2022 release. Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, an ECM musician for more than fifty years, is a masterful player who has always welcomed a challenge. His first recording with his new quartet - including rising stars Marius Neset and Helge Lien (both bandleaders in their own right) - is almost entirely improvised. The players make the leap of faith together and find and develop forms in the moment, an object lesson in spontaneous group creativity. Affirmation was recorded in 2021 at Oslo's Rainbow Studio.

Vinyl LP pressing. There is a searching, yearning quality to Naked Truth, and a raw beauty and vulnerability in Avishai Cohen's trumpet sound on his most improvisational ECM recording to date. Very much music-of-the-moment, found and shaped in the course of a remarkable recording session in the South of France, Naked Truth takes the form of an extemporaneous suite.

Keith Jarrett's album, Book of Ways, was recorded on July 14, 1986 in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Rather amazing is the great variety of sound and rhythm - Jarrett played alternately one or two instruments simultaneously. Beyond unmistakable echoes of lute music and Japanese koto, the whole range of modes of expression the clavichord is capable of is being fathomed out. All this has been supported by studio techniques, which recorded the sound of the instrument with rarely heard intensity.

Stephan Micus is a unique musician and composer. He collects and studies instruments from all around the world and creates his own musical journeys with them. This is his 25th solo album for ECM and it's sound is dominated by the four-metre long Tibetan dung chen trumpet, an instrument he has recently learned and is using for the first time. It was the thunderous sound of this instrument that led to the album's name and it's nine tracks celebrating deities around the world.

Fred Hersch - "Silent, Listening" [LP] / Silent, Listening is a major addition to ECM's distinguished line of solo piano recordings, featuring one of the outstanding improvising pianists and jazz masters of our time: Fred Hersch. The album features seven original creations and a handful of well-chosen standards, all played with the focus, sensitivity and gracefulness for which Hersch is renowned. Developed with producer Manfred Eicher in the responsive acoustics of the Lugano studio, the album was recorded in May 2023.

DRIFTING

Vijay Iyer / Linda May Han Oh/Tyshawn Sorey - "Compassion" / Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer follows his 2021 ECM disc Uneasy - the first to showcase his trio featuring bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey - with Compassion, another album in league with these two gifted partners. Compassion, Iyer's eighth release as a leader for ECM, continues his drive to explore fresh territory while also referencing his forebears along the way, two of them long associated with the label. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher and Vijay Iyer.

Kenny Wheeler is among the most lyrically commanding yet daring of modern trumpeters. There's a palpable ease of execution, and a poignant human quality, to his distinctive timbre, as on the title tune where his fluttering descents into the lower register, the cracked yet powerful vocal inflections, and the sudden emission of high harmonics suggest a whistling column of air slowly leaking from a balloon. And from the moody Spanish tinge of "Present Past" to the raga-ish Nordic gravity of "Unti," alto player Lee Konitz matches Wheeler's lyric ease with a singing sound and rhythmic buoyancy all his own.

2022 release. The Danish String Quartet's Grammy-nominated Prism project, linking Bach fugues, Beethoven quartets and works by later masters, receives it's fourth installment. The penultimate volume of the series combines Bach's Fugue in G minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier (in the arrangement by Viennese composer Emanuel Aloys Forster) with Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 132 and Felix Mendelssohn's String Quartet No.2 (composed in 1827).

Brazilian percussionist Nan� Vasconcelos's Saudades album, recorded in March 1979, was the culmination of a dream for a musician who had long yearned to hear the berimbau in an orchestral context. This 'concerto' for an innovative player of a traditional instrument was made possible with the creative input of Egberto Gismonti, here the arranger of the material for strings, as well as co-composer and supporting soloist. The Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart was conducted by Mladen Gutesha (who had worked with ECM previously on trans-idiomatic projects with Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek and Terje Rypdal). Produced by Manfred Eicher, Saudades remains an extraordinary journey, an ahead-of-it's-time album, waiting for the world to catch up. This vinyl reissue, in gatefold sleeve, adds new liner notes providing historical context and background information.

The Danish String Quartet bring their highly acclaimed Prism project to it's conclusion. The project has been eight years in the making. Now on the fifth and final volume, Johann Sebastian Bach's chorale prelude prefaces Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 16 in F major. Anton Webern's early String Quartet, composed in 1905 - and inspired both by Beethoven and Schoenberg - follows, and the programme returns to Bach with Contrapunctus 14 from The Art of the Fugue.

Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer follows his 2021 ECM disc Uneasy - the first to showcase his trio featuring bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey - with Compassion, another album in league with these two gifted partners. The New York Times captured the special qualities of this group, pointing to the trio's flair for playing "with a lithe range of motion and resplendent clarity... while stoking a kind of writhing internal tension. Crucial to that balance is their ability to connect with each other almost telepathically." Compassion, Iyer's eighth release as a leader for ECM, continues his drive to explore fresh territory while also referencing his forebears along the way, two of them long associated with the label. The album includes a lyrical homage to Chick Corea via the late pianist's valedictory interpretation of Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed." Another tip of the hat comes with "Nonaah," a whirlwind of a piece by avant-garde sage Roscoe Mitchell, a key mentor for the pianist. Then there are Iyer's own melodically alluring, rhythmically invigorating compositions, ranging from the pensive title track to the hook-laced highlights "Tempest" and "Ghostrumental."

Vinyl LP pressing. Ralph Alessi's fourth appearance as a leader for the ECM label follows a singular album run that's been met with nothing but praise from the New York Times to the Guardian. On his new album, Alessi's unique tone is as limber, piercing and present as ever, enveloped by a fresh quarter lineup including Florian Weber (piano), B"nz Oester (bass) and Gerry Hemingway (drums), that navigates through the trumpeter's idiosyncratically swinging compositions with a sixth sense.

Ralph Alessi's fourth appearance as a leader for the label follows a singular album run that's been met with nothing but praise from The New York Times to The Guardian. On his new album, Alessi's unique tone is as limber, piercing and present as ever, enveloped by a fresh quartet line-up - pianist Florian Weber, B"nz Oester on bass and drummer Gerry Hemingway - that navigates through the trumpeter's idiosyncratically swinging compositions with a sixth sense.

Louis Sclavis / Benjamin Moussay -"Unfolding" - Having previously joined forces on several Louis Sclavis recordings for ECM (including the clarinetist's last album, Characters On A Wall), Sclavis and pianist Benjamin Moussay have been increasingly focused on their two-way communication in recent years, playing expansive and well-received concerts throughout Europe. Now, in a program of originals (two-thirds from the pianist's pen, the remaining third by the clarinetist), the French duo dreams up a world of chamber conversations that juxtaposes lyrical contemplation with whimsical inventiveness in a joyous, concentrated collaboration. Verve Label Group; ECM; Jazz