Manu Katche Manu Katche

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.”

When the talented session drummer Manu Katche decided to release his own solo effort, his colleagues from studio gigs with Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, and Dire Straits were happy to sign on to help the talented Mr. Katche record It's About Time. Among them, guitarists Daniel Lanois, keyboardist Simon Clark, and sax legend Branford Marsalis join Katche to create some thrilling jazz- and funk-influenced rock cuts. Warm and soulful, Katche's tunes reflect the influence of Nothing Like the Sun-era Sting, perhaps more than any of the other artists that the drummer previously supported.

A specially-price limited edition compilation of Manu Katché on ECM. Here the French drummer is joined in performances of his tunes by an outstanding cast of soloists including Jan Garbarek, Tomasz Stanko, Nils Petter Molvӕr, Trygve Seim, Mathias Eick, Marcin Wasilewski, Tore Brunborg, and Jacob Young. Recorded 2004 -2012 in Oslo, New York and Pernes-les-Fontaines, and drawn from his widely acclaimed albums: Neighborhood (ECM1896), Playground (ECM 2016), Third Round (ECM 2156), Manu Katché (ECM 2284)

Eagerly awaited second ECM album by French-African drummer Manu Katche. Recorded in New York’s Avatar Studio in January 2007, “Playground” picks up where the best-selling “Neighbourhood” left off: in the interim the project has coalesced into a rip-roaring and fully-integrated band. Manu’s group, featuring a Polish/Norwegian confederacy of young players, is energized by his hard driving drums and by his compositions which invite spirited solos… Together, the quintet - whose strong new frontline features Mathias Eick and Trygve Seim - makes exciting, zestful music.

Manu Katché went to the Conservatoire but his musical origins are to be found in rock music. Even though the drummer extraordinaire has listened to a lot of jazz music, he hasnt played that much of it. The case gets even harder to crack when you listen to Katchés tenth album, The ScOpe, where he digs deep into the roots of groove music all the while incorporating the modern sounds of machines. The album cover designed by Arno Lam appropriately pictures Katché sideways an African profile he says- and indeed Africa is the underlying musical theme of the whole album. But this sensual statue is highly flammable if you consider that Manu Katché also knows about dancing he practiced it as a kid, goes out dancing in clubs and after all, you need all four limbs to play the drums he himself remarks.

After a four album stint with ECM, French/Ivorian percussionist Manu Katché releases his ACT debut, recorded on an electrifying evening (in June 2014) in the famed Parisian club New Morning. Katché and his quartet played some 130 concerts last year, which gives them impressive cohesion; the sound is superbly solid, sweeping all before it. Braced by layers of Hammond organ from the subtle Jim Watson, trumpeter Luca Aquino now standing in for the excellent Nils Petter Molvaer takes flight.