Ecm Dvd

For his fourth ECM album, titled just “Manu Katché”, the great French-Ivorian drummer reshuffles the line-up of his band once more, and presents a new programme of compact, self-penned tunes. The revolving door policy is part of Katché’s songwriting concept: “If you write all your own music, you’re aware of your limitations. It helps to have a changing cast of musicians, because they naturally bring in things you wouldn’t have expected. It’s really been the idea since the first album [2004’s “Neighbourhood”] to keep on changing the band.” Choices of musicians have usually been inspired by meetings and encounters. “I’ll get to play with someone and then try to have his style, or at least the essence of his style, in mind when I write the music at the piano.”

Enrico Rava's debut for ECM, 1975's The Pilgrim and the Stars, is a stellar progressive jazz effort from the Italian trumpeter who was then just coming into his own. Previously, Rava had spent his formative years working with such artists as saxophonist Steve Lacy, trombonist Roswell Rudd, and pianist Carla Bley, and obviously took much to heart when approaching his own music.

Steve Tibbetts is a difficult artist to categorize. While the German-based ECM was (at one time) the home of jazz guitarists Pat Metheny, John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner, Tibbetts' music seems more a product of Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa than Jim Hall or Wes Montgomery. Throw into the mix the wordless vocals on some tracks and the use of tabla and synthesizer, and Tibbetts and the other musicians on this CD produce some powerful music–not to mention amazing guitar pyrotechnics from Tibbetts himself.

Bassist and composer Anders Jormin has been one of the more restless and adventurous musical talents on the ECM roster. He's worked with numerous jazz talents from his long associations with Bobo Stenson, Charles Lloyd, and Tomasz Stanko, and from his composing for brass ensemble. This project is off the map. Commissioned to write new sacred music for premiere in the cathedral in Västerås, Switzerland, he composed a series of works in which he used the existing poems of Swedish writers like Harry Martinson, Johannes Ederfelt, Lotta Olsson-Anderberg, and the great Pär Lagerkvist, as well as those of William Blake.

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.

As one of ECM’s most passionate and prolific contributors, Jan Garbarek has left us with a varicolored, sometimes watery, archive. For All Those Born With Wings, the Norwegian saxophonist went solo, painting an evocative album of relic-laden vistas. The result is a six-part session filled with a variety of instruments and tastes. The hammered dulcimer is a welcome sound to the Garbarek palette, and is used tastefully in the 1st Part, where Garbarek’s saxophone refracts into a flock of large-winged birds. An army of chants floods the 2nd Part, as martial drums resound like the introductory sequence of a classic martial arts film.

Highly attractive recording debut album of gifted Italian sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana in a programme of 20th and 21st century pieces for violin and piano. This recital of Takemitsu, Hindemith, Janáček and Silvestrov is distinguished by its sensitivity and thoughtfulness and by the refined and insightful playing of the award-winning Duo Gazzana.

John Surman is an exceptionally versatile musician and his instrumental prowess has been showcased in many contexts. Yet his solo albums may be the best sources for insights into his melodic imagination. If you want to understand the wellsprings of his creativity, the solo albums are the place to go.

Founded in 1992, Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble is a highly sophisticated grouping, which for this recording conceptually pairs three acoustic musicians with electronic tone manipulators. What keeps it so interesting is the different approaches to electronics, with Walter Prati transforming Parker's sounds, Marco Vecchi reformulating Paul Lytton's percussion, and violinist Philipp Wachsmann processing his own acoustic sounds and those of bassist Barry Guy. It is all fascinating stuff, and if it does not swing or fit into any easy definitions of "jazz," it takes the concept of improvisation to a new level. There is sometimes an aimlessness to it all that can be off-putting, but concentrated listening can produce wonderful rewards for the patient consumer. Parker's role seems less that of a leader than an instigator. He does, nonetheless, afford himself the opportunity to press his revolutionary technique to action.

Paul Giger's 1993 solo release, Schattenwelt, takes a darker turn following his more volksliederisch 1991 release, Alpstein, though it is on this release that his virtuosity really shines. The delicate textures of the recording's bookends – "Bay" and "Bombay" – utilize a variety of timbres and tones, sometimes harsh, sometimes flute-like, that wash over the structure of the pieces. The centerpiece of the recording, "Seven Scenes From Labyrinthos," a retelling of the myth of the minotaur and the labyrinth, spans a variety of styles, from the shrill and dissonant "Crane" to the almost-lilting "Creating the Labyrinth." A great recording for aficionados of the violin with a sophisticated ear.