After Oylam (2010), Judith Berkson, mezzo-soprano, pianist, composer and improviser, returns with another unclassifiable, and strangely compelling, artistic statement. On Thee They Thy, she leads a trio with Trevor Dunn and Gerald Cleaver through a radically changing programme addressing new settings for prayer (Berkson is also a cantor), original songs, vocal experimentation, improvised piano and more. “I view the pieces on this recording as a natural extension of my solo work,” says Judith Berkson. “This idea of songs that are quite intimate and personal, informed by jazz with pockets of improvisation but also drawing from song and avant-garde traditions in their harmonic and melodic material, embracing elements of minimalism…
Tag Archive: ECM
Bassist Miroslav Vitous made his bones in the late ’60s and early ’70s as both player and composer for the original lineup of Weather Report, not to mention as a major contributor to pianist Chick Corea’s landmark trio album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. But he’s been a leader on his own albums for ECM since the late seventies, and he’s never rested on any laurels in doing it. Thus Mountain Call, which combines three different sets of players into a remarkable program that threads the needle between jazz and classical musics.
Vitous opens the album with a four-song mini-set featuring duets with late clarinetist Michel Portal that sound like two old friends having a truly interesting conversation – interesting enough that more of its appear throughout…
US pianist Marilyn Crispell and Swedish bassist Anders Jormin filter their decades of musical experience and improvisational instinct into Memento, their debut duo recording. Combining original compositions with four freely created pieces, the album focuses on the universal themes of memory and loss.
Crispell, recently honored with a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, first met Jormin at a Stockholm festival in 1992. It left a lasting mark on her musical thinking. “When I heard Anders playing, it touched a chord in me that resonated strongly,” she recalls. Jormin, a longtime member of the Bobo Stenson Trio, has collaborated with Tomasz Stańko, Charles Lloyd and Don Cherry. He has recorded many albums…
Five years on, Mark Turner returns to the studio with his pianoless quartet to record the follow up to the hugely impressive Return from the Stars and see how much further they can collectively take the music forward.
As with the earlier recording, Turner once again draws his influence from his love of science fiction with the Patternmaster novel by Octavia E. Butler published in 1976, and which in the distant future humans are sub-divided with the dominant Patternists ruled by a powerful telepath known as the Patternmaster.
With a similar fascination with science fiction, Turner likens Wayne Shorter to the Pattermaster of Butler’s novel to the extent that the title track is a cleverly disguised contrafact of…
German pianist Julia Hülsmann has making a series of strong trio and quartet albums for ECM Records for almost twenty years. While I Was Away is the first vocal record she’s made since 2015’s A Clear Midnight: Kurt Weill in America, which guest-starred elastic-voiced songwriter/interpreter Theo Bleckmann.
For her thirteenth album, Hülsmann assembles a new group that includes drummer Eva Klesse, bassist Eva Kruse, violinist Héloïse Lefebvre, cellist Susanne Paul, and, crucially, a trio of singers: Aline Frazão, Live Maria Roggen, and Michael Schiefel. For such an unusual lineup, the bandleader gathers an eclectic batch of songs for them to perform. Hülsmann sets poems by Emily Dickinson (“Sleep”), e.e. cummings (“TicToc”), and…
With Convergence, his second solo album, Swedish-born bassist Björn Meyer further develops music on the blueprint established with his recording Provenance (2017), making use of the technical potential of the bass guitar to establish striking sonorities and grained textures while also being acutely aware of the acoustic space in which his sounds emerge. In its review of Björn’s previous solo statement, London Jazz News found the bassist demonstrating “that melodic high-jinks and emotional intensity aren’t just for those who inhabit the treble stave. Meyer’s bass sings.” Here the bass player’s atmospheric explorations conjure images in the mind. His technical innovations appear expanded in a programme of songful quality. In brief it feels complete in itself…
Pianist and composer Craig Taborn, known for his shockingly powerful technique and his ability to traverse post-modern jazz, contemporary classical music, and indie electronics, moves fluidly between structure and freedom. The six tracks on Dream Archives — four originals and two covers — are smartly conceived, finding fresh sonic angles and probing inventive approaches to rhythm. Working in a trio format with cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer/vibraphonist Ches Smith, the colorfully chameleonic Taborn adds another compelling chapter to his already rich catalogue.
“Coordinates for the Absent” oozes lyrical introspection and nocturnal delicacy, captivating through carefully traced electronics, floating vibraphone, bowed cello, and…
There’s a rare acoustic alchemy at play in Time Is a Blind Guide. Personnel changes have guided and co-shaped the musical character of Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen’s ensemble and on the group’s third recording we once again experience a slight shift in the line-up, with Leo Svensson Sander replacing Lucy Railton on cello.
The new voice blends seamlessly into the quietly breathing ensemble sound, with a sparse but most precise Ayumi Tanaka navigating her way empathetically across the keyboard, responsive to Strønen’s percussive layers, Ole Morten Vågan’s bending double bass work and Håkon Aase’s lyrical violin accounts. At times the group’s three string instruments make up a firm trio-unit that enters into thoughtful dialogue with…
American guitarist John Scofield and British bassist Dave Holland, two jazz heavyweights with a tremendous shared oeuvre, join forces for their first duo record, join forces for their first duo record, Memories of Home. Recorded after extensive touring together, the album its something to stick with, as they refine and hone abundant musical ideas in nine old and new compositions — five by Scofield and four by Holland. In the past, they spread their talent in projects by pianist Herbie Hancock and saxophonist Joe Henderson, and co-led the quartet ScoLoHoFo with saxist Joe Lovano and drummer Al Foster.
The album couldn’t have a better start than with Scofield’s “Icons at the Fair”, a phenomenal piece inspired by Hancock’s arrangement of…
The striking cover image of an abandoned swing illuminated against a field of glittering stars makes a compelling visual metaphor for the music on Close. “Music is a twilight language,” Steve Tibbetts confirms. “The job is to translate some shadow into sound.”
On his 11th ECM release the Minnesotan guitarist resumes the quest, slowly developing his yearning improvised melodies over layered loops and drones and darkly rumbling percussion. If the sound colours, including distorted electric guitar and sparkling 12 string acoustic, make this music of the west, its gradual, almost hypnotic unfolding continues to suggest eastern affinities.
“I am still reaching for the evocative sound of Sultan Khan,” says Tibbetts, speaking of…
The Greek duo of lyra player Sokratis Sinopoulos and pianist Yann Keerim’s first studio statement is a deep well of inspired musical dialogues that cross the idiomatic space between European folk tradition and chamber-jazz seamlessly.
Bartók’s six “Romanian Folk Dances” appear in newly shaped guises throughout the album, with Sokratis’s painterly lyra playing setting a lyrical counterpoint against Yann’s in turns rhythmically propulsive and quietly thoughtful accompaniment. This is the first time the duo is heard distilled from Sokratis’s acclaimed quartet (albums Eight Winds and Metamodal) and their conversations interlock gracefully, always responsive to one another and with a keen sense of space and atmosphere. Their own duo elaborations join…
Wolfgang Muthspiel and his trio with Scott Colley on bass and Brian Blade on drums (“Together they have something of the empathy of the Bill Evans trio” – Downbeat) goes into its third recording-venture swinging, setting the stage for what may be the group’s most adventurous trio recording with a delicate reading of Keith Jarrett’s “Lisbon Stomp”. Throughout the album however, the Austrian guitarist and his American cohorts turn the spotlight towards Wolfgang’s captivating originals, touching on balladic lyricism (“Pradela”, “Traversia”), subtle folk infusions (“Strumming”, “Flight”), as well as oblique chamber jazz (“Weill You Wait”) and twangy rock and roll (“Roll”). As has become custom, Wolfgang alternates between acoustic and electric guitars fluently and…
Two guitars gently envelop the uniquely evocative bandoneon of Dino Saluzzi on El Viejo Caminante, (‘The Old Wanderer’). Here, the Argentinean father and son team of Dino and José María Saluzzi are joined by Norway’s Jacob Young, in an album of musical depth and great charm.
“It fills me with joy”, says Saluzzi, delighting in this recording’s sonic blend, with José on classical guitar and Jacob on Telecaster and acoustic steel-string guitar. “Jacob and José are very good together. They have different sounds, different visions, but when it comes to the artistic output there is something beautiful happening.”
The elder Saluzzi, who turned 90 in May, has lost none of his youthful enthusiasm for artistic collaboration, or for venturing beyond…
Masterful trio interplay reliant on deeply honed three-way communication and a refined sense of understatement make Fred Hersch’s third recording for ECM an essential entry into the piano trio canon. Hersch tackles a handful of 20th century compositions – spanning from standards to less frequented jazz tunes – as well as three originals, with Drew Gress on bass and Joey Baron on drums – two longstanding companions of Fred’s who have played with him on and off since the late 80s and early 90s respectively.
“I feel that on this record you really hear the history,” the pianist notes. “I hope that people can feel the maturity of the interaction, the sonic world and the sensitivity at play.” Fred’s own pieces are striking in their lyrical intensity,…
What accolade has not been heaped upon the 80-year-old Keith Jarrett and the music he has bestowed upon the world? So, without embarrassing and overbearing hyperbole, New Vienna is another of those very special recordings Jarrett sculpts from silence with an integral artistry and frequency that, some fifty-odd years after he began this solo journey, still stuns greater minds.
Recorded live in July of 2016 at Austria’s storied Musikverein (home of the Vienna Philharmonic and the main stage of the Vienna Mozart Orchestra), Jarrett bares his soul and stirs his audience with a majesty befitting his grand European hosts.
It is all here. All Jarrett. The cadence. The sway. The melody. Always the melody, pulling you like a soft ocean tide to the next turn in the road.
The Scandinavian project Arcanum brings together four artists all well-known to followers of music at ECM: Arve Henriksen, Trygve Seim, Anders Jormin and Markku Ounaskari. They’ve played together in many permutations over the years, but this is their first album as a quartet. Already hailed as a “Nordic supergroup” in some quarters, the designation hardly conveys the thoughtful, reflective quality of the improvising and the sensitivity of the interaction here, whether playing music composed in real time or taking a written theme to new places.
Ounaksari, Jormin and Seim were all working with folksinger and kantele player Sinikka Langeland when the idea of a new band was first raised: “We’d often play as a trio during soundchecks…