Forthcoming ECM releases

[paul secor]

Roscoe Mitchell's Far Side is due for UK release on 18 October. I listed the personnel below. There are three other titles due that day, one by Stephan Micus, one by Markku Ounaskari, Samuli Mikkonen, and Per Jorgensen, and one by Trygve Seim and Andreas Utnem. In a departure for this label, all four have very moody cover art, and contain a parental advisory not to play before the children are in bed and you are on your third helping of Nordic Melancholy Vodka.

Roscoe Mitchell

and the Note Factory

Far Side

Roscoe Mitchell: saxophones, flutes

Corey Wilkes: trumpet, flugelhorn

Craig Taborn: piano

Vijay Iyer: piano

Harrison Bankhead: cello, double_bass

Jaribu Shahid: double_bass

Tani Tabbal: drums

Vincent Davis: drums

ECM 2087 | CD 270 4801

Thanks for the heads up on the Roscoe Mitchell. I look forward to hearing it. No listing here on Amazon.com or CDU yet.

CDU and Amazon.com have Far Side listed as a November 9th release.

[David Ayers]

Well we are a bit behind in this thread no doubt due to lack of interest in recent releases. Far Side came and went. Then other stuff we weren't too bothered about. Next up are these:

Re: Ecm by Riccardo Villalobos & Max Lode

Avenging Angel by Craig Taborn

Live at Birdland by Lee Konitz, Brad Mehldau, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian

Songs of Ascension by Meredith Monk

These are up for pre-order on amazon.co.uk. I guess I'll give the Taborn a go. I am sure I'd enjoy the Konitz but how much more comfortable Hadenism do I need in my life? Never got into Meredith Monk. Now's the time?

[Guy Berger]

I'll get the Konitz.

[LWayne]

I'll get the Konitz.

Me too. But not until June 7th. ECM USA advisd me that the release date was pushed back due to a manufacturing defect.

LWayne

[WorldB3]

I'll get the Konitz.

Me too. But not until June 7th. ECM USA advisd me that the release date was pushed back due to a manufacturing defect.

LWayne

Thats good to know, thanks. I also want to wait for a few more reviews to come in but I am sure I will grab it.

A recent ECM release that I am enjoying a great deal is the Marcin Wasilewski Trio - Faithful.

Loved January and this one is just as good.

[GregK]

I'll get the Konitz.

Me too. But not until June 7th. ECM USA advisd me that the release date was pushed back due to a manufacturing defect.

LWayne

You sure? I got my copy from Borders last week. I like it.

[GA Russell]

A recent ECM release that I am enjoying a great deal is the Marcin Wasilewski Trio - Faithful.

Loved January and this one is just as good.

I've been enjoying Faithful very much as well. I think I like January better, but Faithful is great for a quiet Sunday afternoon.

The Marcin Wasilewski Trio is currently wrapping up its European tour:

Dortmund May 19

Bielsko-Biala, Bielskie Centrum May 27

Coutance , France, Jazz Sous Les Pommiers May 31

[LWayne]

I'll get the Konitz.

Me too. But not until June 7th. ECM USA advisd me that the release date was pushed back due to a manufacturing defect.

LWayne

You sure? I got my copy from Borders last week. I like it.

The June 7th date is posted on the ECM facebook page as well.

LWayne

[GregK]

I'll get the Konitz.

Me too. But not until June 7th. ECM USA advisd me that the release date was pushed back due to a manufacturing defect.

LWayne

You sure? I got my copy from Borders last week. I like it.

The June 7th date is posted on the ECM facebook page as well.

LWayne

I have it sitting beside me on the desk as I type. I loaded it into iTunes last week. I don't know what else to say. I know I'm not dreaming. I've listened to it three times.

[JETman]

I'll get the Konitz.

Me too. But not until June 7th. ECM USA advisd me that the release date was pushed back due to a manufacturing defect.

LWayne

You sure? I got my copy from Borders last week. I like it.

The June 7th date is posted on the ECM facebook page as well.

LWayne

I have it sitting beside me on the desk as I type. I loaded it into iTunes last week. I don't know what else to say. I know I'm not dreaming. I've listened to it three times.

My guess is that you have one of the defective ones that leaked out.

[brownie]

The Lee Konitz is on sale in Paris stores (release date was May 16):

[GregK]

I'll get the Konitz.

Me too. But not until June 7th. ECM USA advisd me that the release date was pushed back due to a manufacturing defect.

LWayne

You sure? I got my copy from Borders last week. I like it.

The June 7th date is posted on the ECM facebook page as well.

LWayne

I have it sitting beside me on the desk as I type. I loaded it into iTunes last week. I don't know what else to say. I know I'm not dreaming. I've listened to it three times.

My guess is that you have one of the defective ones that leaked out.

where's the defect? It plays fine, the booklet is in good shape....why are people having such a hard time believing that it's out now? Has anyone else actually tried to order it yet?

[jeffcrom]

where's the defect? It plays fine, the booklet is in good shape....why are people having such a hard time believing that it's out now? Has anyone else actually tried to order it yet?

I ordered it from a local brick-and-mortar store; they don't have it yet.

[JETman]

I'll get the Konitz.

Me too. But not until June 7th. ECM USA advisd me that the release date was pushed back due to a manufacturing defect.

LWayne

You sure? I got my copy from Borders last week. I like it.

The June 7th date is posted on the ECM facebook page as well.

LWayne

I have it sitting beside me on the desk as I type. I loaded it into iTunes last week. I don't know what else to say. I know I'm not dreaming. I've listened to it three times.

My guess is that you have one of the defective ones that leaked out.

where's the defect? It plays fine, the booklet is in good shape....why are people having such a hard time believing that it's out now? Has anyone else actually tried to order it yet?

I've ordered it from CD Universe and it's not in stock yet. I don't know what the defect is. If you're not hearing it, maybe it's a subtle one.

[GregK]

I've ordered it from CD Universe and it's not in stock yet. I don't know what the defect is. If you're not hearing it, maybe it's a subtle one.

Live At Birdland Paul Motian

SKU: 602527369877 Shipped,

May 09, 2011

Tracking #

I give up.

[JETman]

I've ordered it from CD Universe and it's not in stock yet. I don't know what the defect is. If you're not hearing it, maybe it's a subtle one.

Live At Birdland Paul Motian

SKU: 602527369877 Shipped,

May 09, 2011

Tracking #

I give up.

I'm not doubting that you received it. I'm just saying it's a possibility that some defective ones leaked before the error was discovered. It's not like that hasn't happened before

[GA Russell]

The Lee Konitz is on sale in Paris stores (release date was May 16):

June 7th has come and gone, and Live at Birdland is now available to everyone in the US.

I received this press release about it today.

Lee Konitz/Brad Mehldau/Charlie Haden/Paul Motian

Live At Birdland

Lee Konitz; alto saxphone

Brad Mehldau: piano

Charlie Haden: double-bass

Paul Motian: drums

U.S. Release date: June 7, 2011

ECM CD: B0015764-02

UPC: 6025 277 4616 6

“This week,” reported the New York Times in December 2009, “Birdland has booked an ad hoc quartet with three eminences and a great younger player. (…) It’s going to be a week of soft anarchy, a gig without preparation or rehearsal, despite the presence of recording microphones for a couple of evenings. The jazz musician’s trust in the present moment is elevated nearly to worship among this group’s elders, all of whom, one way or another, were in on the early stages of loosening up rhythm and structure in jazz.”

On this live recording from New York’s legendary club, an ensemble of history-making players dives into the music without a set list. Four exceptional jazz musicians –Lee Konitz, Brad Mehldau, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian – approach the standards from new perspectives and unusual angles. They play them with freedom, tenderness and a melodic and rhythmic understanding found only amongst jazz’s greatest improvisers.

The recording was made at Birdland and mixed by Manfred Eicher and the quartet, with James Farber as engineer, at New York’s Avatar Studios. Songs selected by this team from the performances of December 9 and 10, 2009, are: “Lover Man”, “Lullaby Of Birdland”, “Solar”, “I Fall In Love Too Easily”, “You Stepped Out Of A Dream” and “Oleo”. Konitz has often said that he tries to play the material as if encountering it for the first time. With all four musicians listening intently, discoveries are continually made in the music.

“Lover Man”, the ballad strongly associated with Billie Holiday (but also, for instance, with Lee Konitz and Gerry Mulligan at Newport) makes an arresting opening track, with the uniquely melancholic cry of Lee’s alto sax to the fore. Mehldau’s solo gives immediate notice of his architectural intelligence as a player, and in his subtle comping he continually builds bridges between the idiosyncratic playing styles of his associates. Haden’s bass solo is characteristically soulful, Motian’s deft brushes perfectly placed.

“Lullaby Of Birdland”, composed in 1952, acquires additional poignancy through the recent death of its composer, George Shearing. (Lee Konitz, now 83, is said to be the only living jazz soloist to have played all of the diverse addresses of the Birdland club, starting in 1949.) The piece is driven here by the marvellous rhythmic interplay of Haden and Motian, their near-telepathic understanding honed long ago during their decade-plus association with Keith Jarrett in the 1960s and 70s.

“Solar” begins with an abstract clarion call from Konitz. “Mr. Konitz, with a piece of fabric stuffed into the bell of his horn to mute it, started playing Miles Davis’s ‘Solar’ and Mr. Motian joined in, followed by the others. A skeletal groove emerged…”, wrote Ben Ratliff in the NY Times. Mehldau’s solo is a marvel of invention, lifted up by the waves of Motian’s wayward drums.

“I Fall In Love Too Easily” is a touching rendition of the Jule Styne ballad (a song first intoned by Frank Sinatra in 1945) with fine outlining of the melody by Mehldau, and Konitz almost Ornette-like in his phrasing. The singing quality of the performance is extended in Haden’s heartfelt solo.

“You Stepped Out Of a Dream” was previously recorded by Konitz, Mehldau and Haden for a Blue Note trio album 1997: the powerful presence of Paul Motian on the present recording transforms it completely.

Sonny Rollins’s “Oleo” is given one of the freest performances of the set, beginning with a beautifully elastic Konitz/Motian duet. Brad Mehldau has commented on the performance’s cool chromaticism, allied to the rhythmic phrasing of bebop, until the tune is deconstructed in the final moments of collective soloing.

When these musicians play the standards, they do indeed make them new.

*

All of these musicians have some previous ECM history. Paul Motian’s considerable ECM discography as leader of his own groups includes a series of highly acclaimed albums by the trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano, as well as a recent recording in trio with Jason Moran and Chris Potter, Lost In A Dream. Motian has also drummed on a wide range of other albums for ECM – with Paul Bley and Gary Peacock, Enrico Rava, Bobo Stenson, Arild Andersen, Marilyn Crispell, and more. Haden’s and Motian’s associations with ECM go back almost to the beginning of the label’s history. Haden’s first ECM appearance was in 1972, as a contributor to Motian’s Conception Vessel, Paul’s first album as a leader. Both men recorded for ECM with Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet (the epic Survivors’ Suite and Eyes of the Heart). Haden’s also been heard on ECM with Pat Metheny, Denny Zeitlin, Carla Bley, and the much-loved Magico trio with Jan Garbarek and Egberto Gismonti. He’s also led his own large ensemble on Ballad of the Fallen (also with Paul Motian). Last year, after a longer absence, he returned to the label for Jasmine, a series of duets with Keith Jarrett. Mehldau played on a pair of Charles Lloyd discs, The Water Is Wide and Hyperion With Higgins, drawn from an inspired session in December 1999, and Konitz contributed to Kenny Wheeler’s classic Angel Song in 1996.

A recent ECM release that I am enjoying a great deal is the Marcin Wasilewski Trio - Faithful.

Loved January and this one is just as good.

I've been enjoying Faithful very much as well. I think I like January better, but Faithful is great for a quiet Sunday afternoon.

The Marcin Wasilewski Trio is currently wrapping up its European tour:

Dortmund May 19

Bielsko-Biala, Bielskie Centrum May 27

Coutance , France, Jazz Sous Les Pommiers May 31

Here's a press release about Faithful I received when it was issued.

Marcin Wasilewski Trio

Faithful

Marcin Wasilewski: piano

Slawomir Kurkiewicz: double-bass

Michal Miskiewicz: drums

U.S. Release date: April 12, 2011

ECM CD: B0015391-02

UPC: 6025 275 9105 6

“Marcin Wasilewski does not think like other jazz pianists, His improvisational underpinning, his sense of musical space and his aural imagery are so fresh they are initially mysterious, then get more so. The same can be said of his trio as a whole with bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz…It takes nerve for a young trio to create music of such stillness, such patience. The fact that the three have played together since they were teenagers is audible in the way they trust the epiphanies they collectively come upon.”

- Thomas Conrad, JazzTimes

Continuing directions sketched on 2007’s January, and the earlier album called just Trio (2004), Faithful is the third ECM album by Poland’s Wasilewski Trio. Their ECM discography also includes a further three albums as members of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet: Soul of Things, Suspended Night and Lontano, recorded between 2001 and 2005. Furthermore, pianist Marcin Wasilewski and bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz are featured on Manu Katché’s Neighbourhood and Playground albums of 2004 and 2007. Nonetheless, it is to the trio that the listener must turn for the most comprehensive account of the players’ capabilities and inspirations. And Faithful may be the most comprehensive album yet from this group, capturing the trio’s admixture of energy, lyricism and ideas.

The album opens strikingly with Hanns Eisler’s “An den kleinen Radioapparat”, a song written (in 1942) from the perspective of a German exile still pursued and haunted by the voices of his persecutors through the medium of the radio. The tune’s had a latter-day revival under the title “The Secret Marriage”, but the Wasilewski Trio reach for a feeling closer to the piece’s original intention.

“Night Train To You” is the first of five new Wasilewski tunes here, described by the composer as “a motoric piece, a process.” At the outset, three chords set up a pattern, “like a loop.” Time signatures progress from 6/8 to 11/8. A “very simple melody” takes us to a solo sequence for piano and drums, before the piece slows like a locomotive approaching a station, leading to a final section with improvisations around the chords heard in the open moments.

Faithful takes its name from its title track, a tune originally from Ornette Coleman’s 1966 album The Empty Foxhole, long a reference at ECM for the clarity of its melodic line and the purity, the innocence, of its improvisation. In an indirect way, it can be related to the history of Wasilewski, Kurkiewicz and Miskiewicz, players who found their shared musical identity when just schoolchildren. Their trio has been in existence since the mid 1990s, and the three musicians have made their discoveries in jazz together.

Marcin’s tune “Mosaic” is patterned like its title, a musical mosaic, with moving and fragmented chords painting a larger picture.

“Ballad of the Sad Young Men”, now a jazz standard, was written by Tommy Wolf and Fran Landesmann for the Beat Generation musical The Nervous Set in 1959.

Hermeto Pascoal’s “Oz Guizos” (The Bells) was brought to the session by bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz, who counts Brazilian music amongst his inspirations. “Slawomir brought a bunch of Pascoal tunes to rehearsal and we ran them through. This one seemed to speak most clearly to the character of our group.”

“Song for Swirek” is a tribute to the trio’s close friend Marek Swierkowski.

The dreamlike “Woke up in the Desert” was named by Marcin’s friend, Polish rock singer/songwriter Edyta Bartosiewcz. “Every time we have a new recording session, I go over to her place and I like to listen to the music with her. I respect her opinion very much and she’s great at finding titles. This title still makes me laugh, but it also works on the imagination. It seems to suggest all kinds of associations.” (Henri Rousseau’s “Sleeping Gypsy” might come to mind, perhaps.) Marcin points out, furthermore, the snakelike movement and sonorities of Michael Miskiewicz’s cymbals and snare.

Paul Bley’s ”Big Foot” (a.k.a. “Figfoot”) was heard one of the very first of ECM’s releases, Paul Bley With Gary Peacock, issued in 1970. In the present version, its dryly witty twists and turns are more characteristically Bley-like than its romping energy.

Finally there’s “Lugano Lake”, named for the site of the recording, made with producer Manfred Eicher at Lugano’s Auditorium SRI. “It’s a fond memory of a beautiful town, with the lake and the mountain, and sums up for me, the feeling of being there, in a recording.”

[GA Russell]

I received this press release today about the new Amina Alaoui release called Arco Iris, which is due out next Tuesday.

ECM

Amina Alaoui

Arco Iris

Amina Alaoui: vocals, daf

Saïfallah Ben Abderrazak: violin

Sofiane Negra: oud

José Luis Montón: flamenco guitar

Eduardo Miranda: mandolin

Idriss Agnel: percussion, electric guitar

U.S. Release date: June 28, 2011

ECM CD: B0015527-02

UPC: 6025 276 3758 7

“This music transcribes an Iberian peninsula carried towards a dialogue with the potential of what might be. It is a poetic geography that entertains the dream of the impossible: human horizons that transcend borders, lyrical Mediterranean idioms that are open to the universe and the intelligence of being, of mutual communication. Song and music explore this possibility in order to open up another path: original expression.”

Amina Alaoui.

Following her outstanding ECM debut performance as the lyrical voice of Jon Balke’s Siwan recording (released June 2009) Amina Alaoui explores a rainbow of musical possibilities on her own Arco Iris. It is an emotionally powerful album that soars through related idioms. This time, says Alaoui in her liner notes, there is “no need to discuss the origins of fado, flamenco or Al Andalusi” for the music itself investigates the common crucible of the styles: Amina’s delivery, and the performances of her superb ensemble, make the interconnections of the genres self-evident. Yet as she also points out, “you must first have assimilated your own roots, in order to absorb the culture of the other...” Historical awareness, study and discernment are essential but more is needed: “I am an artist of the present. I abstain from simply copying the styles of the past.”

Singer, composer, poet and scholar of distinction, Amina Alaoui was born in Fez and originally schooled in the Moroccan Gharnati tradition, which remains a central reference in her work. She also studied European classical music from childhood onwards. While based in Paris in the mid-1980s she explored medieval chant with Henri Agnel and Persian song with Djallal Akhbari, interested, as ever, in the points of contact between the traditions. Alaoui has been the recipient of many awards including the Algerian Prix d’Interprétation du festival de Musique Arabo-andalouse d’Oran, Morocco’s Prix d’Excellence au Festrival Ghanati d’Oijda, and the Cairo Opera’s Prix d’Honneur du Festival de Musique Classique Arabe. She is also a laureate of the Villa Medicis Hors les Murs where her musicological research into the confluence of musical streams led ultimately to the work that has become Arco Iris.

On this disc, recorded in April 2010 in the recital room of Lugano’s Audiorium RSI, with Manfred Eicher producing, Amina is flanked by her truly international ensemble: violinist Saïfallah Ben Abderrazak and oud player Sofiane Negra are from Tunisia: Negra has played with Alaoui for many years and has much experience also of cross-cultural collaboration – working, for instance, with flamenco singer Ines Bacan and with many jazz players. Abderrazak’s interesting resumé includes work as a physicist specializing in acoustics and sound principles as well as membership of the Symphonic Orchestra of Tunis. Guitarist José Luis Montón from Barcelona has a following amongst flamenco adherents worldwide (and an ECM solo album of his own is in preparation). Mandolinist Eduardo Miranda was born in Brazil, has lived the last two decades in Portugal, and links choro and fado styles through a vocabulary influenced by jazz. The group’s youngest member, Idriss Agnel, son of Amina Alaoui, studied music at Maîtrise Notre Dame de Paris from the age of seven. He is meanwhile renowned as a multi-instrumentalist, contributing here deft percussion and (on one track) electric guitar. The sparkling interchanges between the instrumentalists and the rapport of each of them with Alaoui make for exciting listening throughout Arco Iris.

The songs are from many sources, and the texts and some of the melodies span a thousand years. Amina sets mystic poems by St. Teresa of Avila and by 11^th century king of Seville Al Mutamid Ibn Abbad, and nature poetry of Ibn Khafaja. (“Nothing is more beautiful, O Andalusians / Than your luxuriant orchards / Gardens, shadow and rivers / And fountains of crystal.”). There is 20th century fado from the pen of Antonio de Sousa Freitas and the well-known 15^th century text “Las Morillas de Jaén” which Amina puts to her own music (a very different rendition can be heard on the Garbarek/Hilliard Officium Novum set).

The album concludes with the title track, Amina’s song of praise to “Arco Iris”, the rainbow: “Sun and rain in an embrace (…) bridging the firmament”, while “Sounds/ Of light and colour/ Weave in harmony”.

CD booklet includes liner notes by Amina Alaoui in French and English, all song texts in English translation, and photos from the recording session.

[Van Basten II]

Heard good things about the Taborn solo, have yet to listen it though, gotta say curious about the match between ECM and him, not exactly an obvious fit but the fellow is quite versatile so who knows.

[Chuck Nessa]

Heard good things about the Taborn solo, have yet to listen it though, gotta say curious about the match between ECM and him, not exactly an obvious fit but the fellow is quite versatile so who knows.

Do you mean he's willing to bend?

[Sundog]

The Taborn is excellent. A thoughtful, nuanced, performance having more in common with 20th century modern classical music. No blues here!

[Chuck Nessa]

Last century stuff, eh?

[Sundog]

Last century stuff, eh?

Yeah- pretty much.

[David Ayers]

Will buy the Taborn as soon as the donwload appears on amazon over here...

Edited to add: did I say donwload? I meant dnowlaod.

Edited June 22, 2011 by David Ayers

[mjazzg]

If it's half as good as the recent performance at the Vortex it'll be a recording of note.

Mine on its way from Honest jon's hopefully