$55.00
The first-time teaming of Poland’s dynamic Marcin Wasilewski Trio and big-toned US tenorist Joe Lovano brings forth special music of concentrated, deep feeling, in which lyricism and strength seem ideally balanced. The alliance plays four new tunes by Marcin and one by Joe, as well as Carla Bley’s classic “Vashkar” (in two variations), plus collective improvisations with strong input from all four players; Slawomir Kurkiewicz’s bass skills are particularly well-deployed in the spontaneous piece “Arco”. Joe will be joining the Polish trio for a number of selected concerts in the autumn. Arctic Riff was recorded at France’s Studio La Buissonne in August 2019, and produced by Manfred Eicher. - ECM
Label: ECM Records – ECM 2678, ECM Records – 087 9959 |
Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: Germany |
Released: 26 Jun 2020 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Contemporary Jazz |
$39.00
After critically-acclaimed ECM recordings with the Maciej Obara Quartet (Unloved, Three Crowns), Polish pianist Dominik Wania delivers a solo album recorded in November 2019 in Lugano. Wania’s sensitivity to touch, tone and texture is informed by his classical background. But he also has the in-the-moment instincts of a great improviser, acutely focused on the unfolding details of the music in the responsive interior of the Auditorio Stelio Molo studio. The balancing of influences from both disciplines makes Dominik Wania one of the most distinctive players of his generation. Lonely Shadows is a testimony to his creative originality as well as a significant addition to ECM’s celebrated line of solo piano recordings. Produced by Manfred Eicher. - ECM
Label: ECM Records – ECM 2686 088 9560 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo |
Country: Germany |
Released: 18 Sep 2020 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Contemporary Jazz |
$39.00
Dreamlife of Debris carries forward the story begun on Kit Downes’s Obsidian, extending and developing its processes and core ideas. But where Obsidian was (almost exclusively) a solo church organ album, part of Kit’s plan for Dreamlife was to put the organ in a broader context, and also to bring the piano into the larger compositional picture. Musicians in the project are primarily players with whom Downes has had long associations – saxophonist Tom Challenger, cellist Lucy Railton, drummer Seb Rochford – and there is also a first musical encounter with Norwegian guitarist Stian Westerhus. “I was interested to see how bringing in different people would change the direction of the recording.” – ECM Records
Label: ECM Records – ECM 2632, ECM Records – 080 1588 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: Germany |
Released: 25 Oct 2019 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Contemporary Jazz |
$39.00
Guitarist John Scofield celebrates the music of his friend and mentor Steve Swallow in an outgoing and spirited recording, made in a day in New York in March 2019 - “old school” style as Scofield says, while acknowledging that more than forty years of preparation led up to it. John was a 20-year-old student at Berklee when he first met and played with the bassist, and they have continued ever since. “I love these songs”, says Scofield of the selection of Swallow compositions explored here – a broad range including classics such as “Hullo Bolinas”, “Eiderdown”, “Falling Grace” and “Radio”, as well as lesser-known works. The rapport between Scofield and Swallow is evident in every moment. John: “Sometimes when we play it’s like one big guitar, the bass part and my part together.” Behind the drum kit, Bill Stewart, a close associate of Scofield’s since the early 90s, is alert to all the implications of the interaction. “What Bill does is more than ‘playing the drums,’” Scofield says. “He’s a melodic voice in the music, while also swinging really hard.” – ECM Records
Label: ECM Records – ECM 2679, ECM Records – 086 8394 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: Germany |
Released: 10 Jun 2020 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Contemporary Jazz |
$39.00
Charismatic trumpeter Avishai Cohen launched his exuberant, home-grown band Big Vicious six years ago, after relocating from the US to his native Israel, rounding up players to shape the music from the ground up, and co-authoring much of its newest material together with them. The group is an association of old friends. “We’re all coming from jazz, but some of us left it earlier”, Avishai says, summing up the stylistic reach of his cohorts. “Everyone’s bringing in their backgrounds, and that becomes part of the sound of the band.” Textures from electronica, ambient music and psychedelia are part of the blend, so too grooves and beats from rock, pop, trip-hop and more. A wide-open approach to cover versions – from Massive Attack to Beethoven - is also integral to the Vicious vision. Recorded in Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in August 2019 and produced by Manfred Eicher, Big Vicious’s debut album is issued as the band gears up for extensive international touring. – ECM
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View Avishai Cohen titles Here
Label: ECM Records – ECM 2680 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Stereo |
Country: Germany |
Released: 27 Mar 2020 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Contemporary Jazz |
$48.00
Revisited, with additional takes, texts and photos, here is the very first ECM session, recorded in Ludwigsburg in November 1969, featuring the great American pianist Mal Waldron, whose resume included work with Coltrane, Mingus, Dolphy and Billie Holiday. In his original liner notes, Mal wrote: “This album represents my meeting with free jazz. Free jazz for me does not mean complete anarchy… You will hear me playing rhythmically instead of soloing on chord changes.” As Jazz Journal noted, “tough, two-handed modal blues” predominates, and the music sounds as fresh now as the day it was recorded. Indeed, the tersely-grooving “Boo” and “Rock My Soul” could be club hits half a century later. The Extended Anniversary Edition of Free At Last is issued as an audiophile vinyl double album. - ECM Records
Label: ECM Records – ECM 1001, ECM Records – 779 8632 |
Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered |
Country: Germany |
Released: 15 Nov 2019 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Hard Bop, Contemporary Jazz |
$45.00
Hypnotic, magnetic new album by Anouar Brahem which adds a new dimension to our knowledge of this exceptional Tunisian musician. 'Le pas du chat noir' gives the clearest indication yet of the work of Brahem as composer and features a spacious 'chamber music' that resonates with the freshness of improvisation. The instrumentation is unique: oud, piano, accordion. Brahem's writing for this combination is highly evocative, meticulously controlled and sparse. Half of the magic, as he notes, resides in the not-played, in the marvellous mingling of overtones, sounds that rise from the piano to blend with the warm tones of the oud and the breath of the accordion's bellows.
Initially published on CD in September 2002, vinyl is issued in June 2019.
Label: ECM Records – ECM 1792 |
Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo |
Country: Germany |
Released: 06 Jun 2019 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Contemporary Jazz |
$45.00
Like their acclaimed ECM release Small Town of 2017 – which The Guardian called “wistful and mesmerizing… tonally ingenious and haunting” – Epistrophy by guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan was recorded at New York City’s Village Vanguard. The new album once again captures the rare empathy these two players achieve together in this intimate environment. There are further poetic takes on pieces from the duo’s Americana songbook (“All in Fun,” “Red River Valley,” “Save the Last Dance for Me”), as well as another intense version of a composition by Paul Motian (“Mumbo Jumbo”), an artist whom both the guitarist and bassist knew well. Frisell and Morgan communicate the essence of Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” and the Frank Sinatra hit “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” so much so that the famous words seem to hang in the air even without a singer. At the center of the album is a pair of pieces by Thelonious Monk: the funky, angular “Epistrophy” and the ruminative ballad “Pannonica.” And as with “Goldfinger” on Small Town, Frisell and Morgan offer a glowing duo interpretation of a melody-rich John Barry title tune from a James Bond film – “You Only Live Twice.” – ECM Records
Label: ECM Records – ECM 2626, ECM Records – 773 9824 |
Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: Europe |
Released: 12 Apr 2019 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Contemporary Jazz |
$39.00
With Absinthe, his second release for ECM, guitarist Dominic Miller has created an album colored by a distinct atmosphere. “The first thing that came to me before I wrote any tunes was the title,” he says. “Living in the South of France, I am fascinated by Impressionism. Sharp light and witchy mistrals, combined with strong alcohol and intense hangovers must have driven some of these artists toward insanity. Skies that are green, faces blue, perspective distorted.” While Miller’s ECM debut, Silent Light, emphasized intimacy in solo and duo settings, Absinthe finds the guitarist fronting a quintet that brings his ever-lyrical compositions to textured life. Miller, switching between nylon- and steel-string acoustic guitars, has a key harmonic-melodic foil in the bandoneon of Santiago Arias. The vivid presence at the drum kit is Manu Katché, an ECM veteran and for years a colleague with Miller in the band of Sting (whom the guitarist has accompanied now for three decades). Mike Lindup’s keyboard tones add a ghostly air to such highlights as the title track, while bassist Nicholas Fiszman roots the sound. As for Miller, JazzTimes described him as a guitarist who “milks every note, thriving on the pauses between them and whispery effects of fingers sliding across strings,” while Stereophile agreed, declaring that “his ability to express emotion through a guitar is amazing to hear.” - ECM
Label: ECM Records – ECM 2614, ECM Records – 770 6424 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: Germany |
Released: 01 Mar 2019 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Contemporary Jazz |
$45.00
Tender is the night on what is, perhaps, Keith Jarrett's most intimate album. It is comprised of solo piano renderings of jazz ballads and folk songs, recorded at home and played with unmistakable affection. Jarrett dispenses with the jazz soloist's conventional emphasis on dexterity, the 'clever' phrase, the virtuosic sleight-of-hand. Instead he strips these songs to their melodic essence and, gently, lays bare their emotional core. – ECM
Label: ECM Records – ECM 1675 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Reissue, Stereo |
Country: Europe |
Released: 2019 |
Genre: Jazz |
Style: Contemporary Jazz |
$39.00
"So many of ECM’s finest trumpeters also happen to be skilled travelers. Tomasz Stanko and Enrico Rava in particular have hopped the globe in search of inspiration, life experience, and musical expansion. Yet few, among the possible exceptions of Nils Petter Molvær and Per Jørgensen, have gone so deeply inward and emerged with such painstaking lyricism as Mathias Eick. Midwest was inspired by a North American tour, during which time Eick recalls feeling very homesick: “Then we reached the area called the Rural Midwest and I suddenly had the strange feeling that I was home. It occurred to me that some of the early settlers must have felt this way, when they looked at the rich soil of the plains and saw that this was wonderful land for farming. Parts of the Midwest remind me strongly of parts of Norway including the southeast of Norway where I grew up.” Even with this, and the migratory tunes that comprise this album, in mind, the journey on which we are led is far more psychic than geographic. Joining his caravan are violinist Gjermund Larsen (last heard on the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble’s Outstairs), pianist Jon Balke, bassist Mats Eilertsen, and percussionist Helge Norbakken: a continent unto themselves."
"If Eick has so far crafted a distinct melodic solar system on ECM, Midwest is a galaxy unto itself. Fresh, spiraled, and classic to the core, it’s sure to be one of the label’s most enduring statements of all time." - ECM Reviews
Item Description:
Artist: |
Mathias Eick |
Title: |
Midwest |
Label: |
|
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
02 Jun 2015 |
Genre: |
Jazz |
Style: |
Contemporary Jazz |
Catalog No: |
ECM 2410 |
Condition: |
New |
$39.00
“Something special happens when they play together” observed Robert Palmer in the New York Times, and the participants concurred. “Playing with John is one of my favourite things to do,” said Ralph Towner. “I can play as much as when playing solo, and still get to ply my skills as accompanist. John is such an amazing person to play with that, even when he’s playing intensely or aggressively, we somehow fit together and there’s really no way that we could collide.” On Five Years Later, follow-up to their debut duo disc Sargasso Sea, their improvisations draw on a wider sonic palette, to telling effect.” – ECM Records
Item description:
Artist: |
Ralph Towner / John Abercrombie |
Title: |
Five Years Later |
Label: |
ECM Records |
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, 180g |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
This reissue: 24th Jan 2014 | Original: 1982 |
Genre: |
Jazz |
Style: |
Contemporary Jazz |
Catalog No: |
ECM 1207, 374 353 |
Condition: |
New |
$45.00
"Guitarist John Abercrombie – who has recorded as a leader for ECM since 1974 – returns with a second album by his quartet featuring Marc Copland on piano, along with longtime rhythm partners Drew Gress and Joey Baron. Extolling 39 Steps, the group’s 2013 album, the Financial Times said: “The emphasis is on subtle intrigue, flowing lyricism and the interplay between the leader’s warm, cleanly articulated guitar and Copland’s piano… with bassist Gress and drummer Baron equally supple and sinewy companions.” The same virtues of lyrical melody and harmonic/rhythmic subtlety are apparent with the new Up and Coming, though with even more emphasis on the enduring values of song. Abercrombie’s liquid phrasing and glowing tone – enabled by the thumb technique he has honed since eschewing a plectrum in recent years – animate his five originals and the pair by Copland, as well as a take on the Miles Davis classic “Nardis” done in the spirit of Bill Evans. Up and Coming has a twilight atmosphere, with melodic flow the guiding light." - ECM Records
Item Description:
Artist: |
John Abercrombie Quartet |
Title: |
Up And Coming |
Label: |
|
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album, 180 gram |
Country: |
|
Release Date: |
|
Genre: |
Jazz |
Style: |
Contemporary Jazz |
Catalog No: |
ECM 2528 |
Condition: |
New |
$39.00
"The music of Cuban-born, Brooklyn-based pianist David Virelles conjures a hallucinatory world in which ancient Afro-Cuban rhythms and ritual reverberate in the here and now. His latest ECM offering is Antenna, music attuned to a timeless rhythmic-cultural current even as it pulses with a vibrantly urban, modernist energy. Antenna – a six-track, 22-minute EP to be released exclusively on vinyl and digitally – sees Virelles channel Afro-Cuban percussion into an electro-acoustic, almost psychedelic swirl, one that melds jazz improvisation and organic grooves with digital refraction, shadowy synthesizers, otherworldly field recordings and Cuban street poetry. Antenna is an undulating, throbbing, dizzying dream of sound. Mbòkó, the pianist’s ECM leader debut from 2014, featured in Best Of The Year lists in The New York Times, NPR, iTunes and The Village Voice, among others. The Guardian described Mbòkó as “a jazz-infused world-music project beyond categories,” adding: “Virelles looks set to make big differences in contemporary music for years to come.” - ECM Records
Item Description:
Artist: |
David Virelles |
Title: |
Antenna |
Label: |
|
Format: |
Vinyl, 10", EP |
Country: |
|
Release Date: |
02 Dec 2016 |
Genre: |
|
Style: |
|
Catalog No: |
ECM 3901 |
Condition: |
New |
$55.00
“The neo-noir textures of Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava's fine ECM release, NEW YORK DAYS, recall evocative, jazz-based film scores such as Gato Barbieri's LAST TANGO IN PARIS or Miles Davis's ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS. Joined by a stellar cast, including the fine pianist Stefano Bollani, contemporary tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, and the apparently ageless Paul Motian on drums, Rava conjures a rain-soaked, black-and-white urban fantasia on a finely produced, 77-minute set of moody originals. Rava, Turner, and Bollani are all strong stylists, however, so there is little danger of their being fully submerged in the impressionistic dark waters. At times, the sound resembles the post-bop chamber jazz of Miles's celebrated '60s quintet, at others, the upscale European strains of film composer Nino Rota or tango master Astor Piazzolla. Either way, NEW YORK DAYS is one of the outstanding jazz releases of 2009.” – All Music
“The lion’s share of the set list is balladic in nature, starting things off smokily with “Lulù.” Bollani emerges in an early wave with unforced persuasion, lending context to Rava’s Poseidon lyricism. In this tune one feels the city after hours: the shine of rain-slicked asphalt, the whoosh of empty taxis, the flicker of untended streetlights. But then a surprise from Turner, whose horn implies snatches of club life within earshot. By the intermingling of “Certi Angoli Segreti” (an album highpoint), it’s clear the reedman has his telescope pointed to a star we’ve never been able to see through all the dazzle before. His arpeggiations are the light of its fission, the mere presence of which inspire pointillist heights in Rava, and in the pianist an uncannily classical sparkle.” – ECM Reviews
Item description:
Artist: |
Enrico Rava |
Title: |
New York Days |
Label: |
ECM Records |
Format: |
2 × Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
2009 |
Genre: |
Jazz |
Style: |
Contemporary Jazz |
Catalog No: |
ECM 2064, 179 7340 |
Condition: |
New |
$39.00
“Norwegian drummer/composer Thomas Stronen, a member of the experimental jazz band Food, returns with a quintet variation of his Time Is A Bling Guide project. Entitled Lucus, the 11-track album features the collective’s core members: violinist Hakon Aase, cellist Lucy Railton, and bassist Ole Morten Vagan, plus a valuable new addition with the up-and-coming Japanese pianist Ayumi Tanaka sitting in for Kit Downs.” – All Music
“Time Is a Blind Guide, fronted by Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen, has made striking advancements in acoustic chamber jazz. Comprised of a traditional jazz piano trio augmented by violin and cello, the quintet blurs the genre lines between classical and jazz by exploring the limits of structure and freedom. Lucus, their second release on ECM, is a reference to the "light" Strønen wanted to let into the group, more precisely a sense of liberation and flexibility between written composition and free improvisation. The album is a polished exploration of textures and space that reflects the unity and cohesion of their ensemble dynamics. Featuring an excellent new pianist in Ayumi Tanaka, Lucus demonstrates how Time Is a Blind Guide have evolved as a strong modern ensemble.” – Pop Matters
Item description:
Artist: |
Thomas Strønen / Time Is A Blind Guide |
Title: |
Lucus |
Label: |
ECM Records |
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
2018 |
Genre: |
Jazz |
Style: |
Contemporary Jazz |
Catalog No: |
ECM 2576, 579 8928 |
Condition: |
New |
$48.00
“In 2016, after a decade-long silence, pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch resurrected his groundbreaking Mobile unit for Continuum. Awase sees the musician reconvening Ronin -- the band that drew the attention of ECM's Manfred Eicher and released four stellar albums between 2006 and 2012 -after a six-year break. The lineup has been trimmed from a quintet to a quartet, consisting of veterans Sha on bass clarinet and alto saxophone, drummer Kaspar Rast, and newcomer Thomi Jordy on electric bass. Continuing to compose in his modular system where interlocking rhythms meet contrapuntal, minimal grooves that Bärtsch defines as "Zen funk," he delivers new works as well as expanded and revisioned takes on earlier pieces as a way of extending the band's reach to embrace and integrate some of the concepts offered on Continuum.” – All Music
“Bartsch’s cerebral moods are all about form and texture and that is well patented on compositions such as “Modul 36”, where arpeggiated piano with sporadic pointillism work together with the mobility of the electric bass to create beautiful moments. Jordi then rebels and sets up a funk-inflected manifesto armed with piano’s sinuous melodic exclamations and extended techniques. “Modul 34” also boasts a cool funky pose launched after a serene preparatory passage. Whenever Rast exhibits his dry drum fills, he announces nuanced mutations in the intensity of the groove delivered in six.
The 18-minute “Modul 58” can be seen as a sum of all the other pieces. It starts with slowly built piano layers enlivened by occasional bass harmonics and pumps, delicate cymbal splashes, and non-intrusive sax embellishments. Obstinate high-pitched notes on the piano drive us into a hypnotic rhythm that feels half-rock, half-electronic. Afterward, the quartet goes through a percussive phase enriched by saxophone pop sounds and air notes, muted pianism, and hi-hat delineations. It all ends up in a danceable acid jazz-funk hooked up in the fine rhythmic counterpoint between sax and piano.” – Jazz Trail
Item description:
Artist: |
Nik Bärtsch's Ronin |
Title: |
Awase |
Label: |
ECM Records |
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album, 180g |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
04 May 2018 |
Genre: |
Jazz |
Style: |
Avant-garde Jazz |
Catalog No: |
ECM 2603, 673 5869 |
Condition: |
New |
$45.00
A TAV Curator's Pick.
“On his ECM debut, 2016's Into the Silence, Avishai Cohen was toiling with the death of his father and understandably, the album was deeply ruminative and introspective. With his sophomore ECM outing, 2017's equally nuanced Cross My Palm with Silver, the trumpeter is no less reflective, yet the album feels somehow lighter, more clear-eyed and less shrouded in sadness. Prior to working with producer Manfred Eicher at ECM, the Israeli-born Cohen (who studied at Boston's Berklee College of Music) was known as a boundary-pushing maverick whose various projects found him moving from extroverted bop standards to groove-oriented klezmer jazz, avant-garde improvisation, and expansive, ambient soundscapes
Cross My Palm with Silver finds Cohen achieving a better balance between his exuberant post-bop inclinations and his more poetic, classical, avant-garde side. Helping Cohen achieve this balance are several returning associates in pianist Yonathan Avishai and drummer Nasheet Waits, augmented this time out with bassist Barak Mori. Together, they play with the kind of intuitive sense one associates with a band who have played together for several years, as is the case here. At just five tracks, the album has a cohesion and brevity that belie its artful slow burn. These are quiet songs punctuated by moments of piercing intensity, such as on the poignant and unsettling "Theme for Jimmy Greene." A tribute to the gifted saxophonist who lost his daughter in the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, the song starts as a warm hush as Avishai's piano builds the song with increasingly discordant energy, eventually lifting Cohen to a series of declamatory high notes.
Similarly, the spacy "340 Down" is a minimalist group improv that evokes both the trumpeter's work with his Triveni Trio and his longtime love of mentor Ornette Coleman. Elsewhere, "Shoot Me in the Leg" is an angular, classically influenced piece in 3/4 time with Cohen screaming in a controlled flutter as pianist Avishai lays down a cubist chordal bed. The album-closing "50 Years and Counting" is perhaps the most straight-ahead moment. Centered around a minor-tinged bass motif with a subtle, off-kilter groove, it sounds like something Horace Silver might have written for another ECM artist, the late trumpeter Kenny Wheeler.
In fact, much of Cohen's playing on Cross My Palm with Silver feels deeply inspired by Wheeler; his harmonically fluid lines marked by wide intervallic leaps. Ultimately, it's Cohen and his bandmates' deft improvisational skill and wide artistic sensibility, straddling straight-ahead jazz, classical, and the avant-garde, that helps make Cross My Palm with Silver such a bright spot in his discography.” – AllMusic
Item description:
Artist: |
Avishai Cohen |
Title: |
Cross My Palm With Silver |
Label: |
ECM Records |
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
05 May 2017 |
Genre: |
Jazz |
Style: |
Contemporary Jazz |
Catalog No: |
ECM 2548 |
Condition: |
New |
$60.00
A TAV Essential Listening Album.
The Köln Concert is a concert recording by the pianist Keith Jarrett of solo piano improvisations performed at the Opera House in Cologne (German: Köln) on January 24, 1975.
The double-vinyl album was released in the autumn of 1975 by the ECM Records label to critical acclaim, and went on to become the best-selling solo album in jazz history, and the all-time best-selling piano album, with sales of more than 3.5 million.
The concert was organized by 17-year-old Vera Brandes (de), then Germany’s youngest concert promoter. At Jarrett's request, Brandes had selected a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial concert grand piano for the performance. However, there was some confusion by the opera house staff and instead they found another Bösendorfer piano backstage – a much smaller baby grand – and, assuming it was the one requested, placed it on the stage. Unfortunately, the error was discovered too late for the correct Bösendorfer to be delivered to the venue in time for the evening's concert. The piano they had was intended for rehearsals only and was in poor condition and required several hours of tuning and adjusting to make it playable. The instrument was tinny and thin in the upper registers and weak in the bass register, and the pedals did not work properly. Consequently, Jarrett often used ostinatos and rolling left-hand rhythmic figures during his Köln performance to give the effect of stronger bass notes, and concentrated his playing in the middle portion of the keyboard. ECM Records producer Manfred Eicher later said: "Probably [Jarrett] played it the way he did because it was not a good piano. Because he could not fall in love with the sound of it, he found another way to get the most out of it."
Jarrett arrived at the opera house late in the afternoon and tired after an exhausting long drive from Zürich, Switzerland, where he had performed a few days earlier. He had not slept well in several nights and was in pain from back problems and had to wear a brace. After trying out the substandard piano and learning a replacement instrument was not available, Jarrett nearly refused to play and Brandes had to convince him to perform as the concert was scheduled to begin in just a few hours. The concert took place at the unusually late hour of 23:30, following an earlier opera performance. This late-night time slot was the only one the administration would make available to Brandes for a jazz concert – the first ever at the Köln Opera House. The show was completely sold out and the venue was filled to capacity with over 1,400 people at a ticket price of 4 DM ($1.72). Despite the obstacles, Jarrett's performance was enthusiastically received by the audience and the subsequent recording was acclaimed by critics. It remains his most popular recording and continues to sell well, decades after its initial release.
The performance was recorded by ECM Records engineer Martin Wieland, using a pair of Neumann U-67 vacuum-tube powered condenser microphones and a Telefunken M-5 portable tape machine. The recording is in three parts: lasting about 26 minutes, 34 minutes and 7 minutes respectively. As it was originally programmed for vinyl LP, the second part was split into sections labelled "IIa" and "IIb". The third part, labelled "IIc", was actually the final piece, a separate encore.
A notable aspect of the concert was Jarrett's ability to produce very extensive improvised material over a vamp of one or two chords for prolonged periods of time. For instance, in Part I, he spends almost 12 minutes vamping over the chords Am7 (A minor 7) to G major, sometimes in a slow, rubato feel, and other times in a bluesy, gospel rock feel. For about the last 6 minutes of Part I, he vamps over an A major theme. Roughly the first 8 minutes of Part II A is a vamp over a D major groove with a repeated bass vamp in the left hand, and in Part IIb, Jarrett improvises over an F# minor vamp for about the first 6 minutes.
Subsequent to the release of The Köln Concert, Jarrett was asked by pianists, musicologists and others, to publish the music. For years he resisted such requests since, as he said, the music played was improvised "on a certain night and should go as quickly as it comes." In 1990, Jarrett finally agreed on publishing an authorized transcription but with the recommendation that every pianist intending to play the piece should use the recording itself as the final word. A new interpretation of The Köln Concert was published in 2006 by Polish pianist Tomasz Trzcinski on his album Blue Mountains. A transcription for classical guitar has also been published by Manuel Barrueco.
The album was included in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. - Wiki
- Recorded live at the opera in Köln, Germany January 24, 1975
About Keith Jarrett:
Keith Jarrett’s ECM discography embraces solo improvisation, duets, trios, quartets, original compositions, multi-instrumental ventures, masterpieces of the classical repertoire and wide-ranging explorations of the Great American Songbook.
Jarrett was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in May 1945. He took his first piano lesson before his third birthday and gave his debut solo recital aged seven. “I grew up with the piano,” he has said, “I learned its language while I learned to speak.”
His earliest training was classical, but by the age of 15 his piano lessons had ceased and Jarrett’s interest in jazz was burgeoning. He turned down an opportunity to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and in 1964 took the decisive step of moving to New York to establish himself in the jazz world. After a spell touring with Art Blakey’s New Jazz Messengers, Jarrett joined Charles Lloyd’s quartet in 1966. He also played organ and electric piano with Miles Davis in 1970 and 1971.
Jarrett’s association with ECM dates from November 1971, when he and producer Manfred Eicher first collaborated on the hugely influential solo piano album Facing You, eight short pieces which, in Eicher’s words, “hold together like a suite”. The album also prefigured the solo piano concerts which would be such a defining aspect of Jarrett’s career.
In 1973 ECM organised an eighteen-concert European tour, consisting solely of Jarrett’s solo improvisations. The Köln Concert (1975) has unsurprisingly passed into legend: a multi-million-selling album that has been the subject of books and a complete transcription. But Köln should not eclipse the achievement of the whole sequence of improvised concerts, a genre which Jarrett effectively created. After the success of that first solo tour, Jarrett has continued to pursue the improvised solo concert format, the decades of his career studded with records of his endlessly fertile imagination, usually referred to simply by where they took place: Paris, Vienna, Lausanne, Carnegie Hall, La Scala...
Jarrett has been a member of several outstanding groups. In the mid-1970s he began recording with his so-called “European Quartet” consisting of saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen. Their recordings include Belonging, My Song, Nude Ants, Personal Mountains and Sleeper. No less essential is his contemporaneous “American Quartet” work with Charlie Haden (bass), Paul Motian (drums) and Dewey Redman (sax), whose output included The Survivors’ Suite and Eyes of the Heart (both 1976). The American Quartet extended the range of Jarrrett’s trio with Haden and Motian. The early trio’s work is documented on Hamburg ’72.
In the early 1980s Jarrett formed his “Standards Trio” with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette, which proved to be one of the most fertile and long-lasting partnerships in jazz history. Over the years they have toured and released an unparalleled series of albums of standards and freely improvised sets, including the 6-CD set At the Blue Note, an extraordinary record of three extraordinary nights in June 1994, about which the New York Times wrote: "Jarrett makes each new note sound like a discovery... The music whispered and glimmered, seeking a pure, incorporeal song.”
In 1987, Jarrett initiated a series of recordings of some of the great monuments of the classical keyboard repertoire with Bach’s Wohltempierte Klavier, Book I, which was followed by the Goldberg Variations (1989) and the second book of Wohltempierte Klavier (1990). For a pianist with such a fine command of voicing, Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, was perhaps a natural next step: "It didn't feel like I was playing someone else's music," Jarrett said of his first encounter with these works. "[The pieces] are coming from some strange quirky place that I'm familiar with.” The New York Times was just one of many to hail this award-winning recording: no mere crossover curiosity, “Jarrett has finally staked an indisputable claim to distinction in the realm of classical music”.
40 years on from his ECM debut, Facing You, Rio (2011) blazed with as much energy and invention as any of his solo concerts from the past four decades, while his duet sessions with the late bassist Charlie Haden (Jasmine and Last Dance) reveal the players at their most intimate and introspective: “When we play together it's like two people singing,” Jarrett said of these recordings.
ECM marked Jarrett’s 70th birthday with two simultaneous releases, a mid-80s recording of Barber’s piano concerto and Bartok’s third, and Creation, a nine-piece suite drawn from concerts in the pianist’s 2014 concert tour. Creation is amongst the most strongly lyrical of Jarrett's recent solo releases, the choice of music emphasizing pieces in which there is a sense of song being born, voices striving to be heard. It also offers the most up-to-the minute account of Jarrett's uncanny capacity to construct compelling music in real-time: his melodic-harmonic imagination as an improviser and his ability to consistently find and shape new forms remain, after all these years of solo concerts, remarkable. - ECM Records
Item description:
Artist: |
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Title: |
The Köln Concert |
Label: |
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Format: |
2 × Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Gatefold Cover, 180 Gram |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
2010 |
Genre: |
Jazz |
Style: |
Contemporary Jazz, Avant Garde, Free Jazz, Post Bop, Piano, Live |
Catalog No: |
ECM 1064/65 |
Condition: |
New |