When Kenny Wheeler expatriated from his native Canada to England, it was not headline news. But upon the release of Gnu High, he became a contemporary jazz figure to be recognized, revered and admired. Playing the flugelhorn exclusively for this, his ECM label debut, Wheeler's mellifluous tones and wealth of ideas came to full fruition. Whether chosen in collaboration with label boss Manfred Eicher or by Wheeler alone, picking pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette was a stroke of genius. They support the elongated and extended notions of Wheeler's in many real and important ways. What is also extant is a sense of self-indulgence, real for listeners with short attention spans…

Guitarist John Abercrombie was one of the stars of ECM in its early days. His playing on this trio set with bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette is really beyond any simple categorization. Abercrombie's improvisations are sophisticated yet, because his sound is rockish and sometimes quite intense (particularly on the nearly 11-minute "Sorcery 1"), there is really no stylistic name for the music. Holland contributed four of the six originals while DeJohnette brought in the other two (one of which was co-written with Abercrombie). The interplay between the three musicians is quite impressive although listeners might find some of the music to be quite unsettling. It takes several listens for one to digest all that is going on, but it is worth the struggle.

For Kyanos, Jon Balke continues the journey begun on Further with an assembly of likeminded label mates - among them trumpeters Per Jørgensen and Arve Henriksen, bassist Anders Jormin, and drummer Audun Kleive - under the moniker Magnetic North Orchestra to ply the glaciers of the Norwegian pianist’s nostalgic compositional approach. Many permutations of the album’s title (which means “blue” in Greek) find purchase in the album’s intimate geography. “Mutatio,” for one, unpacks the depressing implications of the color, trading piano-heavy gestures with soft punctuations from the MNO, each a hope sidestepped in favor of seclusion. “Katabolic” tells the same story but reverses the formula, fronting Jørgensen and Henriksen against intermittent swells of synth. “In vitro” seems to speak in the language of the color itself, as if it were an entire species with specific taxonomic histories and genetic signatures…

John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner have forever been tied to the ECM roster as leaders and individualists, and initially it was hard to imagine their styles being compatible. As an amplified electric guitarist, Abercrombie's steely, sometime unearthly sound was an uneven puzzle piece alongside the graphic, stoic, classically oriented style of Towner. Yet on Sargasso Sea, there are several instances where they merge together as one, feeling their way through pure improvisations, angular and colorful motifs, or thematic nuances and a certain strata of consciousness that makes a world of common sense. There are selections where they both play acoustic guitars, but it is mostly Abercrombie's hopped up sound through an amp over Towner's bold and beautiful unplugged instrument, tossing in a piano overdubbed on two tracks…

34-year old guitarist, composer, and bandleader Jacob Young hails from Oslo, Norway, making him a natural for Manfred Eicher's ECM label. Young was educated at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York, where he studied under Jim Hall and privately with John Abercrombie. Young's warm, rounded tone indicates a debt to the former while his wide harmonic palette owes to the latter; but his extended melodic vocabulary, gorgeous phrasing, and notions of group interplay are his own. What is immediately startling about Evening Falls is its lyricism; it doesn't sound like a guitarist's date. Young's compositions reflect song, paying careful attention to nuance and dynamic. There is plenty of room for improvisation and group interplay - with veteran drummer Jon Christensen, trumpeter Mathias Eick, bass clarinettist and saxophonist Vidar Johansen, and bassist Mats Eilertsen - around melodic invention…

Intelligent, moving, jazz influenced, progressive rock performed by a stellar cast of musicians including amongst others and in addition to Pip himself is: Dave Stewart, Barbara Gaskin, Phil Miller, Jakko M Jaksyk, Richard Sinclair, John Greaves, Fred Thelonious Baker, Hugh Hopper, Paul Rogers, Didier Malherbe and Elton Dean. Pip Pyle has played drums with amongst others Gong, Hatfield and the North, National Health and In Cahoots and this album shows also what a great composer he is. Quite simply this album contains some of the best examples of the Canterbury/Prog Rock music that has been heard on CD. The opening track 'Seven Sisters', originally written by Pip and performed in a different form by National Health (a version is available on 'Playtime' called 'Pleiades') has to be one of the top five pieces of music of the last few years. It's simply stunning, no other way to describe it. What is amazing here and on other tracks written solely by Pyle is the beauty of his compositions from a melodic and harmonic viewpoint.

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.

Gifts–recorded with the Weavers quartet–serves as a deeply personal musical memoir.

This three-album retrospective of bassist Eberhard Weber’s group, Colours, recorded between 1975 and 1980, is striking musically, historically, culturally, and creatively. As American and British jazz musicians were employing electric instruments to create edgier, funkier, and more stridently knotty music, many Northern Europeans were exploring an entirely different sonic universe: creating another pathway in jazz. Weber's work would help to define the ECM imprint's sound. Weber founded Colours in 1974 with saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Charlie Mariano, keyboardist Rainer Bruninghaus, and drummer Jon Christensen - to be replaced in by John Marshall in 1977. Its 1975 debut, Yellow Fields, put painterly touches into a sonic kaleidescope that explored tonal and harmonic realms with acute compositional and improvisational attention to the space that surrounded jazz…

Ketil Bjørnstad made his book debut at the age of 20 and released his first record at the age of 21. In those years, he has published a staggering 53 (!) books and 73 (!!) albums, of which a dozen are double and triple albums. In 2022, Ketil Bjørnstad turned 70 and it is celebrated with a box of everything he did in the 70s. Absolutely everything.

Gigi Gryce was a giant of the hard-bop movement in the 1950s, a celebrated and in-demand sideman but a bandleader insufficiently recognized for his skills in that arena. This collection brings together eight of his best recordings as a leader, originally issued on labels like Savoy, Riverside, and New Jazz. The first disc consists of material written or arranged for biggish bands, including some great tunes with Thelonious Monk, some of them relatively obscure Monk compositions like ''Shuffle Boil'' and ''Brake's Sake''; there is also a wonderfully hard-swinging uptempo version of ''Over the Rainbow.'' Disc 2 features two late-1950s albums that find Gryce leading tight, disciplined, and powerfully swinging small combos that include the likes of trumpeter Donald Byrd, pianist Hank Jones, and drummer Art Taylor and that continue his practice of playing ballads as up numbers note in particular his explosive bebop treatment of ''Love for Sale.'' On his self-titled album from 1958, he is multitracked on various saxophones and flutes, creating the sound of a much larger ensemble than the quartet in the studio; his tenor solo on ''It Don't Mean a Thing'' is especially noteworthy. (I'm not sure we really needed a celeste obbligato on ''My Ideal,'' but Gryce's playing on that cut is lovely.) And one of the things you really notice, listening to these eight albums end to end, is that while Gryce has always been justly celebrated for his writing, he was equally creative and adept as an arranger. This might not be an absolutely essential set for every jazz collection, but it's certainly recommendable. ~ Rick Anderson

One of the best recordings for Keith Jarrett's mid-'70s American quartet (whose style differed sharply from its European doppelgänger), The Survivors' Suite opens with Jarrett's aching, breathy sigh on the bass recorder, evoking the sound of a horn somewhere across a great expanse of fog. Percussion soon punctuates the melodic line to give the opening a more spiritual, ritualistic feel, which is only the first of many mutations that this album will go through. Divided into two parts, entitled "Beginning" and "Conclusion," this suite effortlessly flows between its movements which range from fiery free jazz to open, meditative atmospheric pieces showing heavy input from indigenous musics to instrumental solos that owe a sylistic debt to the music of the previous decade…

Enrico Rava's restrained trumpet playing has been regarded in modern times as perfectly reflective of the ECM sound. It is wrapped in European classical music while displaying a lyricism that goes beyond strict tonality, reaching for a soulful arena that only he can claim in the post-Miles Davis era. The emerging pianist Stefano Bollani joins Rava and veteran drummer Paul Motian for this contrabass-less trio that uses a downplayed sonic footprint, at times ethereal, but mostly calmed, collected, and serenely furnished. The compositions are mainly Rava's in hushed tones, but occasionally a modern progressive, bop-influenced, or energetic presence creeps in. Bollani's style is romantically based and postmodern in derivation, while Motian is simply one of the most sensitive drummers ever, with ears that pick up on every shading or nuance, translating it into artful percussive brush strokes of light color…

"Aquarela do Brasil," an unofficial anthem of Brazil, may have received literally thousands of different version and interpretations, but even then, Egberto and Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos (his sole accompanist here) were able to devise an extremely original version, which opens with an unassuming stylized samba introduction, slowly bringing elements which conduce the listener to the piece's identification. Egberto is very fond of percussive attacks and ethereal configurations, both acquiring superior importance in his music, not being necessarily attached to or supportive for a musical theme or melody. Therefore, the next defined melody presented (in the low strings of his 10 string violão) is at track six, "Bianca," which is a complex yet lyrical construction based in which seems a folkloric rhythm motif…

Saxophonist Jan Garbarek is very much at home in the quiet throes of “Farewell Theme” and lends his focused energy to a nexus of strings and santouri that, in a short span, scales the heart’s deepest cliffs. This piece both begins and ends a disc comprised of Karaindrou’s best from the 1980s, and is also the longest. “Elegy For Rosa” and “The Journey” are among the briefer portals into the album’s blinding refractions, such as “The Scream” and “Return,” the latter something of an anthem in its present context. The chromatically inflected evocations of “Wandering In Alexandria” quiver with curiosities, as if lost in a land one has forgotten. The oboe of “Adagio” spins a rope of travel across the sky, sending down threads of hope into “Fairytale” and “Parade”…