Pianist Alexander Lonquich, alongside the Muncih Chamber Orchestra, rises to the challenge of performing the entirety of Beethoven’s piano concertos, programmed in chronological order.

Vinyl LP pressing. Mysterious, dramatic and alluring, Luminessence comes from a peak period in the creative association between Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek, recorded in 1974, immediately after their vibrant Belonging album. Here, Jarrett creates shimmering orchestral frameworks to spur Garbarek to some of his most concentrated, impassioned and expressive playing. "The melodies that Jarrett writes sound like Garbarek improvisations, so great is the rapport between the two men," wrote Ian Carr in his Keith Jarrett biography, while DownBeat, in a 5-star review, observed that "probing deep into his own personal musical cosmos, Jarrett has brought back a chilling and singular achievement that promises to stand as a landmark in the musical landscape of the 70s". Produced by Manfred Eicher, the album that gives the Luminessence audiophile edition it's name is augmented with new liner notes providing historical context.

The third album from Levon Eskenian's remarkable ensemble is it's most adventurous to date. As well as reclaiming the music of esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff for folk instrumentation, Zartir situates Gurdjieff in a tradition of Armenian bards and troubadours including Ashugh Jivani, Baghdasar Tbir and the legendary Sayat-Nova. In parallel, an emphasis on pieces for sacred dance reaches it's apex in The Great Prayer, an entrancing collaboration between the Gurdjieff Ensemble and the National Chamber Choir of Armenia, which draws upon ritual music of multiple faiths. Arranger Eskenian says, "I believe The Great Prayer is more than a mere 'composition'. It is one of the most profound and transformative pieces I have encountered in Gurdjieff's work." Zartir was recorded in Yerevan in 2021 and mixed and completed in Munich in November 2022 by Manfred Eicher and Levon Eskenian.

Vinyl LP pressing. "When we walked out on stage it felt like a homecoming," says Jakob Bro of this texturally spacious and emotionally charged live recording from Copenhagen, on which three of the defining protagonists of improvisation in Denmark, leading musicians from three generations of Danish jazz, come together. The concert, in February 2023, was particularly poignant since it marked a return to performance for trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, who delivers some of his most thoughtful playing here. Repertoire, drawn from Jakob Bro's Returnings and Gefion albums, is addressed in spontaneous and exploratory spirit, and transformed as Marilyn Mazur's subtle percussion language of blossoming gongs and metals and rumbling drums blends with Bro's drifting and rippling washes of sound. The music's atmospheric qualities, as well it's eruptive moments, are enhanced by the resonant acoustics of the Danish Radio Concert Hall.

WORDS UNSPOKEN

Pat Metheny - "Bright Size Life (ECM Luminescence Series)" / With his first studio recording as a leader, Bright Size Life was the album that decisively put him on the map as a bright new force with something fresh to say in the context of contemporary jazz. Recorded in Ludwigsburg in December 1975, and produced by Manfred Eicher, the album features Metheny's regular touring band of the day - Bob Moses on drums and the virtuosic but then largely unknown Jaco Pastorius on bass guitar. "I could happily play all the music from Bright Size Life right now," said Pat Metheny in an interview for the Library of Congress in 2021. "It still seems viable; the arguments there still seem valid and worth thinking about. My sense at the time was that I wanted to make a record that might be the only record I would ever make. I hoped to make a statement on things that were important to me in terms of melody, harmony, trio playing, and even kind of life in general." Verve Label Group; ECM; Jazz; Catalog

Double vinyl LP pressing. Recorded at Munich's Muffathalle twenty years ago, in September 2004, this previously-unreleased concert recording of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet is a fascinating document, capturing a developmental chapter in the music between the song forms of the Suspended Night repertoire and the improvised areas that the Polish musicians would explore on Lontano. The Munich show was a highlight in a year in which the Stanko Quartet played a record number of gigs, with extensive tours of the US and Europe. The great trumpeter himself is at his charismatic best here, playing superbly, clearly inspired by the energetic support and communicative power of Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz and Michal Miskiewicz, the dynamic young players for whom he had been a mentor. The live album was produced by Manfred Eicher. Tomasz Stanko: trumpet / Marcin Wasilewski: piano / Slawomir Kurkiewicz: double bass / Michal Miskiewicz: drums

NEW DAY

With "daring and visionary spirit," to quote a Downbeat review from 1976 after the album's release, master improvisers John Abercrombie, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette forged a unique vision of trio interplay on their first joint effort under the Gateway moniker. The trio tackles Holland and DeJohnette originals with a visionary idea of what three-way conversations in jazz could sound like. As The Observer remarked in an article of the time, "the telepathic ensemble playing and perfect execution make it difficult to believe that this music is almost completely improvised." The players' respectively unique instrumental signatures had already fully crystallized here, hinting at the music to come.

SONGS OF FATE

Jordina Mill�/Barry Guy - "Live In Munich" / Verve Label Group; ECM; Jazz This concert recording from Munich's Schwere Reiter performance space features improvisation with an expanded palette of possibilities. "To work with these colors is a great challenge and joy!" says bassist Barry Guy of the glowing and ever-changing tints, timbres and tones radiating from Jordina Mill�'s freely associative piano. Like Guy, Mill� is both a player of prodigious technical capacity and a fearless improvisational explorer, and her highly creative use of the piano interior opens up new sonic territory, to fascinating result.

TRANSYLVANIAN DANCE

AMARYLLIS (ECM LUMINESSENCE SERIES)

KEEL ROAD

After the beautiful 'Naked Truth' in 2022, trumpeter Avishai Cohen comes back with his quartet, including Yonathan Avishai (piano), Barak Mori (bass) and Ziv Ravitz (drums), with a new suite, 'Ashes To Gold.'

Alice Zawadzki, Fred Thomas & Misha Mullov-Abbado Za Gorami LP / Vocalist and violinist Alice Zawadzki, pianist Fred Thomas and bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado present a rare alchemy on their trio debut, fusing folk idioms from a multitude of sources with free-flowing interplay and fluid structures. Inhabiting their own stylistic realm, the trio encompasses folk song, chamber music, improvisation and acoustic jazz, and on Za G�rami they present the full span of their reach in a mesmerizing whole. The album was recorded at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano and produced by Manfred Eicher.

ASHES TO GOLD

Vinyl LP pressing. With Seeing, Tord Gustavsen begins an intricate new chapter in his series of acclaimed trio recordings, initiated in 2003 with Changing Places - an album that is today considered a classic. "The new recording with it's compact, concentrated song forms, reflects my personal development as I get older, going for the essentials in life and music," says the Norwegian pianist. The group's interplay draws strength from restraint, patiently building the music toward it's climaxes, while Gustavsen, a true master of the trio format, shapes the whole with his delicate touch and subtle gospel glow.

Anja Lechner devotes herself to a particularly unique convergence of three composers from vastly different contexts: J.S. Bach, Carl Friedrich Abel, and Tobias Hume. With her distinct perspective on works composed for both violoncello and viola da gamba, Lechner sheds a fresh light on music written within a span of two centuries. Produced by Manfred Eicher

Originally Released in 1981, the debut of the legendary keyboardist from Eberhard Weber's Colours band and later the Jan Garbarek Group, Freigeweht presented Rainer Br?ninghaus as a highly original and idiosyncratic sound sculptor in his own right, accompanied by ECM stalwarts Kenny Wheeler on flugelhorn and drummer Jon Christensen as well as oboist Brynjar Hoff. In a review of the album from the year of it's release, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung traced Rainer's influences and minimalist designs back to Steve Reich, calling Br?ninghaus "the most imaginative musician to employ minimal art in the realm of jazz. Though he neither uses minimal art as ideology nor as replacement for a rhythm section, but in a more playfully constructive way, as an element that can undergo change." Jon Christensen adds uncompromising propulsion to Br?ninghaus's lyrical themes, which are evocatively fleshed out by Wheeler and Hoff's contemplative tones. 180g LP. Part of ECM's New Audiophile Vinyl Series: Luminessence!

Thomas Str�nen - "Relations" / Musical messages from Oslo, New York, Basel and Lugano - recorded between 2018 and 2022 - are juxtaposed and recombined on an absorbing recording that features Norwegian drummer Thomas Str�nen solo and in a series of duets. With such partners as Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy, the musical frame of reference is very broad. Str�nen offers a project that implies new threads of connectivity, new creative relationships. Produced by Manfred Eicher. Verve Label Group; ECM; Jazz.

The trio-debut of pianist, composer and 2025 MacArthur Fellow, Craig Taborn with Tomeka Reid and Ches Smith has been eagerly awaited. Their approach to Dream Archives is cerebral, yet as the title suggests, a wide musical spectrum is covered as multitudes of idioms seem to be pulled from history and reconfigured to form a previously unheard sound world full of reveries. Dancing grooves and powerful lyrical accounts also arise in otherwise densely orchestrated trio interchanges. Sometimes Craig wears his influences on his sleeve, and with the trio's passes at Paul Motian's "Mumbo Jumbo" and Geri Allen's "When Kabuya Dances" two of his most important ones are paid homage to in masterful fashion. Tomeka on cello juggles with melodic lead on the one hand and a pizzicato bass bedrock on the other, coalescing - with tension - with Ches Smith's versatile sound array and Craig's comprehensive grasp of the keyboard.

The ensemble brings together the intimacy of a classical trio (violin, cello, piano), the rhythmic grounding of a jazz piano trio, and three distinctive vocalists, resulting in a fluid and highly expressive group sound. The album moves freely between song, chamber music, and improvisation, setting H�lsmann's original compositions alongside a personal interpretation of Ani DiFranco's "Up Up..." and a Brazilian song by Z�lia Fonseca. Lyrics by poets such as Emily Dickinson, Margaret Atwood, and E.E. Cummings add literary depth, while shifting textures evoke Brazilian dance, musical theatre, and moments of dense collective improvisation. While I Was Away presents a luminous and fearless ensemble statement, reaffirming H�lsmann's place as one of contemporary jazz's most thoughtful composers.

The album includes premier recordings of six Holliger compositions written between 2018 and 2020, as well as strongly contrasting pieces dedicated to him by fellow composers over the years. The earliest of these are J�rg Wyttenbach's Sonate (1961) and Jacques Wildberger's Rondeau (1962), and the most recent are Gy�rgy Kurt�g's aphoristic con slancio, largamente and Toshio Hosokawa's evocative Musubi (Knots), both written to celebrate Holliger's 80th birthday in 2019.

In his review of Mark Turner's last quartet effort for ECM, 2022's Return From The Stars, the Swiss daily Weltwoche's Peter Ruedi described the program as "the leanest, most concentrated, and most inspired improvised chamber music imaginable." It's a fitting description of the tenor saxophonist's powerful quartet endeavors, which seem to have arrived at their most sophisticated and hard-hitting on Patternmaster, an album that in many respects feels like a continuation and expansion of the group's last recording. Both boundless improvisation and cool control are driving motors behind a quartet that has molded it's common musical understanding over years on the road and in the studio. "The more you trust, the more chances you can take and the deeper you can go with people," says the leader, who feels that within this group's chemistry he can go "beyond craft and gage into the art of music more in depth."