ECM New Releases

[mjzee]

Release date July 1:

On his second release for ECM, New York-based saxophonist Oded Tzur introduces a heightened sense of urgency and a conceptually augmented approach to his distinctive voice, weaving one underlying musical idea through a series of elaborate and impassioned designs. Throughout Isabela, Oded and his collaborators apply their subtle dialect in a more intense space, exploring the nuances and colors of his self-fashioned raga in a suite-like sequence of quiet meditations and powerful exclamations.

 

[mjzee]

Release date July 29:

Hellbound Train is a retrospective from Steve Tibbetts with music selected by the guitarist from his 40 years of recordings for ECM, neatly divided into electric and acoustic chapters. With its liquid melodies, textures, hypnotic patterns, and pulsations subtly influenced by music of many cultures, it's an ideal introduction to his unique body of work. At different times Tibbetts might seem closer to minimalism, alternate rock, or ambient music, yet his artistic signature is unmistakable.

Release date July 8:

Siwan, the transcultural, trans-idiomatic musical collective led by Norwegian keyboardist/composer Jon Balke, continues along its special path with new music inspired by the creative spirit of Al-Andalus. The ensemble weaves lines of communication between musicians from multiple traditions and locations. Among the texts set by Balke on Siwan's third album (and persuasively sung by Algerian vocalist Mona Boutchebak) are verses by Ummayad princess Wallada bint al-Mustakfi and contemporaries.

[mjzee]

Release date September 2:

Elastic Wave presents dummer Nilssen's powerful trio with fellow Norwegian Andre Roligheten on reeds and Swedish bassist Petter Eldh (recently heard with Kit Downes). The group's dynamic interaction, dancing sense of pulse and boldly etched themes - all three players contribute compositions - make Acoustic Unity one of the most engaging bands on the circuit today, able to address fiery anthems and poignant ballads with equal panache and conviction.

Release date September 30:

The grandmaster of improvised bass & the electronics-playing son of Hungary's great contemporary composer share a deep commitment to making new music in the moment, informed by their different lives & experiences. With his subtle use of synthesizers & digital percussion, Gyorgy Kurt g Jr shapes shifting spaces for Barre Phillips to negotiate, an acoustic labyrinth illuminated in detail in Manfred Eicher's crystalline mix. Recorded at Studios La Buissonne, Face … Face is a fascinating album.

[GA Russell]

Bordeaux Concert Documents Keith Jarrett's Last Solo Performance in France  The Improvised Thirteen-Part Suite from 2016 Finds the Pianist at a Creative High Point   Available September 30 via ECM Records   WBGO Interview and Track Premiere

Bordeaux Concert documents a solo performance, the last that Keith Jarrett would give in France, at the Auditorium de l'Opéra National de Bordeaux on July 6, 2016, and finds the pianist at a creative high point.   Each of Jarrett’s 2016 solo piano concerts had its own strikingly distinct character, and in Bordeaux – although the music would progress through many changing moods – the lyrical impulse was to the fore. In the course of this improvised thirteen-part suite, many quiet discoveries are made. There is a touching freshness to the music as a whole, a feeling of intimate communication shared with the 1400 attentive listeners in the hall. This time there is no recourse to standard tunes to round out the performance; the arc of spontaneously composed and often intensely melodic music is satisfyingly complete in itself. In the later concerts part of Jarrett’s achievement as an improviser has been the way in which he has not only channeled the music in its moment-to-moment emergence but implied a sense of larger structure as he balances its episodes and atmospheres.   Reviewing the July 2016 performance, the French press spoke of hints of the Köln Concert and Bremen-Lausanne in the flow of things, and extended sections of Bordeaux Concert are beguilingly beautiful. Tender songs are coaxed from the air, “rousing a community of listening at the edge of silence," as Francis Marmande put it in Le Monde, “an awareness of time out from the noise and weariness of the world.”   *  Bordeaux’s community of listeners had long been aware of Jarrett’s music. The Nouvelle-Aquitaine capital was one of the first European cities where Jarrett presented his music, as early as 1970 - with his trio, then, with Gus Nemeth and Aldo Romano. He was back in the early 1990s, with the ‘Standards’ trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette. The July 2016 concert, however, was his only solo performance in the city (made possible via the Jazz and Wine Bordeaux Festival and its director, Jean-Jacques Quesada).   Previous releases from Keith Jarrett’s 2016 solo concert tour:     Munich 2016   “His elegance, restraint, freedom, austerity, richness, breadth of allusion, heartfelt depths, rhapsodic heights, passionate musical intelligence, rigorously disciplined expressiveness, development of forms invented in the moment, and concentrated brilliance – all executed with undiminished perfection of technique – are amazing, at times overwhelming. No one else does anything that comes close. No one ever has.”   Richard Lehnert, Stereophile   “Munich 2016 features Jarrett at his fluent and inventive best... The pianist re-constitutes the core ingredients of his aesthetic in fresh and unexpected ways.”   Mike Hobart, Financial Times     Budapest Concert   “This composite suite could be considered a concentrated compendium of his talents, of his entire career.”   Jacques Denis, Libération   “The second half features a few of Mr. Jarrett´s most ravishing on-the-spot compositions. Those ballads, like ‘Part V’ and ‘Part VII,' spark against briskly atonal or boppish pieces, gradually building the case for a mature expression that might not have been possible earlier in his career. A magnificent achievement.”   Nate Chinen, New York Times

Keith Jarrett | Bordeaux Concert ECM Release Date: CD: September 30, 2022; 2-LP: October 14, 2022   For more information on ECM, please visit: ECMRecords.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

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The Song Is You Documents the Inspired Meeting Between Italian Trumpeter Enrico Rava and American Pianist Fred Hersch   Available September 9 via ECM Records

The Song Is You documents the inspired meeting of two master improvisers. Italian trumpeter and flugelhornist Enrico Rava and US pianist Fred Hersch share a love of the music’s history and together explore standards including Jerome Kern’s “The Song Is You," Thelonious Monk’s “Misterioso” and “’Round Midnight," Jobim’s “Retrato em Branco e Preto," and George Bassman’s “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You." They also play their own tunes, Fred’s “Child’s Song” and Enrico’s “The Trial," and create music freely together. It’s a subtle and far-reaching performance: when jazz reaches this level of understanding and interplay, a performance becomes less about the material – however distinguished it may be - than what the interpreter brings to it. Rava and Hersch bring vast experience and a finely honed sense of jazz improvisation as a storyteller’s art.   Enrico Rava has recorded for ECM since the 1970s, beginning with The Pilgrim and the Stars, now regarded as a modern jazz classic. The Song Is You is Fred Hersch’s first for the label, following albums as a leader with Nonesuch, Palmetto, Sunnyside and others. Throughout his long career as a player, Hersch has returned very often, to duo instrumentation. In his memoir Good Things Happen Slowly Hersch reflects upon his preference for the format: “The duo suited my ability to use the entire keyboard to do multiple things at once. It also let me orchestrate the music instead of just playing block chords with the left hand... I indulged my love of spontaneous counterpoint – two or more independent melodic lines going on simultaneously. I can go from roaring loud to pianissimo instantly. It’s collaborative and also intimate. You have to be compatible but also different enough for each musician to offer something unique.” (Enrico’s discography also includes some notable duos, including The Third Man with Stefano Bollani).   The November 2021 recording of The Song Is You followed just a handful of Italian dates earlier that year. But from first of these it was evident that something special was happening. Fred Hersch: “One of the things that I really liked from the beginning was that Enrico doesn’t feel like he has to be soloing. It’s not as clearly defined. We make things together,” Fred told interviewer Nicola Ferrauto. “He lets me get in there and push him a little bit. Other times I might give him a lot of space. The best duo partnerships are the ones where you don’t have to talk about it too much. You just play. And I’m getting the feeling this is going to be a long partnership. It’s really very simpatico, and Enrico’s a great master.”   * Born in Trieste in 1939, and growing up in Turin, Enrico Rava came early to jazz, inspired by Miles Davis and Chet Baker among others. Active in the international free jazz milieu of the 1960s, he contributed to historically important recordings including Steve Lacy’s The Forest and the Zoo, Carla Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill and Manfred Schoof’s European Echoes. From the outset it was clear however that Rava’s concept of musical freedom would always embrace lyricism as one of its key components and this has been a constant though all his artistic adventures. Now acknowledged as the most important representative of Italian jazz, Enrico Rava has been the recipient of many awards including the Jazzpar, Europe’s biggest prize for jazz musicians. In 2011 Rava published the book Incontri con musicisti straordinari, with reflections on fifty years of music-making.   Recent ECM releases with Enrico Rava have included two live albums: Roma, a collaboration with Joe Lovano, and Editione Speziale; both albums also feature pianist Giovanni Guidi, one of many younger players who consider Enrico a mentor.   * Fred Hersch was born in Cincinnati in 1955, and studied at the New England Conservatory with teachers including Jaki Byard and Joe Maneri. In 1977, he moved to New York, where he soon found work with Art Farmer, Joe Henderson, Stan Getz and others. His first recording as a leader, 1984’s Horizons, introduced his trio with Marc Johnson and Joey Baron, and established Hersch as an independent and original voice on the piano. His affinity for duo playing has led to collaborations with Anat Cohen, Bill Frisell, Julian Lage, Chris Potter, Avishai Cohen and Miguel Zenon. His solo playing is widely celebrated: in 2006 he became the first artist to play a week-long engagement as solo pianist at New York’s Village Vanguard.   Hersch has also been acclaimed for his compositions, including Leaves of Grass, his 2003 settings of Walt Whitman’s poetry, the 2010 multimedia project My Coma Dreams, and his Variations on a Folksong, which was premiered by Igor Levit at Carnegie Hall in January 2022. Fred Hersch’s memoir Good Things Happen Slowly was voted Book of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, one of many awards the pianist has received.   * The Song Is You was recorded at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in November 2021, and produced by Manfred Eicher   More information: www.fredhersch.com, www.enricorava.com

Enrico Rava & Fred Hersch | The Song is You ECM Release Date: September 9, 2022   For more information on ECM, please visit: ECMRecords.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

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On The Next Door, Julia Hülsmann Returns with the Quartet from 2019’s Not Far From Here, and Presents Her Unique Pianistic Voice in a Varied Program of Almost Exclusively Original Music   Featuring Saxophonist Uli Kempendorff, Drummer Heinrich Köbberling and Bassist Marc Muellbauer  Available August 26 via ECM Records

“Our various responsibilities within the quartet are more open and free than in the trio. Even though there’s an additional player, assigning stricter roles isn’t necessary. There’s plenty of room for me to move around on piano, manoeuvre from contributing unison lines to melodic accompaniment, then switch to playing basslines – all seamlessly, because we are always listening to each other. That’s our first and foremost priority” – Julia Hülsmann    The follow-up to 2019’s Not Far From Here sees Julia Hülsmann reconvening with the same line-up as last time, in Studios La Buissonne, and entering into intense interplay with a band that has been extensively worked-in on the road. The Guardian called the quartet’s debut “a standout, for understated reinvention of the familiar and cool virtuosity” and spoke of “clever, thoughtful, inquisitively contemporary jazzmaking." These virtues have been further refined and new idioms added to the blend on the quartet’s second stance, with each member – tenor saxophonist Uli Kempendorff, Heinrich Köbberling on drums, Marc Muellbauer on bass and Julia – contributing original material to The Next Door.   “Since the last album we’ve been on the road a whole lot," Julia notes. “We’ve had time to further develop our rapport as a quartet and, as a result, our interplay has become even more intuitive.” Even when most live-activity was intermittently shut down, Julia and her quartet participated in alternative performance projects and spent many weeks vigorously rehearsing new material. The fruit of their labour, presented on this album, is as multi-facetted as it is uncompromising, with a strong emphasis on an intimate ensemble sound. Flashes of jazz’ tradition, somewhere between '60s modal customs and post-bop swing, pull through The Next Door like a guiding light, but it’s how the group subsequently transforms these notions and makes them their own that stands out.   “Empty Hands," the album’s pensive opener, is a blank canvas, gradually filled in with tender key strokes, searching melodies and delicate accompaniment. As Julia, who wrote the song, explains: “When your hands are full, you have to juggle everything back and forth, you’ve too much to deal with simultaneously. Empty hands, on the other hand, are like a clean slate – you have all the possibilities in the world to do what you please”. “Made of Wood” contrasts this impressionist design with an earthy tone, set in a modal frame and propelled forward by straight-ahead swing: “Time and again I feel like writing something solid, conciliatory in a way. This piece refers to my inner foundation, which I associate with something made of wood, something comforting.”   The pianist’s brief duo exposition in exchange with saxophonist Uli Kempendorff on “Jetzt Noch Nicht” – later reprised as a variation with all members of the group – is a moody theme with a twisty melody, inviting the players’ most expressive playing. On Julia’s “Fluid” the band presents a tight, spirited unit in a mesmerizing performance of a smooth, steadily crescendoing arc: “This piece is based around the thick, layered piano sound that’s introduced after a couple of bars. Melodies can crystallize over this fluid tapestry and flow on in waves. Water is an important element to me, which frequently appears in my images.”    Uli’s warm tone complements Julia’s trio with exceptional warmth, entering into a natural symbiosis with the piano’s subtle action, and his own piece, “Open Up," is among the set’s highlights: “When writing ‘Open Up’ I was exclusively focused on the melody’s forward-motion. The line dancingly weaves its way through three octaves. The bass part is notated and creates a counterpoint, while piano and drums are free to interject, comment and mingle at will. There’s much room for free interpretation and alteration throughout.”   Marc Muellbauer’s compositional contributions go through various pulsations – “Polychrome” being a rubato exercise built around a, mostly, diatonic melody that wants to escape its tonal framework. “Wasp at the Window” on the other hand finds the group conspiring in an extensive workout in nine-time with an ostinato bending and bulging to the quartet’s beat. Again different by design, Marc wrote the bossa nova “Valdemossa” with composer Frédéric Chopin in mind: “It is based on the harmony of Chopin’s well-known Prelude No.4 in E Minor, from his cycle of 24 Preludes, op.28. I wrote a new melody expanding the harmony’s chromatic suggestions and exploiting its ambiguity in modulating into two other, far removed keys. It is named after the beautiful place in Mallorca where Chopin wrote his piece…”   With a playful and slightly deconstructed inclination, drummer Heinrich Köbberling’s first original in the programme, “Lightcap," initially suggests the sketch-like framework of a Paul Motian tune. Actually, the piece is inspired by Köbberling’s early trio endeavours in the '90s with saxophonist Lisa Parrott and bassist Chris Lightcap, giving the song its name. The drummer’s other composition is “Post Post Post” – a subtle group improvisation with a veiled melody that has occupied the drummer for several years.   It has become customary for Julia’s records to highlight revamps of known songs from the pop world and with Prince’s “Sometimes it Snows in April” the quartet uncovers another neat treat. The piece’s catchy melody, immediate harmonic hook and laid-back groove are thoughtfully explored by the entire band, with Julia’s gentle touch at the centre of attention.    The Next Door, recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in March 2022, is issued as the quartet embarks on a European tour, with concerts in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Norway.

Julia Hülsmann Quartet | The Next Door ECM Release Date: August 26 2022   For more information on ECM, please visit: ECMRecords.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

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[mjzee]

Release date October 14:

Release date November 4:

Ruins and Remains, a suite for piano, string quartet and percussion, was composed by Wolfert Breferode in 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. There is a vulnerable but resilient quality to the music, as it hovers over its emotional terrain, with moods both bleak and guardedly hopeful. Highly sensitive playing by Brederode, percussionist Joost Lijbaart and the Matangi Quartet, distinguish a special album recorded in Bremen's Sendesaal and produced by Manfred Eicher.

[mjzee]

Release date December 2:

Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, an ECM musician for more than fifty years, is a masterful player who has always welcomed a challenge. His first recording with his new quartet - including rising stars Marius Neset and Helge Lien (both bandleaders in their own right) - is almost entirely improvised. The players make the leap of faith together and find and develop forms in the moment, an object lesson in spontaneous group creativity. Affirmation was recorded in 2021 at Oslo's Rainbow Studio.

 

Release date December 9:

ECM recording artists and key jazz musicians from several generations unite on `Once Around the Room' to celebrate the musical legacy of drum icon Paul Motian in a big way. Jakob Bro and Joe Lovano lead an ensemble through fiery originals that recall the idioms and idiosyncrasies which Motian brought to light over six influential decades behind the drums. Featuring Larry Grenadier, Thomas Morgan and Anders Christensen on bass, as well as Joey Baron and Jorge Rossy on drums.

[Dub Modal]

Down for the Arild quartet but damn, get some fresh album cover ideas ECM! Their themes of sparse winter/cold landscapes are played out at this point, and really are an antithesis of spontaneous group creativity. 

[mjazzg]

You'll be asking them to brighten the colour palette next 

[Dub Modal]

20 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

You'll be asking them to brighten the colour palette next 

Lol, they love some blue/gray/black/white don't they? The ocean in the rest of the warmer world is blue too guys! 

[JSngry]

What happened to the dog?

[Dub Modal]

48 minutes ago, JSngry said:

What happened to the dog?

Maybe RCA filed a C&D?

[JSngry]

Fuck RCA!  

[mjazzg]

1 hour ago, Dub Modal said:

Lol, they love some blue/gray/black/white don't they? The ocean in the rest of the warmer world is blue too guys! 

That's Northern Europe for you - always grey  it's why we're so much fun at parties

Edited November 1, 2022 by mjazzg

[mjzee]

Perhaps ECM's top executives are color-blind.

[danasgoodstuff]

Too many of their records sound like those darned covers too.

[mjzee]

Release date February 3:

After Mette Henriette's critically acclaimed, self-titled first recording comes Drifting - an album pervaded by trio conversations of idiosyncratic and original expression. With Johan Lindvall returning on piano, new addition Judith Hamann on cello and herself on saxophone, Mette's chamber musical elaborations prove of a concentrated and exploratory quality, marked by subtle yet intense interaction. Motifs and recurring patterns crystallize and reveal a concise, intricate narrative.

Stephan Micus is a unique musician and composer. He collects and studies instruments from all around the world and creates his own musical journeys with them. This is his 25th solo album for ECM and its sound is dominated by the four-metre long Tibetan dung chen trumpet, an instrument he has recently learned and is using for the first time. It was the thunderous sound of this instrument that led to the album's name and its nine tracks celebrating deities around the world.

Release date February 3:

This "short diary (of loss)" as drummer Sebastian Rochford calls it is offered as "a sonic memory, created with love, out of need for comfort." The album is dedicated to Rochford's father, Aberdeen poet Gerard Rochford (1932-2019) and to his family. Seb, one of ten siblings, wrote most of the music for this album shortly after Gerard's death and delivers it here, in performances of deep feeling and hymn-like clarity, together with pianist Kit Downes.

Release date February 24:

The creative partnership of bassist Anders Jormin and singer/violinist/violist Lena Willemark was first given exposure on ECM in 2004. In 2015, they introduced a new project with koto player Karin Nakagawa on Trees of Light. Now, with the addition of drummer Jon F„lt (Anders's longtime comrade in the Bobo Stenson Trio) the group has expanded its improvisational range. Many creative ideas are explored on Pasado en claro, emerging from its juxtaposition of poetry and music.

[mjzee]

Release date April 7:

Ralph Alessi's fourth appearance as a leader for the label follows a singular album run that's been met with nothing but praise from The New York Times to The Guardian. On his new album, Alessi's unique tone is as limber, piercing and present as ever, enveloped by a fresh quartet line-up - pianist Florian Weber, B„nz Oester on bass and drummer Gerry Hemingway - that navigates through the trumpeter's idiosyncratically swinging compositions with a sixth sense.

An ECM artist for his entire musical career, US guitarist Ralph Towner has built up a unique body of work in his recordings for the label. Central to his oeuvre are his solo albums, the first of which, Diary, was issued 50 years ago. At First Light extends this great tradition, drawing inspiration from a broad palette of music. In addition to his own pieces, Towner also plays Hoagy Carmichael's "Little Old Lady", Jule Styne's "Make Someone Happy" and the traditional tune "Danny Boy."

The Bobo Stenson Trio's ability to cover far-reaching idioms and wide-ranging repertoire within the scope of their personal diction has become both hallmark and custom. New York Times says the pianist "makes sublime piano-trio records without over-playing. It's pulsating, lumpy with long improvised phrases; it's alive." Charting a subtle and idiosyncratic path through originals and melodies derived from various Scandinavian composers, the group proves of a particularly supple alchemy on Sphere.

[mjzee]

Release date May 5:

Joe Lovano's 3rd album Trio Tapestry finds the group extending its spacious and lyrical approach with deep listening and intense focus. Marilyn Crispell is the optimal pianist for this music, orchestrating it as it unfolds with a sensibility attuned to both contemporary chamber music and post-Coltrane improvising. Drummer Carmen Castaldi, a Lovano associate since teenage years, embellishes the music with his own poetic touch on cymbals and, like Joe, draws blossoming resonances from gongs.

[mjzee]

Release date June 30:

A Time To Remember is a continuation of the special synergy that inhabited Elina Duni's acclaimed Lost Ships and finds her regrouping with that album's quartet of guitarist Rob Luft, Matthieu Michel on flugelhorn and Fred Thomas on percussion and piano. The notion of `time' pulls through the program like a theme, connecting music from different parts of the world - traditionals, popular songs and original compositions - in performances of deep lyricism but also fleet-footed folklore. CD Softpak.

[mjzee]

Release date October 13:

[Guy Berger]

I really haven’t been into many of their recent releases

[GA Russell]

The Album Title of British Reedman's John Surman's Words Unspoken Alludes to the Instant Musical Understanding Found by the Members of This Nimble Quartet   Featuring Vibraphonist Rob Waring, Guitarist Rob Luft and Drummer Thomas Strønen   Available February 16 “It has always fascinated me hearing from people the many different images and messages that any one piece of music can conjure up in their imaginations,“ says the British reedman John Surman in the liner notes for his new quartet album. “Quite often the impressions and stories can be widely varied, and yet somehow seem to make sense to the individuals concerned. This is one side of the title Words Unspoken - but the other refers to the way that I wanted us to approach the music as a group. I simply brought some ideas along to the musicians and, without discussing who would play which element and how the tunes would take shape, we would try and piece the elements together just by listening to each other and reacting accordingly.”   Surman’s open compositions here are frameworks encouraging musical debate as the players guide the collective sound to new destinations, and add striking statements of their own. The ensemble’s identity builds upon the understanding achieved by Surman and US vibraphonist Rob Waring who, like the bandleader, has long been a resident of Oslo. Surman and Waring previously collaborated on John’s 2017 trio recording Invisible Threads with Brazilian pianist Nelson Ayres. They are joined here by two musicians familiar to ECM listeners, British guitarist Rob Luft (lately heard on albums with singer Elina Duni), and Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen, whose projects have included the ensemble Time Is A Blind Guide, Food (with Iain Ballamy), the trio Bayou (with Ayumi Tanaka and Marthe Lea), Parish (with Bobo Stenson) and more. Strønen’s most recent ECM appearance was as a member of Sinikka Langeland’s band on 2023 release Wind And Sun.   The Words Unspoken quartet is a resourceful and often exciting band, as the opening “Pebble Dance” immediately makes plain. It flies from the starting block with a flurry of notes from the vibraphone that establish a climate for swirling and energetic soprano saxophone, and an atmosphere of intensity stoked by taut drums and shimmering guitar.   Through the changing moods of the album each of Surman’s instruments comes to the fore. On “Hawksmoor”, the music begins as a lithe dance for bass clarinet and Strønen’s brushed drums, joined at the halfway mark by guitar and vibes. On title track “Unspoken Words”, the beautiful baritone sax has a tenderness and eloquence that John alone seems able to wrest from the big horn, his soulful soliloquy developed against a wash of complementary sound-colour from Luft and Waring. So it goes.   Surman, who turns 80 in 2024, has been a vital force in European jazz and adjacent genres for more than half a century, already establishing himself as a unique soloist in the 1960s in groups led by Mike Westbrook and Chris McGregor. The band called just The Trio, with Surman and Americans Barre Phillips and Stu Martin, was one of the defining improvising groups of its era, and it was with this line-up that Surman first appeared on ECM, on Barre Phillips’s Mountainscapes in 1976. This was followed, in 1978, by Surman’s Upon Reflection.   Since then, he has appeared on ECM in the broadest range of contexts. These range from solo recordings (including the acclaimed Private City and Road To St Ives) to large ensembles - among them the John Surman/John Warren Brass Project, the Proverbs and Songs project with the Salisbury Festival Chorus, and Free and Equal with London Brass. And from duos (with Jack DeJohnette, Howard Moody) to transcultural projects (Anouar Brahem’s Thimar trio with Dave Holland, and John Potter’s early music-aligned Dowland Project). Surman has collaborated with the string quartet Trans4mation (on The Spaces In Between and Corruscating), and fronted his own groups on the albums Nordic Quartet (with Karin Krog, Terje Rypdal and Vigleik Storaas), Stranger Than Fiction (with John Taylor, Chris Laurence and John Marshall) and Brewster’s Rooster (with John Abercrombie, Drew Gress and Jack DeJohnette.) He has also been an important contributor to projects led by Paul Bley, Miroslav Vitous, Tomasz Stanko, Misha Alperin and Mick Goodrick. In all, a richly creative discography.   Unspoken Words was recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in December 2022. John Surman · Words Unspoken ECM · Release Date: February 16, 2024   For more information on ECM, please visit: ECMRecords.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

[jlhoots]

There'a a new Vijay Iyer Trio CD coming out that I pre-ordered.

[mjzee]

Release date July 5:

Release date August 2:

[mjzee]

Release date November 8:

At The Deer Head Inn, released in 1992, was the first selection of material from pianist Keith Jarrett's spontaneous, and in retrospect historic, return to the Pennsylvanian venue of his early years. "The music has the dash and the unabashed lyricism of Keith Jarrett's best work," wrote Stereophile in 1994. All attributes applicable to this edition, featuring 8 previously unreleased performances, which dives deeply into the magic of this special live event. A one-night-only coming together of a Jarrett trio with Gary Peacock (bass) and Paul Motian (drums). CD with O-card packaging.