#ECM records

[caviarsonoro]

Arvo Pärt: Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (Remastered 2015).

The first time I listened to Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, I was overcome by an overwhelming emotion, as quiet as it was absolute. I felt a purity that was difficult to name, as if the music had enveloped me in an intimate space, suspended outside of time. In that moment, I understood that this was not merely a composition, but a form of sonic prayer that spoke directly to the soul, with a nakedness that transcended language.

This work by Arvo Pärt, in its 2015 remastered version performed by the Staatsorchester Stuttgart under the direction of Dennis Russell Davies, begins and ends with a single toll of a bell. That sound, deep and suspended, does more than mark the opening and closing: it contains the spiritual architecture of the entire piece and wraps it in an atmosphere of transcendence.

The initial bell is not a mere effect or incidental gesture. It is a sonic ritual. A low, suspended tone that stops time. Its slow, mournful vibration introduces a space of active silence, almost liturgical. Pärt is not seeking to move us through accumulation, but through purification. The toll marks the threshold between the everyday and the spiritual. And it does so with an austerity that moves more deeply than any orchestral climax. I remember clearly the first time I heard this piece: I was left frozen. Not only by its beauty, but by the sensation of absolute suspension, as if sound and silence had merged into a single substance.

From that first strike, the string texture unfolds in a descending canon in D minor. It develops with the implacable logic of time, yet breathes with the cadence of a prayer. The compositional technique based on parallel resonances—one of the most refined hallmarks of Pärt’s mature language—reveals itself here with moving clarity. Each note seems to contain a world; each silence, an echo of the invisible.

In the final cadence of the strings, where harmony seems to dissolve slowly, there is a gesture of farewell devoid of drama. The return of the bell, at the exact moment when everything seems to fade, is not merely a formal closure. It is a response without words. As if the music, on the verge of extinction, returned to its origin to remind us that every resonance, even the most fleeting, leaves a trace in the air and in memory.

[theimmaculatearchive]

[grrlmusic]

Steve Reich – Octet • Music For A Large Ensemble • Violin Phase

[jazzplusplus]

1975 - Keith Jarrett - ECM Records - distributed in Japan by Trio Records

[schibborasso]

Keith Jarrett The Köln Concert (live at the opera, cologne, 1975)

[crownhate]

been sick with a chronic throat infection bleh bleh bleh lots of cat cuddles + coffee walks to the book store is my main form of therapy these days. Picked up The Word for World is Forest cause I heard it is “angry Le Guin” so I’m hoping it’ll be at least as good as Lathe of Heaven (my third fav of hers so far), and then saw the exact edition of Babel-17 that I’ve been looking for sitting behind the counter. Score. Also stopped at the record store to grab Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith’s latest record. Dark and beautiful jazz for the resistance. Legends.

[justforbooks]

Savina Yannatou, Primavera en Salonico and Lamia Bedioui: Watersong

Considering water as balm and curse, life and storm: the fabulous Greek singer and collaborators transport us across centuries and countries

Savina Yannatou is a fabulous Greek singer whose work over the last five decades hasn’t stood still. Her CV includes interpretations of early music, throat singing, composing for video art and improvisations with Can’s Damo Suzuki. Her new album with Greek jazz ensemble and long-term collaborators Primavera en Salonica and Tunisian singer Lamia Bedioui is a global tour of traditional songs about water: how it can be balm and curse, source of life and storm.

Watersong begins beautifully, in Greece, with The Song of Klidonas. Singing of a mid-summer ritual in which girls place charms in a pot of clean water to be left outside bathed in starlight, Yannatou dusts the beautiful melody with melancholy. Then the mood shifts. Naanaa Algenina (Garden Mint)/Ivana mixes folk songs from Aswan in Egypt and North Macedonia into a wild, wayward concoction: Yannatou and Bedioui’s opening stunning harmonies twist into a middle section in which Yannatou gasps and ululates around stuttering instruments. Elsewhere, she gives Cypriot traditional song Ai Giorkis (St George) a sultry edge and Spanish ballad A los Baños del Amor (At the Baths of Love) a hymnal glow.

The album jumps across the centuries, from Ireland to Iraq, Corsica to Calabria, but it is filled with intensely modern moments. Michalis Siganidis’s double bass in Greek carol Kalanta of the Theophany has motorik-like propulsion. The 10th-century Arabic poem Mawal (To the Mourning Dove I Said) comes across as an avant garde contemporary prayer, setting a tangle of percussion against Yannatou and Bedioui’s spoken-word delivery, full of contrapuntal whispers and wails.

Traditional instruments such as Kostas Vomvolos’ qanun (an Arabic zither) and Harris Lambrakis’s ney (a Persian flute) also add drama and dreaminess. This album sets traditional music flowing and crashing in many unexpected, wonderful directions.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[newjazzthings]

CHICK COREA AND GARY BURTON / IN CONCERT, ZÜRICH, OCTOBER 28, 1979

[joshhaden]

Works (1984, ECM) is a Pat Metheny compilation LP that includes the track "Every Day (I Thank You)", originally from 1980's 80/81 LP. w/ my father, saxophonist Michael Brecker, & drummer Jack DeJohnette.

[audio-luddite]

ECM Records

I have a few. All are jazz.

It is a German label, but has a lot of American Jazz. Very well recorded in Germany. Right now I have the ECM Keith Jarret's "Arbour Zena" spinning. It needs a bit more cleaning as there is a very low level of crackling to be heard. But under that it is plain to hear a very good recording on good vinyl. My brain processor removes the minor noise easily.

This is a curious and interesting album. Technically excellent recording. The music is a hybrid of jazz and orchestra. I mean orchestras need written music jazz is improvisational. The piano and Sax are jazz, but playing over a foundation of strings. Very nice.

Most confusing to this old man is I have not listened to this for years, a lot of years and it is all familiar. How is it that music and memory work this way?

I found three Jarret albums in my horde. I think there is another buried somewhere. This one, Luminessence, and Great Moments with Keith Jarret. Two are ECM one is MCA. You can still buy the ECMs from their website. This one is 25 Euros for the LP. The famous Koln Concert LP is there too for a bit more. I think I have that one but it still eludes my search.

I cannot recall if I heard Jarret, liked him or started buying them on some recommendation. Whatever. He is an accomplished classical musician as well as jazz. Oh and he likes Bach.

For many years I would buy LPs with a reputation for high quality. Some turned out as test records, some I just like the music. Exploring the media you know. No path, just curious.

I like jazz. This one worked out. My wife is out at a pottery class so I can play stuff that would annoy her.

And to state the obvious I built my system to give the music a place to bloom.

[therecordchanger62279]

ECM Label Album Covers

With ECM, it's never been just about the music. It's the whole package - music, sound, and the visual brilliance of those extraordinary album covers. These are some of my favorites.

[caviarsonoro]

Arvo Pärt - Berliner Messe: Agnus Dei

Few works capture Arvo Pärt’s aesthetic with such clarity as the Agnus Dei from his Berliner Messe. Recorded by Tõnu Kaljuste with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, and released by ECM in 1993, this performance delivers a rigorous, introspective, and technically flawless interpretation. One hears with striking clarity the voice of a composer who has redefined sacred music from a place of radical interiority. Arvo Pärt has built a personal musical language in which every excess has been stripped away, distilling sound to its essential truth. In this Agnus Dei, arguably one of the most beautiful in the contemporary repertoire, his aesthetic ideal is fully realized: stillness understood not as the absence of motion, but as a form of transcendence. The piece is written in a homophonic texture, with no counterpoint or harmonic expansion. Everything serves a structural simplicity that, paradoxically, demands absolute technical control. Pärt employs his signature tintinnabuli style, in which one voice moves melodically while another circles around the tones of a triad. The result is a tension between movement and stasis that creates a contemplative atmosphere. Here, the harmony, built on a restrained Dorian mode, avoids progression and dramatism in favor of purity. Each phrase is separated by silences that do not interrupt but articulate the musical discourse: silence as an active element of form. Kaljuste’s interpretation, under the unmistakable ECM aesthetic, stands out for its balance, precision, and tonal transparency. The Estonian choir, composed of extraordinarily unified voices, maintains impeccable intonation and phrasing that respects the inner architecture of the work. The string orchestra provides a warm, ethereal support without obscuring the clarity of the ensemble. This recording stands among the most refined and essential in Pärt’s sacred catalogue, a work of luminous restraint where beauty emerges not from excess, but from the clarity of what remains.

[theimmaculatearchive]

[grrlmusic]

Steve Reich – Music For 18 Musicians

[jazzplusplus]

1984 - Carla Bley Band - poster promo pour l'album “Heavy Heart” (France) - ECM records

Carla Bley (org, synth), Steve Slagle (fl, sax), Hiram Bullock (g), Michael Mantler (tp), Gary Valente (tb), Earl McIntyre (tuba), Kenny Kirkland (p), Steve Swallow (b), Victor Lewis (dr), Manolo Badrena (perc)

Recorded September and October 1983 at Grog Kill Studio, New York

[spaceintruderdetector]

to be continued / Miroslav Vitous, Terje Rypdal, Jack DeJohnette