Released in 1978, it is a landmark of 1970s minimalism-certainly one of the period’s most sensually gratifying products, thanks to the keen balance of rhythm and harmony, as well as the lush, almost pneumatic timbres produced by an ensemble of strings, clarinet, piano, mallets, and voice. Among these, Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians is one of the most iconic-even though, ironically, it was originally produced for Deutsche Grammophon and then shelved for two years before Eicher got his hands on the recording. Listen to The Köln Concert on Spotify + Apple Music Steve Reich – Music for 18 Musicians (1978)ĮCM may be best known as a jazz label, but some of its most important recordings have come from the realm of classical music and contemporary composition. Toning down the abstraction in favor of lyricism, Köln is Jarrett at his best and deserves its heady reputation. In a sense, that passage paved the way for The Köln Concert, which is not only Jarrett’s best-known LP but was also a multi-platinum sensation. Extended passages find him going inside the instrument to pluck the strings with his hands, and the final 20 minutes of Lausanne, which build from spacious modal probing to frantic scalar workouts, are so beautiful as to defy belief. Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne, from 1973, draws on two concerts to show the staggering range of what Jarrett could do at the piano. The other two essential solo piano records are his first two live sets. Dense and intricate, it veers from boogie-woogie funk to ghostly ballads and is impossible to pin down from one moment to the next. While his solo piano is defined by his live recordings, his first full-length solo work on the instrument, the 1971 album Facing You, set the template for what was to follow, and it remains one of his best records. On releases like The Köln Concert and Sun Bear Concerts, Jarrett essentially created a new form for the instrument, one based on spontaneous improvised pieces that could be jagged and atonal one moment and stunningly lyrical the next. But his most iconic music from the decade remains his work for solo piano. Keith Jarrett was hyper-prolific through the 1970s, with a steady stream of records from his two working jazz quartets and a number of experimental records that were hard to classify.
–Philip Sherburne Keith Jarrett: Facing You (1971), Solo Concerts: Bremen / Lausanne (1973), The Köln Concert (1975) We’ll readily admit we’ve only just barely scratched the surface of the surface, given that the label’s catalog comprises some 1,600 titles, but every one of these can serve as a stepping stone into the furthest reaches of its universe. To mark this new era of ECM, we’ve put together a guide to a few of our favorite releases: canonical, left-field, and somewhere in between. Still, the label couldn’t resist slipping in an old-school aside: “The physical catalogue and the original authorship are the crucial references for us: the complete ECM album with its artistic signature, best possible sound quality, sequence and dramaturgy intact, telling its story from beginning to end.” Streaming listeners, they seem to imply, are only experiencing a fraction of the experience. A statement framed the previously unannounced move as a necessary counter to the unauthorized distribution of ECM titles on YouTube and file-sharing sites. But last week, ECM titles began to trickle onto Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and other streaming services. Until very recently, the only way to hear an ECM recording was to acquire it on vinyl or CD. (While the label has never delved deeply into electronic music, in 2011 it did open up the vaults to Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer’s sprawling Re: ECM remix project-a teasing glimpse of possible new directions for the label’s second 50 years.) But the bedrock of ECM’s roster belongs to a slightly different kind of musician-standouts in their respective fields, yet hardly household names, like the avant-garde jazz group Art Ensemble of Chicago (including Roscoe Mitchell and Lester Bowie), the Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem, and the groundbreaking pianist/composer/bandleader Carla Bley. ECM has displayed a particular knack for identifying sounds likely to cross over to a non-specialist public: Enduring crowd-pleasers like Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert, Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, and Arvo Pärt’s devotional hymns have found their way into many a record collection otherwise untouched by jazz or classical or sacred music, and they have changed the course of popular music along the way.
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