Ecm

Berlin-based DJs and composers Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer - two of the best-known names in contemporary electronica - share their admiration for music on ECM in a unique double-album of specially-created “sound-structures”. Their project “Re: ECM” will bring the label’s music to a new listenership. It is certain to be one of the most talked-about albums of the season. Using original ECM recordings as a starting point, Villalobos and Loderbauer create new music that bridges several worlds, including ECM’s world of space-conscious improvisation and composition and the worlds of ambient electronics and minimal techno.

Bassist Arild Andersen shines as the principal soloist in a celebration of music from ECM with specially-commissioned new big-band arrangements of well-known pieces by Dave Holland, Chick Corea, Trygve Seim, Jan Garbarek, and Keith Jarrett. The resourceful Tommy Smith adds powerful tenor solos, arranges Garbarek's "Molde Canticle", and directs the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra.

Bassist Arild Andersen shines as the principal soloist in a celebration of music from ECM with specially-commissioned new big-band arrangements of well-known pieces by Dave Holland, Chick Corea, Trygve Seim, Jan Garbarek, and Keith Jarrett. The resourceful Tommy Smith adds powerful tenor solos, arranges Garbarek's "Molde Canticle", and directs the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra.

Keyboardist Craig Taborn’s Daylight Ghosts is his third ECM release as a leader, a quartet album following acclaimed solo and trio recordings. In addition to Taborn on piano and electronic keyboards and drummer Dave King, the quartet features two New York jazz luminaries, reed player Chris Speed and bassist Chris Lightcap. Each member draws from a broad artistic background, as informed by rock, electronica and diverse strains of world music as by the various permutations of jazz improvisation. "Daylight Ghosts" is animated by dynamism and spectral ambience, acoustic and electric sounds and groove and lingering melody.

Polish alto saxophone player Maciej Obara makes a striking ECM debut with "Unloved", an album whose expressive range embraces tender lyricism and impassioned, fiery, powerful playing. With the exception of the title track - written by Krzysztof Komeda (spiritus rector of modern jazz in Poland) for Janusz Nasfeter's film of the same name - themes are by the highly inventive alto saxophonist.

After a trilogy of highly successful trio albums, Tord Gustavsen branches off in new directions. His new band adds two players familiar to ECM listeners – bassist Mats Eilertsen and saxophonist Tore Brunborg – and introduces the blues-inflected voice of Kristin Asbjørnsen on Tord’s settings of the poetry of W.H. Auden. Inside the ensemble, duo and trio interaction unfolds, taking off from the clear melodic language of Gustavsen’s songwriting.

"Elegy" is the ECM leader debut by vocalist and composer Theo Bleckmann. A prolific recording artist, his association with the label dates back to Meredith Monk's 2002 date Mercy and its follow-up, Impermanence, in 2008 (Bleckmann was a member of her ensemble for 15 years). His voice was also a focal point of Julia Hulsmann's quartet on 2015's Clear Midnight: Kurt Weill & America. For a singer who draws attention to himself almost as much for what he doesn't do as what he does, Elegy is a quiet yet startling offering.

Polish alto saxophone player Maciej Obara makes a striking ECM debut with "Unloved", an album whose expressive range embraces tender lyricism and impassioned, fiery, powerful playing. With the exception of the title track - written by Krzysztof Komeda (spiritus rector of modern jazz in Poland) for Janusz Nasfeter's film of the same name - themes are by the highly inventive alto saxophonist.

Pianist Tigran Hamasyan’s Luys I Luso ("Light from the Light") is an extraordinary exploration of Armenian sacred music, hymns and sharakans (Armenia’s liturgical songs) as well as chants, all arranged for voices and piano. This music of the 5th to 19th centuries is given new and dramatic expression through Hamasyan’s improvisational imagination and committed performances from Armenia’s leading choir, the Yerevan State Chamber Choir. Hamasayan has long been deeply interested in Armenian sacred music, increasingly drawn to its “incredibly beautiful melodies".