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When listening back to these recordings, I am surprised to discover how many ingredients of my own biographical narrative this album reveals. My fascination for the spirit of free improvisation is clearly present and I can hear many traces of the musical elements that touched me the most in the first decade of my life. In 1967, the year I was born, Miles Davis toured in Europe with his quartet.

"ROAR feat. Christopher Dell" is the logical extension of Reza Askari's trio. Saxophone, double bass and drums are joined by the vibraphone - quasi percussion, harmony and rhythm instrument in one and therefore the ideal complement. Dell not only brings vibrating metal plates and beating mallets into the existing trio, but also his own way of thinking and working: Structures are questioned, gutted, negated or reassembled. Within the buildings that "ROAR" creates and has built, windows open up. They unlock a view of new soundscapes. While Askari's compositions for the trio let off steam in their respective frames, the quartet sometimes scrapes at the frame of the frame, scratches some varnish from the surface, leaves it and returns to it again.

Danish & London based bassist, Jasper Høiby, who made a name for himself with the high octane piano trio Phronesis, returns with the second album ‘Like Water’ with his new trio ‘3Elements’.

Return from the Stars, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner's first solo album since 2014's Lathe of Heaven, has a progression that suggests an easy, organic flow across the eras and many influences from jazz history.

On March 11th, 1829, a barely twenty-years old Felix Mendelssohn conducted the performance of the St. Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie. That event certainly ushered in the modern awareness about Bach’s role in the history of European music; with that awareness came the familiarity with the entirety of his output.

Sophie Agnel plays the whole piano. Its body matters as much as its strings. The keyboard's lid is just as good closed as it is open - in fact it’s best slammed open and closed rapidly. Joined by bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble, Three on a Match explodes the piano trio - each player sparking off the other so quickly that it’s impossible to figure out who lit the flame.

In his second ECM appearance (following a critically-acclaimed duo recording with Markus Stockhausen) pianist Florian Weber leads a strong cast through a programme of his compositions and sketches. Whether paying tribute to mentor Lee Konitz on “Honestlee”, impressionistically conveying the glittering “Melody of a Waterfall” or generating impactful drama out of fragments of sound on “Butterfly Effect”, Weber continually draws fresh responses from his players.

Fresh Cream represents so many different firsts, it's difficult to keep count. Cream, of course, was the first supergroup, but their first album not only gave birth to the power trio, it also was instrumental in the birth of heavy metal and the birth of jam rock. That's a lot of weight for one record and, like a lot of pioneering records, Fresh Cream doesn't seem quite as mighty as what would come later, both from the group and its acolytes. In retrospect, the moments on the LP that are a bit unformed in particular, the halting waltz of "Dreaming" never achieves the sweet ethereal atmosphere it aspires to stand out more than the innovations, which have been so thoroughly assimilated into the vocabulary of rock & roll, but Fresh Cream was a remarkable shift forward in rock upon its 1966 release and it remains quite potent.

Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner makes his ECM debut as leader on this session featuring Avishai Cohen on trumpet, double bassist Joe Martin and drummer Marcus Gilmore. The quartet of kindred spirits, often entwining in serpentine fashion, plays long, introspective lines of hypnotic grace; the lithe rhythm section providing subtle volatility. With no chordal instrument in the band, the music opens up and takes on an attractive spaciousness. The songs display the long-breathed essence characteristic of Turner’s work, where melody takes priority. There is also mystery to the album, a quality of patient storytelling to the compositions.