After his acclaimed solo album Silent, Listening, Fred Hersch comes back on ECM with Drew Gress and Joey Baron for a new trio recording: The Surrounding Green.

Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Paul Motian - "At The Deer Head Inn: The Complete Recordings". "The music has the dash and the unabashed lyricism of Keith Jarrett's best work," wrote Stereophile in a rave review of the first selection from the intimate Deer Head Inn live recording, capturing Jarrett's spontaneous, and in retrospect historic, return to the Pennsylvanian venue of his early years, alongside Gary Peacock (bass) and Paul Motian (drums). The second release, titled The Old Country and released 30 years after the first volume in 2024, was met with equal acclaim - The Guardian's John Fordham called it, "song-based jazz-imagining at it's best." Keith Jarrett: "I think you can hear on this tape what jazz is all about." Here, both albums are combined and released on vinyl for the very first time. The Complete Recordings are spread across 4 LPs in two tip-on gatefold jackets and framed by a deluxe slipcase. There won't be a second print-run of this boxset, limiting it strictly to this edition.

Guitarist John Scofield and bassist Dave Holland, two of jazz's contemporary masters, have played together over the years in contexts including projects with Herbie Hancock and Joe Henderson and a spirited co-led band with Joe Lovano and Al Foster. Memories of Home is their first duo album. The album includes Scofield's "Icons at the Fair," "Meant to Be," "Mine Are Blues," "Memorette," and "Easy for You," and Holland's "Mr. B," "Not for Nothin'," "You I Love" and "Memories of Home."

Guitarist John Scofield and bassist Dave Holland, two of jazz's contemporary masters, have played together over the years in contexts including projects with Herbie Hancock and Joe Henderson and a spirited co-led band with Joe Lovano and Al Foster. Memories of Home is their first duo album, made at NRS Studios, in Catskill, New York, last year, after extensive touring activity. John Scofield: "The record, like our live shows, features tunes each of us composed, some new, some old. We share decades of common references musically. The similarities and differences in our approaches make for a more interesting collaboration, I think." The album includes Scofield's "Icons at the Fair", "Meant to Be", "Mine Are Blues", "Memorette" and "Easy for You", and Holland's "Mr. B", "Not for Nothin'", "You I Love" and "Memories of Home."

TOKYO

Vinyl LP pressing. Grammy Award-winning titan of jazz saxophone Joe Lovano, hailed by The New York Times as "one of the greatest musicians in jazz history," and virtuoso guitarist Julian Lage have enjoyed a long journey of mutual artistic admiration. This new electrifying ensemble also features longtime collaborators Santi Debriano on bass and drummer Will Calhoun.

The Koln Concert 2-LP / gatefold sleeve / booklet / printed signature - the groundbreaking recording of Keith Jarrett's improvised solo concert at the Cologne opera house - has attained legendary status since it's 1975 release. An iconic album and an essential document of the era, few live recordings in any idiom have been celebrated as widely. In the liner essay included in the 50th Anniversary Edition of the album, the concert's context is outlined in detail. Recorded on January 24, 1975 and originally released on November 30 the same year, The Koln Concert was produced by Manfred Eicher. For the 50th anniversary, the special edition 2-LP is released in a high-quality tip-on-gatefold sleeve with a glued-in, 8-page booklet featuring a new liner essay in German and English, as well as original and new photos. Includes an art print with a photo and printed signature by Keith Jarrett.

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 Milla/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 Milla's freely associative piano. Like Guy, Milla 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 Gorami 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!