einer Atempause in der Veröffentlichungsaktivität von ECM. Deshalb hier schon ein Blick in den nächsten Monat – am 25. August erscheinen drei Jazz-Neuheiten:

Vijay Iyers ECM-Veröffentlichungen haben international reichlich Lob erfahren. Und doch erreicht der Keyboarder und Komponist auf seinem fünften Album für das Label seit 2014 nochmal ein neues Level. Far From Over präsentiert sein Sextett aus virtuosen Improvisatoren – mit den Bläsern Graham Haynes, Steve Lehman und Mark Shim und einem Rhythmusgespann aus Bassist Stephan Crump und Schlagzeuger Tyshawn Sorey.

Tim Berne ist von der New York Times als “Saxophonist und Komponist von granitharter Überzeugung” beschrieben worden. Incidentals, das vierte Album seiner Band Snakeoil, ist zugleich das zweite (nach You’ve Been Watching Me 2015) in jener Quintettbesetzung, bei der seine Kerngruppe um Klarinettist Oscar Noriega, Pianist Matt Mitchell und Schlagzeuger/Vibraphonist Ches Smith um den Gitarristen Ryan Ferreira erweitert wird. Incidentals erscheint rechtzeitig für eine Snakeoil-Tournee durch Nordamerika im September und Oktober, der dann im November Konzerte in Europa folgen.

Auch Gary Peacocks Trio mit dem Pianisten Marc Copland und dem Schlagzeuger Joey Baron erntete im Jahr 2015 mit seinem ersten ECM-Album Now This viel Anerkennung auf beiden Seiten des Atlantik. Die US-Website All About Jazz schrieb: „Die Musiker sind immer ganz im Moment: hörend, reagierend, wissend, wann sie spielen müssen und wann nicht.“ Diese Worte würden genauso für Tangents passen, das neue Album der Gruppe. Die kraftvolle, durch poetische Zurückhaltung temperierte Virtuosität des Trios belebt Eigenkompositionen von Peacock, Copland und Baron genauso wie eine freie Improvisation voll dunkler Atmosphäre und zwei Klassiker, die gemeinhin mit Bill Evans assoziiert werden: „Blue in Green“ und „Spartacus“.

Neues von ECM: John ABERCROMBIE und FOOD

This 3-CD set with recordings from 1978 to 1980, issued in ECM’s acclaimed Old & New Masters series, returns some historically-important material to the catalogue, namely the albums Arcade, Abercrombie Quartet and M. The quartet with Richie Beirach, George Mraz and Peter Donald – John Abercrombie’s first touring band as a leader – was the group in which the guitarist defined some priorities, moving away from a jazz-rock period into a more spacious, impressionistic and original music. Abercrombie and pianist Beirach had a strong musical rapport as improvisers and wrote almost all of the band’s book between them. George Mraz and Peter Donald provided imaginative support. For this edition the recordings – made in Oslo and Ludwigsburg and produced by Manfred Eicher – were remastered from original analog sources.

The British/Norwegian Food duo of Iain Ballamy and Thomas Strønen are joined again by Austrian guitarist and electronics player Christian Fennesz for a new album of powerful grooves, evocative textures and exploratory improvisation, sometimes hypnotically insistent, sometimes turbulent. The project was recorded with engineer Ulf Holand and mixed together with Manfred Eicher – the first time Eicher and Holand have collaborated since Nils Petter Molvaer’s Khmer, almost 20 years ago. Thomas Strønen describes the sound of This Is Not A Miracle as “heavier, dryer, connecting more with how we actually sound live.”

Neues von ECM: Mathias Eick, Giovanni Guidi Trio, Paolo Fresu

		Mathias Eick: Midwest Mathias Eick reflects on distances travelled in this intensely melodic set of original compositions, which makes an imaginative journey from Hem, the tiny Norwegian village where the trumpeter grew up, to the vast plains of Dakota in the American Midwest. It was to the Midwest that hundreds of thousands of Norwegians travelled by sea in the 19th and early 20th centuries - and naturally they took their music with them. In similar spirit Eick, a Norwegian improviser-composer strongly influenced by North American jazz, here reintegrates some of the colours and textures of his native folk music in these newly-created pieces. In the frontline of the line-up featured here he is partnered by the brilliant violinist Gjermund Larsen, whose roots are in the Norwegian folk tradition. Trumpet and violin exchange lines and soar together above a brilliant rhythm section with Jon Balke at his most lyrical, Helge Norbakken periodically finding pulses that can suggest tribal drumming or buffalo hooves, and the resourceful Mats Eilertsen helping to drive the music forward. The original inspiration for the album was sparked by a gruelling North American tour: “I’d been out on the road for a long time and was feeling homesick. Then we reached the area called the Rural Midwest and I suddenly felt as if I was home. I had a se nse of why the early settlers would want to build their farms there. It reminded me very much of parts of Norway. ” ECM Player Available on CD and LP
		Giovanni Guidi Trio: This Is The Day The Giovanni Guidi Trio plays jazz of uncommon originality and reflective depth. On their second ECM album, Italian pianist Guidi, US bassist Morgan, and Portuguese drummer Lobo continue the work begun on the 2011 recording City of Broken Dreams, with pensive, abstract ballads which shimmer with inner tension. Each of the players has a strong sense for the dialectics of sound and silence. The repertoire is mostly from Guidi’s pen, but also includes the standard “I’m Through with Love”, Cuban songwriter Osvaldo Farrés’ “Quizás, quizás, quizás” (familiar to jazz listeners through, above all, Nat King Cole’s version), and “Baiiia” by João Lobo. ECM Player
		Paolo Fresu / Daniele di Bonaventura: In maggiore Sardinian-born trumpeter Paolo Fresu and bandoneonist Daniele di Bonaventura from Fermo, Italy, indicated the depth of their musical understanding on 2010’s Mi stico Mediterraneo, a collaboration with Corsican singers A Filetta. Left to their own resources they explore a very broad range of material which includes original ballads by both men, improvisations, a Puccini theme from La Boheme, liturgical music, pieces by legendary Chilean songwriter Victor Jara and Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jaime Roos, music of Neapolitan composer Ernersto de Curtis, “O que sera” by Brazil’s Chico Buarque and more. Daniele Di Bonaventura has spent much of his creative life bringing aspects of jazz and music of South American traditions together, and Paolo Fresu is one of the outstanding lyrical voices of contemporary improvising. When Fresu plays muted trumpet, he makes a point of bringing Miles Davis to mind; at such moments, Di Bonaventura’s bandoneon becomes a chamber orchestra behind a soloist. The relationship between the instruments is continually changing throughout this attractive programme, recorded in the warm and spacious a coustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in May 2014, and produced by Manfred Eicher.(The session itself has already achieved a measure of renown: scenes from it appear in the new documentary Wenn aus dem Himmel by Italian filmmaker Fabrizio Ferraro, which is currently making the rounds of the festivals.) ECM Player