ECM’s Luminessence Audiophile Vinyl-Reissue Series Continues

ECM’s Luminessence Audiophile Vinyl-Reissue Series Continues

Tomasz Stanko | Balladyna | May 15, 2026

Bill Connors | Of Mist and Melting | June 12, 2026

Mick Goodrick | In Pas(s)ing | July 10, 2026

---

ECM’s audiophile vinyl-reissue series Luminessence continues with Tomasz Stanko’s Balladyna on May 15, 2026, Bill Connors Of Mist and Melting on June 12, 2026, Mick Goodrick’s In Pas(s)ing on July 10, 2026.

The Luminessence series is a kaleidoscope, shedding light on the jewels of the label’s deep catalogue in elegant, high-quality editions. The hallmarks of the series: original and evocative music, imaginatively played and sensitively produced. The recordings underline the scope and variety of ECM’s world of sound and the LPs are presented in different formats.

---

An essential document of European jazz in the 1970s, and a recording that still sounds magnificent today, Balladyna exerted an enduring influence on successive generations of improvising musicians – in Poland and Finland above all, though it also cast its spell more widely. As Tomasz Stanko once said, “My international name was built on Balladyna.” On the record, the Polish trumpeter is joined by his close collaborator Edward Vesala on drums (“We were like brothers,” Stanko later said), saxophonist Tomasz Szukalski and master bassist Dave Holland, brought to the session by Manfred Eicher. Even though it was only the trumpeter’s debut for the label, it presented Stanko’s unique melodic voice in an already fleshed-out framework, with his earlier freer influences still looming in the band’s explosive undercurrent. The quartet explores the seven originals on the album with a strong sense of rhythmic propulsion and melodic curiosity throughout. Recorded at Tonstudio Bauer in 1975, Balladyna was produced by Manfred Eicher.

Re-issued as part of ECM’s Luminessence series, Balladyna arrives in a tip-on gatefold jacket with new liner notes and photos from the archive.

---

“A subtle tour de force” are the words with which Billboard met guitarist Bill Connors’s Of Mist And Melting upon the album’s release in 1978; and revisiting this music decades later only confirms that special spirits were indeed at work when the Manfred Eicher-produced session with Jan Garbarek, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette and Connors unfolded at Oslo’s Talent Studio in December 1977. Following a period of electric guitar fireworks in various 70s fusion contexts, Connors’s spout with ECM saw the guitarist strip things back to their acoustic core, revealing chamber music dynamics transported by subtle nylon-string-acrobatics. In thoughtful and engaging interplay with what can retrospectively be considered an improvising “supergroup”, the guitarist presents six original compositions that blend the lyrically concrete with wide-flung open explorations – or as Jazz Journal put it several years later, “rarely have elements of ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ jazz combined so strikingly”. Connors himself, listening to the album in 2025, seemed stunned to rediscover how deeply invested he became with the classical guitar during his 5-year stretch recording with Manfred Eicher for ECM. “It made me nostalgic for those times. I forgot how much time I had dedicated to playing this type of guitar,” Bill remembered, almost surprised by what he hears on his own recording. “Sometimes it seemed like, even though it wasn’t what Manfred expected, it became exactly the album that we both wanted it to be.” 

Re-issued as part of ECM’s Luminessence series, Of Mist And Melting arrives in a tip-on gatefold jacket with new liner notes and photos from the archive.

---

In Pas(s)ing was Mick Goodrick’s recording debut as leader, after some years with Gary Burton and before that, a spell with Woody Herman. Never very tigerish about self-promotion, Goodrick has spent most of his life teaching in Boston: Jazz Times has called him “perhaps the most influential mentor in the history of jazz guitar.” This 1978 production emphasizes what a creative player he is in his own right, inspired by the great team of players assembled for the session. The playful album title, by the way, alludes to ECM’s first office address, which was, yes, in Pasing.

Re-issued as part of ECM’s Luminessence series, In Pas(s)ing arrives in a tip-on gatefold jacket with new liner notes and photos from the archive.

---

For more information on ECM, please visit:

ECMRecords.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

For media inquiries regarding other ECM titles, please contact:

DL Media · 347-489-5894

Jon Solomon · jon@dlmediamusic.com

Don Lucoff · don@dlmediamusic.com

For the Preferred Artist

Information and press materials (including album covers, promotional photos 

and bios) on all DL Media artists can be found at our website: dlmediamusic.com

###