Ecm Works

Under the title “Saltarello”, a 14th-century fast Italian dance in time that survives today as a folk dance, viola player Garth Knox couples works stretching from the 12th century to the present day and demonstrates how fragile, even arbitrary, is the line drawn between art and folk music, but also that between old music and new sounds. Taking up fiddle, viola and viola d’amore, accompanied by cellist Agnes Vesterman and percussionist Sylvain Lemetre, Knox presents his own works alongside music by Hildegard von Bingen; he juxtaposes the exquisite Renaissance sounds of John Dowland against pieces by Kaija Saariaho that make subtle use of electronics, and sets arrangements of traditional melodies and anonymous dance movements against Vivaldi’s D minor Viola d’amore Concerto – a sensuous survey of 1000 years of musical events.

Guitarist, composer, and bandleader Pat Metheny is one of the most successful jazz musicians in the world. He is the only artist to win 20 Grammy Awards in 10 different categories. A consummate stylist and risk-taker, his musical signature melds a singular, euphoric sense of harmony with Afro-Latin and Brazilian sounds, rock, funk, global folk musics, and jazz. His 1976 debut, Bright Size Life, and the self-titled Pat Metheny Group two years later resonated with audiences and critics for its euphoric lyricism, dynamics, and rhythmic ideas.

If one considers that this 2005 CD presents music written in the early to middle twentieth century, and the latest of these is a "recomposition" of three Renaissance madrigals, then it seems a most peculiar offering in ECM's New Series line – certainly important for anyone interested in modern music but decidedly not the cutting-edge fare this label usually delivers.

“Songs of Ascension” is a major new recording from composer Meredith Monk and her vocal ensemble. Written in 2008, it is conceived as a continuous composition, a departure from Monk’s earlier collaged or episodic extended works. In recent years Meredith Monk’s been expanding into the worlds of orchestra and string quartet. On “Songs of Ascension” she teams up with a string quartet of New York players well versed in new music. With winds, percussion and two vocal groups added to her already extraordinary singers, this is one of Monk’s most musically ambitious ventures. Voices and instruments are paired and balanced against each other to an extent rare in her music.

Pianist Julia Hülsmann and singer Theo Bleckmann, in a first – and long-awaited – collaborative recording, celebrate the “unsung Weill” alongside the master’s best-loved works including “Mack The Knife”, “Speak Low” and “September Song”, adding also Julia’s settings of Walt Whitman, with whom Kurt Weill felt an affinity. The project came together at the instigation of the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau in 2013 and since then has gained new life on the road and been fine-tuned in this studio recording made in Oslo in June 2014 with Manfred Eicher as producer. It marks a musical advance for the Hülsmann group at a number of levels, and these recastings of Weill open up new imaginative possibilities for the players. English trumpeter and flugelhornist Tom Arthurs, who made his debut with Hülsmann on In Full View is fully integrated on A Clear Midnight.

Since being afflicted in the late '90s with chronic fatigue syndrome, which kept him on the sidelines for several years, Keith Jarrett has had to reinvent himself as a performer. It's no slight on his classic live recitals of the past to suggest that has proven to be a fruitful development. In moving away from his long, inwardly streaming, lyrically sustained works and adopting a more easygoing episodic approach, he has become more accessible (and less windy) without sacrificing intensity or the freedom to draw upon all manner of styles including blues, gospel, and Americana. Recorded in 2005, The Carnegie Hall Concert features a 10-part piece that runs a gamut of moods and emotions. The enjoyable encore portion consists of three new originals, including a standard, "Time on My Hands," and a rare, enthusiastically received Jarrett oldie, "My Song," from the '70s.

By the fall of 1992, Keith Jarrett had already spent 30 years as a notable jazz performer. What better way to celebrate than to return to this record’s eponymous venue in his birthplace of Allentown, Pennsylvania for a once-in-a-lifetime gig? Switching out his usual go-to, Jack DeJohnette, for Paul Motian (no stranger to Jarrett, with whom he’d worked in the 70s), the trio works wonders with the new colors the latter provides. Peacock and Jarrett are both verbose players who manage never to step on each other’s toes. With Motian backing them, they take longer pauses for reflection, listening to the wind as it blows through their leaves. His presence and panache are as palpable as the prevalence of alliterations in this sentence, bringing an irresistible brushed beat to the squint-eyed groove of Jaki Byard’s “Chandra.”

Giya Kancheli’s tenth album on ECM New Series offers two recent large-scale choral works with unconventional instrumental forces. While the composer has frequently stated that his love for music began with Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington rather than with Bach and Schubert let alone with traditional Georgian polyphony, his highly compelling new compositions mirror impressions of both Western and Georgian sacred music without actually alluding to religion itself. Written in 2003 and 2005 respectively, both “Little Imber“ and “Amao Omi” are melancholic musings about the absurdity of war in conjunction with the power of beauty.

A recent entry in ECM's consistently interesting series presenting music from the former Soviet Union, this release offers two 1990s compositions from the Uzbek-born Alexander Knaifel. Svete Tikhiy (O Gladsome Light), written in 1991 and dedicated to Giya Kancheli, is a three-movement work for soprano and sampler, with texts drawn from Russian Orthodox liturgy. The manipulation of soprano Tatiana Melentieva's voice with the sampler comes mostly in the 20-minute second movement, where human vocal timbres are fragmented into beats and harmonies. Structurally the movement offers a procession of fields of sound (the rather mystical liner notes refer to color associated with Orthodox iconography) not so different from other minimalist works, but the sampler adds a new twist that in 1991 was fairly innovative, especially in Russia.

This release signals in the then 33-year old, Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen's debut outing for the ECM Records label. His fellow compatriots, bassist Harald Johnsen and drummer Jarle Vespestad, round out this jazz piano trio offering. Fundamentally speaking, the group seemingly works its palate into that classic "ECM Records" aesthetic, comprising echo-laden sonic characteristics and a chamber-esque vibe.