Forthcoming ECM releases

[mjzee]

When you can snatch the pebble from my hand...

Like the look of the NEW new releases?

Manfred seems to be in a dark place.

Or he needs glasses.

[David Ayers]

Those Northern winters take their toll.

[JSngry]

The Next Best Thing To Blindness...

[Chuck Nessa]

I think I would prefer the darker side of Manfred.

[JSngry]

The Next Best Thing To Blackness.

[Chuck Nessa]

Ooooooh.

[JSngry]

The Next Best Thing To

[Guy Berger]

Is the Berne a solo disc?

[David Ayers]

We think it' his Los Totopos quartet. I mentioned it in the Hemphill thread and posted youtube link.

[alankin]

Ah, those long, dark Northern Winter nights.

[six string]

The Jarrett title Rio is good but like the Carnegie Hall set it is marred (imo) by the volume of the audience response. The fact that the songs are short, relative to his usual output means the listener (me) is pulled out of his dreamscape again and again. At times I swear the applause is louder than the music. I need to burn this on a cdr with the audience edited out or at least turned way down. That would make it a better album imo.

[GA Russell]

ECM released six classical albums in the past year, and as a result Manfred Eicher today received a Grammy nomination for Classical Producer of the Year.

He won that Grammy in 2002.

[David Ayers]

There's even a film about him now. They followed him around for five years with cameras. That's a bit much, but I guess he has to go down as one of the most significant producers of art music (if that phrase covers it) of the last thirty forty years and someone who has in a way led music production and consumption especially in terms of a modified 'jazz'. I don't know what would have been left of 'jazz' without him. Yes, all the unfinished improv business from the late 60s/70s - but apart from that?

Edited December 2, 2011 by David Ayers

[paul secor]

There's even a film about him now. They followed him around for five years with cameras. That's a bit much, but I guess he has to go down as one of the most significant producers of art music (if that phrase covers it) of the last thirty forty years and someone who has in a way led music production and consumption especially in terms of a modified 'jazz'. I don't know what would have been left of 'jazz' without him. Yes, all the unfinished improv business from the late 60s/70s - but apart from that?

For me, the "unfinished improv business from the late 60s/70s" was what it was all about. To my ears, Manfred Eicher picked up on some of that, smoothed it out, and ran with it. He produced other things too, but not much that interested me.

Imo, Giacomo Pelliciotti and Giovanni Bonandrini - Black Saint and Soul Note - were European record company owners/producers who did more to keep the music alive during the 70s, 80s, and into the 90s. And out own Chuck Nessa is, again imo, a more important producer than Manfred Eicher.

Edited December 2, 2011 by paul secor

[JETman]

There's even a film about him now. They followed him around for five years with cameras. That's a bit much, but I guess he has to go down as one of the most significant producers of art music (if that phrase covers it) of the last thirty forty years and someone who has in a way led music production and consumption especially in terms of a modified 'jazz'. I don't know what would have been left of 'jazz' without him. Yes, all the unfinished improv business from the late 60s/70s - but apart from that?

For me, the "unfinished improv business from the late 60s/70s" was what it was all about. To my ears, Manfred Eicher picked up on some of that, smoothed it out, and ran with it. He produced other things too, but not much that interested me.

Imo, Giacomo Pelliciotti and Giovanni Bonandrini - Black Saint and Soul Note - were European record company owners/producers who did more to keep the music alive during the 70s, 80s, and into the 90s. And out own Chuck Nessa was, again imo, a more important producer than Manfred Eicher.

I think you may be 'slightly' underestimating Eicher's importance in the world of MUSIC.

[paul secor]

I think that a lot of other people overestimate his importance, so he's still way ahead in the game.

[David Ayers]

Eicher developed a wide audience - Pelliciotti and Bonandrini didn't. They also took too much of what musicians wanted to do and for that reason so very many of their releases are just not quite up to snuff and none seem that definitive. It is just objectively true that ECM has brought this music to the widest public by far, developed many artists, allowed new idioms to flourish, and offered space and exposure to some at least of the most talented vanguardists. I know you want to say that Chuck recorded the AEC first in 1967/8 and that Eicher picked them up and smoothed them out, and I'd tend to agree with John Litweiler that early Mitchell/Bowie is more surreal (ok well I said surreal, he said truer to the concept of 'sound in space') while once they added a drummer they stablised and the music became more normative, but who is to say how they arrived at that strategy (maybe they decided, not Eicher?), and certainly the numerous ECMs of AEC and of Bowie and (to this day) of Mitchell set them before a large public and did a lot of work for that music in terms of reaching a public. That you and I prefer a rougher (and more marginal, to us maybe more authentic) music to the stablised music of ECM doesn't alter the public significance of that label.

[paul secor]

Eicher developed a wide audience - Pelliciotti and Bonandrini didn't. They also took too much of what musicians wanted to do and for that reason so very many of their releases are just not quite up to snuff and none seem that definitive.

I have big problems with the last half of your second sentence. I think that you and I inhabit different worlds. We just happen to intersect at this place.

[JETman]

Oy!

Btw, Paul, you forgot Winther in the pantheon of European difference-making producers. The Black Saints and Soul Notes were for the most part HORRIBLY recorded and presented. For that, those EYE-talians (and before you get your knickers in a twist, I happen to be one myself) lose points big time.

And David, what exactly is the "stabilised music of ECM"??? Some of the very best bad-ass and out there sessions have been recorded for that label, IMHO.

[Face of the Bass]

There are many wonderful albums on ECM, but the problem is that, when it comes to jazz, the label now seems to have an almost factory mentality whereby every release is in the same general area, with the same brooding dark covers, with the same smoothed out sound. The music strikes my ears as being far too deep into the tepid waters of Baby Boomer New Age narcissism. And I can't help but notice that some artists who record for the label (Marilyn Crispell comes immediately to mind) did their best, edgiest work before falling into the ECM stable and disappearing into the musical equivalent of a scented candle shop.

[A Lark Ascending]

I think its silly to make absolutist statements on Eicher or ECM. So much is influenced by the context of the individual listener. ECM was one of my principal routes into jazz and I've never had a problem with its approach.

I know what people are saying about the sheen it can put over music - I don't notice so much with the American stuff (partly because that's where I first heard many people with longer prior catalogues) but I do feel a certain coldness in its recording of Italians like Trovesi and Bollani - the circus element gets withdrawn and something more po-faced left behind.

What Eicher and ECM have dared to do (leaving the recording of American artists aside) is encourage varieties of improvised music with some of the most American elements left out - blues, funk, grease or whatever you want to call it.

To some that's a case of removing the very soul of the music; but, to my ears, it just make other musics possible. I think he's at his strongest dealing with northern Europe. What results will not necessarily appeal to those reared on jazz with much firmer links to the broader jazz tradition (quite a bit of it doesn't appeal to me). Who would have recorded Edward Vesala and kept it available for it to slowly enter the consciousness it Eicher hadn't? He'd probably have got recorded; but like so many Scandinavians (or Brits!) would have remained trapped on local record labels. To me Azimuth are perfectly recorded on ECM - I'm not convinced they would have sounded better if Blue Note had given them a contract.

I agree with David that Eicher is important; he's created a very particular area within (and beyond) the broad jazz spectrum that exists today. It has brought a wider audience (many of whom, like myself, have gone on to investigate the prior music of people like the AEC chaps), but the appeal is not universal.

Is he more important than X, Y or Z? That's a pissing contest.

[JSngry]

The next best thing to relevancy.

[GA Russell]

ECM has a new album now of the music of Offenbach. It doesn't sound like it would be jazz to me, but some here might be interested.

ECM

Gianluigi Trovesi/Gianni Coscia

Frère Jacques: Round about Offenbach

Gianluigi Trovesi: piccolo and alto clarinets

Gianni Coscia: accordion

U.S. Release: December 6, 2011

ECM CD: B0016268-02

UPC: 6025 278 1135 2

“Our two friends have their roots in jazz and one’s curiosity is aroused by the challenge they take up with the mode of the can-can before, without our noticing it (or maybe without noticing it themselves) slipping into swing and rhythm ‘n’ blues - certainly not in the search for Offenbach, maybe in search of themselves, or out of the conviction that basically the story of music goes its own way, through evocation and anticipation, as if they were convinced that every composer wrote to anticipate an infinity of music to come: theirs in particular, obviously.”

So writes Umberto Eco in his third consecutive liner note for the duo of Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia, following on from In Cerca di cibo and Round About Weil, discs which honored respectively Milanese composer Fiorenzo Carpi and Kurt Weil with affectionate, free and witty reinterpretations. They now travel, by the scenic route, Round about Offenbach. Their composed and improvised responses to Offenbach revolve around their arrangements of his works including selections from “La Belle Hélène”, “La Périchole”, “La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein”, and “Les Contes d’Hoffmann”.

Offenbach, French composer of German origin (born in Cologne in 1819) wrote some of the 19th century’s most effervescent music, with a sly disregard for highbrow tastes, largely unconcerned whether his work was regarded as high art, certainly unafraid of frivolity. He gleefully parodied Wagner and other cultural icons in ingenious music that could be beautiful and highly satirical by turns, frequently playing with levels and degrees of “seriousness” and “sincerity”. But craftsmanship was a given: his pieces were always meticulously made, as even opponents were forced to allow. Debussy, through gritted teeth, called Offenbach “a gifted musician who hated music.” As a popular composer who remained an outsider, rarely fêted by the critics, he holds a particular appeal for Trovesi and Coscia, who have a long history of siding with cultural anti-heroes, in particular happily waving banners for exponents of art forms alleged to be “minor” - in this case, the operetta. For Gianluigi and Gianni, Offenbach’s a comrade, a soul brother, “Frère Jacques.”

Release of Frere Jacques: Round about Offenbach follows on the heels of the DVD release of Sounds and Silence, the documentary about producer Manfred Eicher and the musicians of ECM which includes sequences with Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia as well as footage of Gianluigi’s All'Opera project with the Filarmonica Mousiké Orchestra and also with his trio with Umberto Petrin and Fulvio Maras.

The old friends from Nembro and Alessandria are enjoying a higher profile lately but it can’t be said that wider recognition is coming too early to them. Gianni Coscia celebrated his 80^th birthday this year. On Frère Jacques his accordion is as spry as ever, always ready to challenge Trovesi, and to create, on the fly, shifting associative soundscapes that can cast the clarinet in new light, transforming settings from jazz club to cabaret to concert hall.

Gianluigi Trovesi, a mere 67, is increasingly acknowledged as one of the great contemporary clarinet soloists in jazz and related music, and his melodic inventiveness is much in evidence on the present disc, virtuosity imbued with an almost nonchalant charm. A simple pleasure in music making shines through layers of irony in the compositions of Trovesi/Coscia and their dedicatee. As Ivan Hewitt, reviewing the duo in the Daily Telegraph wrote: “There’s an innocence about Trovesi which, despite the vast gulf of time and place reminds one of jazz’s innocent beginnings a century ago.”

CD booklet includes liner notes by Umberto Eco in Italian, with English and German translations

[mjazzg]

ECM has a new album now of the music of Offenbach. It doesn't sound like it would be jazz to me, but some here might be interested.

ECM

Gianluigi Trovesi/Gianni Coscia

Frère Jacques: Round about Offenbach

Gianluigi Trovesi: piccolo and alto clarinets

Gianni Coscia: accordion

U.S. Release: December 6, 2011

ECM CD: B0016268-02

UPC: 6025 278 1135 2

"Our two friends have their roots in jazz and one's curiosity is aroused by the challenge they take up with the mode of the can-can before, without our noticing it (or maybe without noticing it themselves) slipping into swing and rhythm 'n' blues - certainly not in the search for Offenbach, maybe in search of themselves, or out of the conviction that basically the story of music goes its own way, through evocation and anticipation, as if they were convinced that every composer wrote to anticipate an infinity of music to come: theirs in particular, obviously."

So writes Umberto Eco in his third consecutive liner note for the duo of Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia, following on from In Cerca di cibo and Round About Weil, discs which honored respectively Milanese composer Fiorenzo Carpi and Kurt Weil with affectionate, free and witty reinterpretations. They now travel, by the scenic route, Round about Offenbach. Their composed and improvised responses to Offenbach revolve around their arrangements of his works including selections from "La Belle Hélène", "La Périchole", "La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein", and "Les Contes d'Hoffmann".

Offenbach, French composer of German origin (born in Cologne in 1819) wrote some of the 19th century's most effervescent music, with a sly disregard for highbrow tastes, largely unconcerned whether his work was regarded as high art, certainly unafraid of frivolity. He gleefully parodied Wagner and other cultural icons in ingenious music that could be beautiful and highly satirical by turns, frequently playing with levels and degrees of "seriousness" and "sincerity". But craftsmanship was a given: his pieces were always meticulously made, as even opponents were forced to allow. Debussy, through gritted teeth, called Offenbach "a gifted musician who hated music." As a popular composer who remained an outsider, rarely fêted by the critics, he holds a particular appeal for Trovesi and Coscia, who have a long history of siding with cultural anti-heroes, in particular happily waving banners for exponents of art forms alleged to be "minor" - in this case, the operetta. For Gianluigi and Gianni, Offenbach's a comrade, a soul brother, "Frère Jacques."

Release of Frere Jacques: Round about Offenbach follows on the heels of the DVD release of Sounds and Silence, the documentary about producer Manfred Eicher and the musicians of ECM which includes sequences with Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia as well as footage of Gianluigi's All'Opera project with the Filarmonica Mousiké Orchestra and also with his trio with Umberto Petrin and Fulvio Maras.

The old friends from Nembro and Alessandria are enjoying a higher profile lately but it can't be said that wider recognition is coming too early to them. Gianni Coscia celebrated his 80^th birthday this year. On Frère Jacques his accordion is as spry as ever, always ready to challenge Trovesi, and to create, on the fly, shifting associative soundscapes that can cast the clarinet in new light, transforming settings from jazz club to cabaret to concert hall.

Gianluigi Trovesi, a mere 67, is increasingly acknowledged as one of the great contemporary clarinet soloists in jazz and related music, and his melodic inventiveness is much in evidence on the present disc, virtuosity imbued with an almost nonchalant charm. A simple pleasure in music making shines through layers of irony in the compositions of Trovesi/Coscia and their dedicatee. As Ivan Hewitt, reviewing the duo in the Daily Telegraph wrote: "There's an innocence about Trovesi which, despite the vast gulf of time and place reminds one of jazz's innocent beginnings a century ago."

CD booklet includes liner notes by Umberto Eco in Italian, with English and German translations

Trovesi and Coscia are a fantastic pairing who've interpreted other composers in their time (Trovesi's take on Monteverdi come to mind). There's likely to be a jazz strand running through this if only subliminally but maybe more explicitly as they both play jazz. They're a pair of consummate improvisors. See them live if you have the chance, great performers and very dry wit - entertaining and stimulating.

[JETman]

One to look for in April 2012:

Abercrombie's new quartet with Lovano, Gress and Baron.