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Pianist Giovanni Guidi (born 1985), is one of the most outstanding musicians to have emerged from the ranks of Italian jazz in the last decade and has already made his presence felt on Enrico Rava’s “Tribe” and “On The Dancefloor” albums. Rava praises both Guidi’s “limitless curiosity” as an improviser and his “relentless refinement” of touch and musical taste, and the pianist continually proves that those qualities are not opposites. His first leader date for ECM is a glowing collection of self-penned tunes, simultaneously inner-directed and creatively daring, with many adroit exchanges between the musicians and plenty of space given also to bassist Thomas Morgan, whose role in the Guidi Trio is perhaps analogous to Scott LaFaro’s in the Evans Trio.

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.

Louis Sclavis has for decades dazzled and provoked listeners with his literate, ambitious musical projects that examine not only the many dimensions and directions of the sonic spectrum, but also his Renaissance-like embrace of literature, foreign cultures, and now, visual art. With a new quartet collaborating with him – only cellist Vincent Courtois is retained from his previous outing, L'Affrontement des Prétendants – Sclavis turns his eyes, ears, and spirit toward an investigation of the paintings of the French artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest on Napoli's Walls.

Kenny Wheeler's beautiful sound on trumpet and his wide range are well-displayed on his four compositions, three of which are given performances over ten minutes long. With the assistance of ECM regulars Jan Garbarek (on tenor and soprano), guitarist John Abercrombie, bassist Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette and (on one song) guitarist Ralph Towner, Wheeler emphasizes lyricism and romantic moods on this fine set of original music.

On its third ECM album Vallon again leads the group not with virtuosic solo display but by patient outlining of melody and establishing of frameworks in which layered group improvising can take place. With this group, gentle but insistent rhythms can trigger seismic musical events. Although Vallon (recently nominated for the Swiss Music Prize) is the author of nine of the pieces here, the band members share equal responsibilities for the music's unfolding. The gravitational pull of Patrice Moret's bass and the intense detail supplied by Julian Sartorius's drums and cymbals are crucial to the success of Vallon's artistic concept and the range of emotions the music can convey.

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.

One of only a handful of Keith Jarrett "Standards" Trio records without a standard within earshot, this is a triumph, for Jarrett has successfully brought the organically evolving patterns of his solo concerts into the group format. Each of the first three selections is built upon a constant revolving ostinato, and each evolves from one stage to the next like a Jarrett solo piano improvisation.

For this live solo concert (recorded at the Teatro alla Scala in Milano, Italy and released in 1997), pianist Keith Jarrett performs two lengthy improvisations simply titled "La Scala, Parts I and II." Most of the music is quite lyrical and romantic. The first part (which lasted nearly 45 minutes) does have a section using a droning rhythm reminiscent of American Indian music before resolving back into a ballad. The second section (a mere 27½ minutes) starts out dissonant, gradually evolves into a peaceful section, and then concludes with the original dissonant ideas. As an encore, Jarrett performs a melodic and very beautiful six-minute rendition of "Over the Rainbow," receiving a well-deserved thunderous ovation at its conclusion. The music overall develops slowly but always holds one's interest, reinforcing one's viewpoint of Keith Jarrett as one of the top pianists of the 1980s and '90s.

With saxophonist Jan Garbarek and bassist Charlie Haden along for the ride, Keith Jarrett indulges in three slow, rambling, meditative, vaguely neo-classical concertos for piano and string orchestra. While a few of Jarrett's and Garbarek's passages here and there have a syncopated jazz feeling, this is mostly contemporary classical music, perhaps even somewhat ahead of its time (it might fit in with the neo-Romantic and minimalist camps today). However, although this music can be attractive in small doses, the lack of tempo or texture contrasts over long stretches of time – particularly the nearly 28-minute "Mirrors" – can be annoying if you're not in the right blissful mood. Mladen Gutesha and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra perform the string parts with what can only be described as commendable patience.

Debussy is closer to the expressionism of Schoenberg than to the chiselled sonorities of a Chopin or the extravagant virtuosity of a Liszt, even if his refined art can still be seen in the line of tradition of 19th-century music. This is frequently forgotten in the interpretation as well as the assessment of his oeuvre. Debussy himself decried the concept of musical impressionism because he feared, rightly, that superficial refinement would degenerate into musical mist, concealing the subtleties of a new musical idiom and its structural logic. Thus, for example, instead of heading his 24 “Préludes” in two books with programmatic titles in his autograph score, he appended them at the bottom of the individual pieces.