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Bobo Stenson / Anders Jormin / Paul Motian: Goodbye
by Achille Brunazzi
Avant-garde and jazz legacy: in 2005, the German ECM label released Goodbye, from Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson, bassist Anders Jormin and drummer Paul Motian. The record represents the most accomplished work in Stenson's discography, because it wonderfully and fully embraces the latest jazz musical concepts and the perfect interplay between its band members. The album recalls ...
Jan Garbarek / The Hilliard Ensemble: Officium Novum
by C. Michael Bailey
At first blush, there is really no reason the eutection of early a capella music and modern saxophone should work. It is antithetical, it makes no sense. However, wizards like Manfred Eicher, saxophonist and ECM stalwart Jan Garbarek, and early music mavens The Hilliard Ensemble not only defy the odds, they redefine them with a bit ...
Manu Katche: Third Round
by Nenad Georgievski
The art of making music that engages both the head and the heart is evidently not hard to pull off, but can be potentially self-defeating. But Manu Katché's exuberant and playful albums set new standards for brainy, soulful, and funky jazz, by blending his strengths as a composer and instrumentalist. His work as a drummer/composer/bandleader, much ...
Steve Tibbetts: Natural Causes
by Ian Patterson
Although guitarist/composer Steve Tibbetts and Marc Anderson have collaborated since the late 1970s--the percussionist has played on every one of Tibbetts ECM releases--this is their first duo recording since Northern Song (ECM, 1982). That album employed silence as a sideman, and although there is less outright pause on Natural Causes, the same soothing, meditative ambiance forms ...
Michael Formanek: The Rub And Spare Change
by John Kelman
With a discography that's growing with each passing year--expanding into territories new to both the label and music in general--it's difficult to understand the need for some to apply a reductionist stance to the music of ECM, whitewashing it with descriptions like “melancholy," or “Nordic cool." One listen to bassist Michael Formanek's ECM debut, The Rub ...
Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Llyria
by John Kelman
Nik Bärtsch's Ronin Llyrìa ECM Records 2010 Few artists have emerged in recent times with so unique and fully-formed a voice as pianist Nik Bärtsch. Living largely, as he does, in the jazz world--especially since coming to ECM in 2006 with Stoa, after years foundation-setting and groundbreaking work in his native ...
Jan Garbarek / The Hilliard Ensemble: Officium Novum
by John Kelman
With the unexpected massive success of Officium (ECM, 1994), Jan Garbarek's first collaboration with The Hilliard Ensemble, it would be all too easy for the Norwegian saxophonist and British vocal ensemble to rest on their not inconsiderable laurels, and simply repeat the formula. But while Officium featured a repertoire of structured early music--from Gregorian chant to ...
Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Llyria
by Chris May
Pianist Nik Bärtsch's Ronin has traveled a long way since its formation in 2001, through its early albums on Ronin Rhythm Records, its signing with ECM, and the three discs that label has so far released. Mid-decade, the Swiss band was forging its reputation with a relentlessly beat-centric style which Bärtsch dubbed “Zen funk" and “ritual ...
Anat Fort: And If
by Dan McClenaghan
Working with legendary drummer Paul Motian on her first ECM release, A Long Story (2007), must have been a formative experience for pianist Anat Fort. On And If, her second release for the German label, she opens and closes the set with two readings of “Paul Motian." These are inward, time-standing-still tunes, showcasing Fort's spare and ...
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen; Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tonu Kalijuste: Arvo Part: Symphony No. 4
by C. Michael Bailey
It is entirely too easy to look at the past and wonder where the greatness is today. In 1734 George Frideric Handel was composing operas at London's Covent Garden. Domenico Scarlatti was in Madrid, serving as music master to Princess Maria Barbara, for whom he composed many of his 555 keyboard sonatas. Johann Sebastian Bach was ...
