ECM 2022 Releases
ECM began 2022 with pianist Kit Downes’ Vermillion, where he and his trio treaded gentle lyricism and bold creative outbursts in equal measures. Israeli trumpeter Avishai Cohen showed a raw beauty and vulnerability on Naked Truth, his most improvisational ECM recording to date, and saxophonist Mark Turner’s Return from the Stars was an album both exhilarating and thoughtful in its arc of expression.
In April, pianist Tord Gustavsen revealed a fresh angle to his particularly unique trio investigations into Scandinavian folk hymns, gospel, chorale and jazz on Opening. The same month, Norwegian keyboardist/composer Jon Balke and his transcultural, trans-idiomatic musical collective Siwan released Hafla, which featured music inspired by the creative spirit of Al-Andalus.
John Scofield’s self-titled album, his first-ever solo guitar recording that was released in May, showcased all the influences and idioms he has cultivated over his storied career. On Isabela, New York-based saxophonist Oded Tzur introduced 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.
ECM continued into the summer with Hellbound Train, the double-album retrospective from Steve Tibbetts that included music selected by the guitarist from four decades of his recordings on ECM. In July, Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity released Elastic Wave, which featured André Roligheten on reeds and bassist Petter Eldh and displayed the trio’s dynamic interaction, dancing sense of pulse and boldly etched themes.
August’s releases included Face à Face from Barre Phillips, the grandmaster of improvised bass, György Kurtág Jr., the electronics-playing son of Hungary’s great contemporary composer, and Julia Hülsmann Quartet‘s The Next Door, which highlighted her unique pianistic voice in a varied program of almost exclusively original music.
ECM moved into autumn with a trio of September releases. The Song is You was a duo album between trumpeter Enrico Rava and pianist Fred Hersch, who both share a deep affection for the jazz tradition and a profound sense for melodic invention. Wolfert Brederode‘s Ruins and Remains, a suite for piano, string quartet and percussion, was composed by Brederode to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Bordeaux Concert was a special document from Keith Jarrett’s last European tour. Each of Jarrett’s 2016 solo piano concerts had its own strikingly distinct character, and in Bordeaux the lyrical impulse is to the fore.
The last quarter of 2022 included Last Decade by German-American pianist Benjamin Lackner, who made his ECM debut with a star-studded quartet of drummer Manu Katché, trumpeter Mathias Eick and bassist Jérôme Regard. Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, an ECM musician for more five decades, released Affirmation, his first recording with his new quartet that is almost entirely improvised.
Saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Jakob Bro lead a collective of seven players through distinctive originals on Once Around the Room, an homage to the late drummer Paul Motian, who appeared on numerous ECM recordings, including his 1973 solo debut, Conception Vessel.
Release February 11, 2022
Kit Downes joins forces with long-time collaborators Petter Eldh on bass and James Maddren on drums for a carefully assorted piano trio program that treads gentle lyricism and bold creative outbursts in equal measures. Downes, whose prior ECM offering Dreamlife of Debris was termed a “work of otherworldly beauty” by BBC Music Magazine, carves out some of his most compendious pieces to date on Vermillion. Replete with subtle twists and turns, the trio offers its idiosyncratic take on the piano trio format, producing unexpected harmonic alterations and animate rhythmic flashes as they flesh out distinct musical forms. Recorded at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano, the three-piece outlines a unique design for this instrumentation in clear-cut interplay and creates a profound study of Kit Downes’ broad musical imagination in the process.
The 180g vinyl version is now available.
Release February 25, 2022
There is a searching, yearning quality to Naked Truth, and a raw beauty and vulnerability in Avishai Cohen’s trumpet sound on his most improvisational ECM recording to date. Very much music-of-the moment, found and shaped in the course of a remarkable recording session in the South of France, Naked Truth takes the form of an extemporaneous suite. For most of its length the Israeli trumpeter painstakingly leads the way, closely shadowed by his long-time comrades – pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassist Barak Mori and drummer Ziv Ravitz – who share an intuitive understanding, hyper alert to the music’s subtly-changing emphases. At the album’s conclusion, Cohen recites “Departure,” a poem by Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky, whose themes of renunciation, acceptance and letting go seem optimally-attuned to the mood of the music. Naked Truth was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, in September 2021, and produced by Manfred Eicher.
The 180g vinyl version is now available.
Mark Turner’s writing for his quartet on Return from the Stars (titled after Stanislav Lem’s science fiction novel) gives the players plenty of space in which to move, on an album both exhilarating and thoughtful in its arc of expression. Solos flow organically out of the arrangements and, beneath the often-dazzling interplay of Turner’s tenor and Jason Palmer’s trumpet, the rhythm section of Joe Martin and Jonathan Pinson roams freely. Although Turner has been a frequent presence on ECM in contexts including the Billy Hart Quartet, the Fly trio, and a duo with Ethan Iverson, Return from the Stars is his first quartet album since 2014’s Lathe of Heaven and an essential document of his artistry as a player and his conceptual thinking as a bandleader.
The 180g vinyl version is now available.
On the album Opening, Tord Gustavsen reveals a fresh angle to his particularly unique trio investigations into Scandinavian folk hymns, gospel, chorale and jazz, as he introduces a different voice on bass. With a new fellow-traveller on board and its recording premiere in Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo, the trio discovers inspired new ways to interact with each other, using innovative approaches to sound and technique in the process. Made up in equal parts of intricately textured improvisations and understated melodic hooks, the group’s conversations bring an enticing unfamiliarity to the language the Norwegian pianist has developed over almost two decades of collaboration with ECM.
The 180g vinyl version will be available in autumn 2022.
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 (1010-1091) and contemporaries including Ibn Zaydun (1003-1071) and Ibn Sara As-Santarini (1043-1123). Hafla was recorded in May and June 2021 at Village Recording Studios, in Copenhagen.
Released May 6, 2022
John Scofield’s first guitar-solo-recording ever gives a résumé of all the influences and idioms he has cultivated over his career in performances on guitar, accompanied by his own rhythmic pulse and chordal backing using a loop machine. Besides jazz, John is known to have always also had a soft spot for the rock and roll and country music he grew up with, revealed here in unencumbered renditions of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and Hank Williams’ “You Win Again.” Between elegant and personal readings of standards, like “It Could Happen To You,” the traditional “Danny Boy” and Keith Jarret’s “Coral,” Scofield presents his own timeless compositions – some new, others known. For the guitarist, it’s all about “the way you get the sound out of the string and what you do with it after you attack it.”
The 180g vinyl version will be available in autumn 2022.
Released May 13, 2022
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. The quartet’s lineup is unchanged from 2020’s Here Be Dragons and the group’s interplay has grown even more expressive in the meantime. Throughout Isabela the saxophonist and his collaborators – pianist Nitai Hershkovits, Petros Klampanis on bass and rhythm conjurer Johnathan Blake – apply their subtle dialect in a more intense space, exploring the nuances and colors of Oded’s self-fashioned raga in a suite-like sequence of quiet meditations and powerful exclamations. The remarkable session was captured in Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo in September 2021 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
The 180g vinyl version will be available in autumn 2022.
Released June 24, 2022
Hellbound Train is a double-album retrospective from Steve Tibbetts with music selected by the US guitarist from 40 years of recordings on ECM. Neatly divided into electric and acoustic chapters, the anthology juxtaposes pieces originally featured on the albums Northern Song, Safe Journey, Exploded View, Big Map Idea, The Fall Of Us All, A Man About A Horse, Natural Causes and Life Of. With its liquid melodies and textures and hypnotic patterns and pulsations subtly influenced by music of many cultures. it’s an ideal introduction to a unique body of work. At different times Tibbetts might seem closer to minimalism, alternate rock or ambient music, yet his artistic signature is unmistakable.
Released July 15, 2022
Drummer Gard Nilssen’s ECM leader debut follows acclaimed recordings for the label with the Maciej Obara Quartet. Elastic Wave presents Nilssen’s powerful trio with fellow Norwegian André 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.
Elastic Wave was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in June 2021.
The grandmaster of improvised bass and 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 and experiences. With his subtle use of synthesizers and digital percussion, György Kurtág 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 in the South of France, Face à Face is a consistently fascinating album.
Released August 26, 2022
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, composed by herself and her colleagues – tenor saxophonist Uli Kempendorff, Marc Muellbauer on double bass and drummer Heinrich Köbberling. A deep respect for the jazz tradition, as cultivated in the post-bop and modal jazz of the ’60s, permeates this session and, with the quartet’s modern twist, sets the stage for highly expressive soloing and profound interplay.
Released September 9, 2022
Their collaboration has been hailed as a summit meeting of two jazz masters. Enrico Rava, trumpeter from Trieste, and Fred Hersch, pianist from Cincinnati, share a deep affection for the tradition and a profound sense for melodic invention. In this recording, with flugelhorn and piano glowing in the superb acoustic of the Lugano studio, Rava and Hersch explore some much-loved standards: 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 improvise freely together. Enrico Rava has been an ECM artist for almost fifty years. The Song Is You is Fred Hersch’s first for the label. The album was recorded at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in November 2021, and produced by Manfred Eicher.
The 180g vinyl version will be available in autumn 2022.
Released September 16, 2022
Ruins and Remains, a suite for piano, string quartet and percussion, was composed by Wolfert Brederode in 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Over time, however, it has come to embody meanings broader and more personal, with wide-ranging resonances. “At a number of levels, the piece has to do with grief and loss and learning to stand up again,” Dutch pianist Brederode says. 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 (increasingly regarded as one of Holland’s most adventurous string quartets), distinguish a special album recorded in Bremen’s Sendesaal in August 2021 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Released September 30, 2022
Bordeaux Concert is a special document from Keith Jarrett’s last European tour. Each of Jarrett’s 2016 solo piano concerts had its own strikingly distinct character, and in Bordeaux the lyrical impulse is to the fore. In the course of this improvised suite, many quiet discoveries are made, and there is a touching freshness to the music as a whole, a feeling of intimate communication. 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 are beguilingly beautiful. Tender songs are pulled from the air, “rousing a community of listening at the edge of silence,” as Le Monde put it, “an awareness of time out from the noise and weariness of the world.”
The 180g vinyl version is now available.
Released October 14, 2022
German-American pianist Benjamin Lackner makes his ECM debut with a star-studded quartet of Manu Katché on drums, trumpeter Mathias Eick and Jérôme Regard on bass. Mathias and Manu share a longstanding association with the label and their respectively unique instrumental signatures can be traced across this set of exclusively original material – eight pieces by Benjamin, one by Jérôme. The bassist and the leader’s partnership goes all the way back to 2006, when Jérôme joined Lackner’s trio, which remains active until today. Two decades of close collaboration have molded them into intimate colleagues, who complement each other’s lines intuitively. Mathias Eick and Manu Katché’s effortless musicianship enhances the quartet’s fluid interplay. Last Decade was recorded in Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-Les-Fontaines and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Released October 28, 2022
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 November 2021 at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio.
Released November 4, 2022
On Once Around The Room, ECM recording artists and key jazz musicians from several generations unite in a small ensemble to celebrate the musical legacy of drum icon Paul Motian in a big way. Joe Lovano and Jakob Bro lead a party of seven through fiery originals that recall the idioms and idiosyncrasies which Motian brought to light over six influential decades behind the drums. Lovano and Motian had been intimate colleagues for many years with their most notable collaboration being the groundbreaking trio featuring Bill Frisell – the lineup released three albums on ECM. Jakob Bro on the other hand made his ECM debut on Paul’s album Garden of Eden (2006). On Once Around The Room, compositions by Joe and Jakob appear alongside collective improvisation and Motian’s own “Drum Music,” seamlessly tied together and developed by an accomplished musical collective with stalwarts Larry Grenadier, Thomas Morgan and Anders Christensen respectively on bass as well as drummers Joey Baron and Jorge Rossy.
ECM | Release Dates: 2022
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