Luminessence 2026: Cowell, Gabarek, Jarrett

ECM’s Luminessence Audiophile Vinyl-Reissue Series Continues

Stanley Cowell Trio | Illusion Suite | September 18, 2026

Jan Garbarek | Rites | October 16, 2026

Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden | Jasmine | November 20, 2026

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ECM’s audiophile vinyl-reissue series Luminessence continues with Stanley Cowell Trio’s Illusion Suite on September 18, Jan Garbarek’s Rites on October 16 and Keith Jarrett/Charlie Haden’s Jasmine on November 20.

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.

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On Illusion Suite, “the charms are quiet,” as DownBeat put it, reviewing the album in 1974. “It creeps up on you and hits you in the ear in subtle ways. Things you hadn’t noticed keep jumping out. This album most directly and accurately pictures [Stanley Cowell’s] fresh keyboard approach”. On the album – Cowell’s only recording for ECM – the pianist’s trio is completed by bassist Stanley Clarke and Jimmy Hopps on drums. Together, the players fashion a wide-flung idiomatic net that puts Cowell’s compositional vision first – improvisation as means for exploration but also for sculpting an unmistakable identity, a thing Cowell had never done with as much clarity prior to this session. In his liner note, accompanying the Luminessence vinyl reissue of this album, pianist and writer Ethan Iverson observes how “Cowell leaps from one idea to the next, tackling diverse genres with gusto” and calls the album “a fearless and experimental excursion that embraces multitudes.”

“With his own trio on Illusion Suite, Cowell finds a remarkable tone that, as personal as it is, set something like a template for a new modernist classicism. An inspired, imaginative, energetic improviser, Cowell digs deep into the harmonic complexities of his tunes while building mercurial melodic lines on the fly. In short, it’s a trio recording that opens out prismatically into the music of the future—and its emphases and inflections are just as timely now.”

– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Re-issued as part of ECM’s Luminessence series, Illusion Suite arrives in a tip-on gatefold jacket with new liner notes and an archival photograph.

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Jan Garbarek’s powerful double-album is a magnum opus, and well-titled. “Rites” suggests initiations, rituals, the archaic, the magical, but also “rites of passage”, and the Norwegian saxophonist reflects, in his choice of material, upon pivotal episodes and influences in his own life and those of his associates. Pieces include a tribute to Don Cherry and reworkings of the Garbarek classics “It’s OK to listen to the gray voice” and “So mild the wind, so meek the water.” There are abundant references to scattered musics of the world, from Norway to India, as well as a setting – for voices and saxophone – of a Native American poem, and the surprise inclusion of Jansug Kakhidze’s “The moon over Mtatsminda,” sung by its composer with the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra. In total, this is the most comprehensive recording Jan Garbarek has made to date, and his subtle saxophone artistry has never been more persuasive.

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In a similar way as Last Dance, Jasmine – originally released in 2010 – captures the intimate one-off session and reunion of Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden, who are documented exchanging familiar glances in duo over several sets of standards at Jarrett’s home studio in New Jersey. At the time of the album’s release, the Financial Times fittingly observed, “it is more than 30 years since they last recorded together, but their dialogue has the detailed intimacy of old friends exploring common themes.” Now available for the first time ever on vinyl, Jarrett and Haden’s unmatched two-way understanding can be re-discovered anew, radiating with great warmth on classic songs like “Body and Soul”, “For All We Know” , “Where Can I Go Without You”, “Don’t Ever Leave Me” and more. As Keith Jarrett says in his liner notes: “This is spontaneous music made on the spot without any preparation save our dedication throughout our lives that we won’t accept a substitute… These are great love songs played by players who are trying, mostly, to keep the message intact.”  

“Jasmine is as unashamedly expressive a recording as either man has ever made. Throughout, the duo operates in a comfort zone that values felicitous melody and openhearted sentiment over displays of bravado.“

– Steve Futterman, The New Yorker

Re-issued as part of ECM’s Luminessence series, Jasmine is released on vinyl for the very first time, arriving in a tip-on gatefold jacket with all the original material from the initial CD release intact.

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