Forthcoming ECM releases

[Chicago Expat]

Expat, I see that you can listen to samples from the Brederode Post Scriptum album at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Post-Scriptum-Wolfert-Brederode-Quartet/dp/B004Q9QXP2/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1312392754&sr=1-1

Yeah, thanks for that. The thing of it is, I know if I search around I can find some 30 second samples. Mostly, though, it's a general frustration with, IMO, a backwards philosophy by many in the music community about streaming albums as a preview before buying. I think it's bad for business. I look at all the cds on my shelf and albums in my itunes library that I took a chance on based on thirty second samples and, now, never listen to anymore, it's frustrating to consider how much money I've wasted on those albums. And now with the internet and the convenience of sites like bandcamp and myspace with which to interact with listeners and allow them to preview more than 30 seconds of a song, I'm just at a point where I don't care how many places I can listen to 30 seconds of Brederode's album, I refuse to buy the damn thing based on the hope that it turns out to be something I like.

And that sucks, because it may actually be an album that I love, which I think is the part of it that really bugs me. But, whatevs, there are a lot of jazz musicians embracing the full album preview, so my purchase list is never a short one. I just get frustrated that the rest of the world doesn't recognize how right I am and start doing things like I think they should. It would make life so much easier.

[GA Russell]

I received this email from ECM today:

Chick Corea and Stefano Bollani, both stars of their instruments for their generations, combine their considerable talents for this first recorded collaboration, a document of a most spirited gig in Orvieto’s Teatro Mancinelli last December. Effervescent virtuosity abounds as the two piano genii romp through a program that includes Jobim’s “Portrait in Black and White”, the swing ballad “Darn That Dream”, Fats Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz”, Miles Davis’s “Nardis”, blues, improvisations and more. And this recording is Corea’s first new ECM date in more than a quarter-century.

Orvieto release date: September 27^th.

[alankin]

Amazon, et al, will have samples.

[LWayne]

Good point Expat.

I bought the recent CD "Bienestan" by Aaron Goldberg and Guillermo Klein because I could hear the entire album on bandcamp and that experience got me off the fence.

You also have to support artists like Darcy James Argue and David Binney that provide live tracks on their website so that you can appreciate the live evolution of the music even if you can't catch the gigs.

Smart self-promootion is the best advertising.

LWayne

[GA Russell]

I've been listening to an advance copy of Chick Corea & Stefano Bollani's Orvieto, and I love it. Just two pianos live in concert.

[mjazzg]

The new double CD Charles LLoyd looks very intriguing - a live concert recording from Athens where the quartet are joined by some Greek musicians, perhaps most notably a vocalist, "Maria Farantouri, Greece's voice of resistance"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Athens-Concert-Charles-Lloyd/dp/B005CAAVK2/ref=ntt_mus_dp_dpt_1

[GA Russell]

Now the Ricardo Villa-Lobos 'reconstruction' album, RE:ECM, that's one to put several cats amongst the pigeons. Some very interesting treatments on the first listen

This is due out tomorrow in the US. Here is the email I received about it.

Ricardo Villalobos/Max Loderbauer - Re: ECM

Berlin-based DJs and composers Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer - two of the best-known names in contemporary electronica - share their admiration for music on ECM in a unique double-album of specially-created “sound-structures”. Their project “Re: ECM” will bring the label’s music to a new listenership. It is certain to be one of the most talked-about albums of the season. Using original ECM recordings as a starting point, Villalobos and Loderbauer create new music that bridges several worlds, including ECM’s world of space-conscious improvisation and composition and the worlds of ambient electronics and minimal techno. Source materials on “Re: ECM” include recordings of Christian Wallumrød, Alexander Knaifel, Louis Sclavis, John Abercrombie, Bennie Maupin, Arvo Pärt, Wolfert Brederode, Paul Giger and more - looped, sampled, remixed and reworked in evocative new treatments. Pleased with the duo’s creative response to his productions Manfred Eicher gave them carte blanche to carry on experimenting with the ECM titles of their choice. Eicher subsequently supervised the mastering of “Re: ECM” in Munich, completing a unique sonic experience.

You can hear a few excerpts, see more information and even watch a video interview with the artists (in German with English subtitles) by clicking on this link:

http://player.ecmrecords.com/villalobos_loderbauer

[A Lark Ascending]

Presumably to be followed with an album of rap, hip-hop, techno and indie rendered in spacious, drum-machine free, glacial soundscapes?

[GA Russell]

The new Charles Lloyd, called Athens Concert, came out yesterday in the US. Jason Moran is on it. I'm looking forward to hearing it.

[mjazzg]

The new Charles Lloyd, called Athens Concert, came out yesterday in the US. Jason Moran is on it. I'm looking forward to hearing it.

It's well worth a listen. I've had a couple of spins and CD2, a suite comprised of Greek traditional tunes works beautifully. The arrangement by Farazis does a great job of facilitating a coming-together of the two disparate music traditions.

CD1 is less immediately successful, to my ears, although there's a great Dream Weaver. Lloyd's sax and Farantouri's vocals blend beautifully a lot of the time. Maybe less successfully when Farantouri is more foregrounded with the band 'backing'

As you'd anticipate the playing is top drawer from everyone but Lloyd just gets better and better as far as I can hear - the tone is luxurious

[Chicago Expat]

The new Charles Lloyd, called Athens Concert, came out yesterday in the US. Jason Moran is on it. I'm looking forward to hearing it.

It's well worth a listen. I've had a couple of spins and CD2, a suite comprised of Greek traditional tunes works beautifully. The arrangement by Farazis does a great job of facilitating a coming-together of the two disparate music traditions.

CD1 is less immediately successful, to my ears, although there's a great Dream Weaver. Lloyd's sax and Farantouri's vocals blend beautifully a lot of the time. Maybe less successfully when Farantouri is more foregrounded with the band 'backing'

As you'd anticipate the playing is top drawer from everyone but Lloyd just gets better and better as far as I can hear - the tone is luxurious

I am a little jealous of people who are into Lloyd. He cranks out albums at a decent pace, and yet each album seems to have its own identity through changing line-ups or themes. It seems like an exciting time to be a Lloyd fan. Unfortunately, his sound clashes with my ears. I keep hoping that the next Lloyd album I hear will be the one to get me over, so to speak.

Cheers.

[mjazzg]

The new Charles Lloyd, called Athens Concert, came out yesterday in the US. Jason Moran is on it. I'm looking forward to hearing it.

It's well worth a listen. I've had a couple of spins and CD2, a suite comprised of Greek traditional tunes works beautifully. The arrangement by Farazis does a great job of facilitating a coming-together of the two disparate music traditions.

CD1 is less immediately successful, to my ears, although there's a great Dream Weaver. Lloyd's sax and Farantouri's vocals blend beautifully a lot of the time. Maybe less successfully when Farantouri is more foregrounded with the band 'backing'

As you'd anticipate the playing is top drawer from everyone but Lloyd just gets better and better as far as I can hear - the tone is luxurious

I am a little jealous of people who are into Lloyd. He cranks out albums at a decent pace, and yet each album seems to have its own identity through changing line-ups or themes. It seems like an exciting time to be a Lloyd fan. Unfortunately, his sound clashes with my ears. I keep hoping that the next Lloyd album I hear will be the one to get me over, so to speak.

Cheers.

I have a similar frustration with Jarrett not that he changes line-ups but he does crank them out - as much as any ECM artist does, anyway. I've stopped buying them to see if it's the one that will 'click'!

[Jazz_Thrash]

The Taborn is excellent. A thoughtful, nuanced, performance having more in common with 20th century modern classical music. No blues here!

I'm a bit curious about how Taborn sounds in this CD that I will have the next week being part of one of my recent orders. I like a lot his work with other artists (Berne, James Carter, Chris Lightcap...), and I love albums like Junk Magic too (the same that Nu-Bop from Shipp), but I think that this will be the first time that I will listen to Taborn in a solo format.

Speaking about other ECM release, recently I have bought "Vespers" from IRO HAARLA and I think that it will be a CD which improves with future listennings. At first it left me a bit cold, although I liked a lot moments when Haarla plays harp. However, Eick does a great work, but in my opinion, the best is Seim which sounds powerful and enigmatic at the same time.

Greets!

[David Ayers]

I found the Taborn interesting though I don't really love it. What I like is that he does more with his left hand than some (in my book this is quite important!). It is a little deliberate, maybe. It is hard for solo piano records not to meander and this does too in places. It bridges the gap between the free rhapsodic approach of Jarrett and the more constructivist approach of, uh, real music.

IMHO.

[kh1958]

The new Charles Lloyd, called Athens Concert, came out yesterday in the US. Jason Moran is on it. I'm looking forward to hearing it.

It's well worth a listen. I've had a couple of spins and CD2, a suite comprised of Greek traditional tunes works beautifully. The arrangement by Farazis does a great job of facilitating a coming-together of the two disparate music traditions.

CD1 is less immediately successful, to my ears, although there's a great Dream Weaver. Lloyd's sax and Farantouri's vocals blend beautifully a lot of the time. Maybe less successfully when Farantouri is more foregrounded with the band 'backing'

As you'd anticipate the playing is top drawer from everyone but Lloyd just gets better and better as far as I can hear - the tone is luxurious

I've really been enjoying this one. Very fine performance.

[Sundog]

Giving the Lloyd it's first spin. Sounds good so far.

[GA Russell]

I checked in at the ECM - USA facebook page, and was reminded that the Chick Corea-Stefano Bollani album Orvieto will come out Tuesday.

[JETman]

I checked in at the ECM - USA facebook page, and was reminded that the Chick Corea-Stefano Bollani album Orvieto will come out Tuesday.

Yes, for me, a new Corea album is always something to celebrate, dianetics aside, of course!

[Pete C]

I checked in at the ECM - USA facebook page, and was reminded that the Chick Corea-Stefano Bollani album Orvieto will come out Tuesday.

I'm looking forward to it. When I posted it on Jazz Corner I only got naysayers. I thought Bollani's ECM solo album was possibly the worst effort from him I've ever heard though. I think he tried too hard to be ECM and his humor, eclecticism and quirkiness fell by the wayside.

[GA Russell]

ECM will release three new albums in the US Tuesday - two jazz and one world music.

Stefano Battaglia Trio

The River of Anyder

Stefano Battaglia: piano

Salvatore Maiore: double-bass

Roberto Dani: drums

U.S. Release date: October 18, 2011

ECM CD: B0016065-02

UPC: 6025 276 8055 2

The pure water of the Anyder River flowed through Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. Italian pianist Stefano Battaglia celebrates it here, in music uncontaminated by jazz trends: “I set myself the task of writing songs and dances uninfluenced by the sophistication of contemporary musical languages, striving to shape pieces that might have been played on archaic instruments a thousand years ago. I think of it as a kind of music before the idioms.” If the piano trio remains a modern institution and the improvisational group understanding shared by Battaglia, Maiore and Dani cannot help but be of-the-moment, the musicians have nonetheless made an album that feels “timeless”.

The compositions here are mostly named after mythical and legendary locations, each of them conferring specific atmospheres. Fictional and real-world place names are interspersed. From Minas Tirith, Tolkien’s White City, the players travel, via the Utopian river, to the sacred mountain of Ararat and onward to Bensalem, mythical island in Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, somewhere to the West of Peru, where an enlightened citizenry labors to improve man’s understanding: “We have twelve that sail into foreign countries under the names of other nations (for our own we conceal), who bring us the books and abstracts, and patterns of experiments of all other parts.”

In his selection of literary and philosophical quotes for the CD booklet, Battaglia casts a net that similarly brings far-flung traditions into juxtaposition, referencing Rumi and Rimbaud, Hildegard von Bingen and Black Elk of the Oglala Sioux: these are just some of the names that fire the composer’s imagination. Yet it is not a musical patchwork that he has created from such influences but an original concept that seems to spring from a strong, organic center. The trio has its own deep pulses and its own methodology. There is a robust lyricism at work as modal improvisations unfold.

***

Battaglia (born 1965 in Milan) first made waves as a classical pianist, playing music from baroque and early music to 20th century composition, touring the European festivals in this capacity, before making the transition to music that incorporated improvisation. A strong feeling for structure, a legacy from the ‘classical’ years, continues to inform all his work, however ostensibly free the context. He has been an ECM artist since 2003, when the double album Raccolto was recorded. Subsequent releases have included Re: Pasolini a tribute to the Italian filmmaker and polymath, which includes contributions from Salvatore Maiore and Roberto Dani, and Pastorale, an album of duets with Michele Rabbia.

Salvatore Maiore was born in Sassari in 1965, and studied double bass at the Cagliari conservatory. He has played with numerous Italian configurations and worked with visiting musicians including Lee Konitz, Billy Cobham, Joseph Jarman, Steve Grossman, Cedar Walton, Oliver Lake, and David Liebman. His discography includes recordings with Glauco Venier, Klaus Gesing, Al DiMeola and many others.

Roberto Dani was born in Vicenza, Italy in 1969 and began playing drums at the age of 7. He has specialized in small ensemble work, exploring the borders between improvised and written music. His own bands and projects have included Norma Winstone, Louis Sclavis, Michel Godard and others. He has also played with Annette Peacock, Ralph Alessi, Ben Monder, Mick Goodrick and many more. Current affiliations include, in addition to the Battaglia group, the trio of Giorgio Gaslini. He has played numerous solo concerts and also issued solo drum albums, recent releases include Lontano, for prepared drums, on the Stella Nera label.

The River of Anyder was recorded in November 2009 in the exceptional acoustic of Lugano’s Auditorio Radiotelevisione Svizzera, with Manfred Eicher producing.

Marilyn Mazur

Celestial Circle

Josefine Cronholm: voice

John Taylor: piano

Anders Jormin: double-bass

Marilyn Mazur: percussion, drums, voice

U.S. Release date: October 18, 2011

ECM CD: B0015988-02

UPC: 6025 276 8056 9

Celestial Circle is the recording debut of the band of the same name. First assembled for Marilyn Mazur’s season as artist-in-residence at Norway’s Molde Jazz Festival in 2008, the group has since become a popular institution on the concert circuit, and the present disc was recorded in Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in 2010. It’s a band of diverse strengths and changing moods, song-oriented but also instrumentally expressive. Organically percussive, too, with Mazur’s panoply of drums and gongs and cymbals and bells a source of natural melody and evocative texture. Pianist John Taylor, in his first ECM session in several years, is keyed at all times to the inflections of Josefine Cronholm’s voice, framing it with his characteristic harmonic sophistication and elegant lyricism. Anders Jormin’s bass provides a dark undertow, anchors the music, moves freely in the improvised sections... Even in its quietest moments the group conveys a great deal of musical information.

Mazur’s work has always expressed a free-spiritedness beyond idioms and borders. Born in New York, raised in Denmark, she has contributed powerfully to improvisation on both sides of the Atlantic, and her resume has included well-documented stints with Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Gil Evans in the late 1980s as well as 14 years on the road with the Jan Garbarek Group (an association referenced on Mazur’s Elixir recording of 2005).

Alongside such high-profile engagements, Mazur has maintained her own bands and projects; ECM recorded her Future Song ensemble in 1994. One such project was Percussion Paradise which included singer Josefine Cronholm – the combination of Cronholm’s and Mazur’s voices is further developed in Celestial Circle.

Mazur has received a number of awards for her music, most recently the First International EuroCore - JTI Jazz Award: Celestial Circle played at the prize-giving ceremony in Trier’s Kurfürstliches Palais last December. Other prizes have included the JazzPar Prize (Europe’s biggest jazz award), the Ben Webster Prize and the Django D’Or.

Celestial Circle marks an ECM debut for Swedish singer Cronholm. Since the mid-1990s, when she collaborated with Django Bates’s Human Chain group, she has been consistently singled out as one of the most original European jazz vocalists of her generation.

John Taylor’s elegant and resourceful piano playing has had a role to play in many ECM contexts including discs with Jan Garbarek, John Surman, Kenny Wheeler, Miroslav Vitous and Peter Erskine as well as Azimuth, the trio he co-founded with Wheeler and Norma Winstone, and his own ‘New York Trio’ with Marc Johnson and Joey Baron (album: Rosslyn). Taylor’s rapport with bassist Anders Jormin was previously confirmed on Mark Feldman’s 2006 recording What Exit.

Anders Jormin also records as a leader for ECM, with recordings including Xieyi and In winds, in light (a new album is in preparation). He is a long-term member of the Bobo Stenson Trio, and appears on ECM discs by Charles Lloyd, Don Cherry, Tomasz Stanko, Mark Feldman, Jon Balke and Sinikka Langeland.

Marilyn Mazur can also be seen in the documentary film Sounds and Silence by Peter Guyer and Norbert, released in September 2011 on DVD and Blu-Ray formats.

The Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble

Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff

Levon Eskenian

Emmanuel Hovhannisyan: duduk

Avag Margaryan: blul

Armen Ayvazyan: kamancha

Aram Nikoghosyan: oud

Meri Vardanyan: kanon

Vladimir Papikyan: santur

Davit Avagyan: tar

Mesrop khalatyan: dap

Armen Yeganyan: saz

Reza Nesimi: tombak

Harutyun Chkolyan: duduk

Tigran Karapetyan: duduk

Artur Atoyan: dum duduk

Levon Eskenian: director

U.S. Release date: October 18, 2011

ECM CD: B0015991-02

UPC: 6025 277 1913 9

“What appeals most to me in Levon Eskenian's instrumentation is the extremely meticulous, clear cut work approach without unnecessary ‘composing’ and ‘cleverness’ – when in the wilderness of silence the tiniest intervention is done with sound, which is very characteristic of Gurdjieff's works. There is deep silence at the core of Gurdjieff’s music that relates us to the Ecclesiastes chapter of the Bible, or to the truth told of deep silences from faraway lands, a stillness that has not been darkened at all, and has the degree of density that leaves the Gurdjieffian silence immaculate.” Tigran Mansurian

ECM has had a long involvement with Gurdieff’s compositions, starting with Keith Jarrett’s recording in 1980 of the Sacred Hymns, which brought about an international revival of interest in the music. Now this fascinating project by Levon Eskenian and his ensemble returns the Gurdjieff music to its inspirational sources.

To date Gurdjieff’s compositions have been studied, in the West, largely via the piano transcriptions of his gifted amanuensis, the Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann. Now, however, Levon Eskenian goes beyond the printed notes to look at the musical traditions that Gurdjieff encountered during his travels, and rearranges the compositions from this perspective. This revelatory recording gives the listener the experience of hearing Gurdjieff in full color and in close-up, as it were Gurdjieff from the source, rather than filtered through western classical interpretation, Gurdjieff with the instruments of the East. Eskenian draws attention to the roots of the pieces in folk and spiritual music, aided by Armenia’s leading practitioners of traditional music, with whom he founded the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble in 2008.

G. I. Gurdjieff, philosopher, spiritual leader, author and composer, was born in Armenia, but his work and particularly his music is just being rediscovered there. Performances of his music, considered a double threat because of its progressive and religious implications, were discouraged during the Soviet years.

Levon Eskenian turned his attention to Gurdjieff while studying at Yerevan’s Komitas Consevatory. An encounter with ECM’s Chants, Hymns and Dances recording – the 2003 album with new Gurdjieff arrangements by Anja Lechner and Vassilis Tsabropoulos – also prompted him to think deeply about Gurdjieff’s sources, as he recognized a number of the tunes as clearly related to folk songs or sacred songs of the region, to songs he’d known since childhood. Eskenian’s liner notes to the present recording trace each of the pieces to specific geographical points of origin and/or inspiration:

“Taking many facts into consideration, and seeking an objective understanding of Gurdjieff’s music, I found it necessary to choose from Gurdjieff’s repertoire pieces that have roots in Armenian, Greek, Arabic, Kurdish, Assyrian and Caucasian folk and spiritual music, and through a study of the instrumentation and performance practices of the musical traditions of the region, I have aimed to create ‘ethnographically authentic’ arrangements of Gurdjieff’s music for Eastern Instruments.“

The logical consequence of this work was the founding of the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble in 2008. The group gave its first concerts in Gyumri (Alexandropol), Gurdjieff’s birthplace, and recorded its debut album in Yerevan in the winter of 2008. The recording was mastered by ECM in Munich in 2011.

[GA Russell]

ECM released two new new by Jarrett and Rava earlier this month that I'm looking forward to hearing. Has anyone heard these yet?

Here are the press releases they sent me.

ECM

Keith Jarrett

Rio

Keith Jarrett: piano

U.S. Release date: November 8, 2011

ECM 2-CD set: B0016119-02

UPC: 6025 277 6645 4

Almost exactly forty years ago, Keith Jarrett’s association with ECM began with the recording of a solo piano album. Facing You (1971) was soon followed by the initiation of the solo concerts, evenings of piano improvisations, documented now on a range of influential live recordings which include Solo Concerts (Bremen-Lausanne), The Köln Concert, Sun Bear Concerts, Concerts (Bregenz-München), Dark Intervals, Paris Concert, Vienna Concert, La Scala, Radiance, The Carnegie Hall Concert and Testament, Paris-London. The span of music addressed on these albums is vast, but they share a common genesis in improvisation, as well as a most remarkable artistic consistency. If it is no longer uncommon for improvisers to fill an evening’s music-making alone, Jarrett remains unrivalled in his capacity to uncover new forms in the moment: the concept of ‘spontaneous composition’ is more than an ideal here.

The latest in the series of ongoing solo concert recordings is Rio. Jarrett had played Brazil only once before, more than two decades ago, and said, before his South American concerts, that he felt he had “unfinished business” there: “I really had no idea what I meant, but this concert is it. Everything I played in Rio was improvised, and there is no way that I could have gotten to this particular musical place a second time, or in a different country: not even in a different hall or with a different audience, or on a different night.”

Rio documents the entire spontaneous concert at the Theatro Municipal, Rio de Janeiro on April 11, 2011. The music that emerges has an intensely lyrical core, reflected in the fifteen short pieces that make up the concert. There is an intimate quality, too, which draws the listener toward it, from the first moments. Jarrett feels the concert was one of his best: “jazzy, serious, sweet, playful, warm, economical, energetic, passionate, and connected with the Brazilian culture in a unique way. The sound in the hall was excellent and so was the enthusiastic audience.”

The Rio concert was the second show in a short South American tour which also included performances in Sao Paolo and Buenos Aires. Jarrett has always rationed his solo appearances; there have been just seven so far in 2011.

*****

ECM

Enrico Rava Quintet

Tribe

Enrico Rava trumpet

Gianluca Petrella trombone

Giovanni Guidi piano

Gabriele Evangelista double-bass

Fabrizio Sferra drums

w/ Giacomo Ancillotto guitar

U.S. Release date: November 1, 2011

ECM CD: B0015932-02

UPC: 6025 276 6970 0

Enrico Rava Quintet / Winter 2012 Tour

February 17 San Francisco, CA SFJAZZ - Herbst Theater

February 18 Portland, OR PDXJAZZ- Winningstad Theatre

February 21-25 New-York, NY Birdland

February 26 Buffalo, NY Albright-Knox Gallery

Since his return to ECM in 2003, Enrico Rava, grand master of Italian jazz, has made a number of recordings exceptional by any standards, with groups both national and international. Tribe belongs to the former category and follows Easy Living, The Words and the Days, and The Third Man. As England’s Jazzwise magazine wrote of The Words and the Days: “Enrico Rava, one of the most charismatic of jazz musicians, has truly hit a purple patch in his career – he’s got a great band, he’s with the best label in the world and he’s making the finest music of a long, distinguished career.”

Rava is indeed playing at a peak of lyrical invention, and his newest quintet, with Gianluca Petrella retained from the Words line-up, is amongst his strongest yet. Voted Rising Star Trombonist in the Down Beat Critics Poll of a few years back, Petrella has a front-line relationship with Rava which recalls Enrico’s affinity with Roswell Rudd back in the heyday of the New Thing. Fast-moving, quick-witted exchanges abound, as the two of them delight in the whole history of jazz. Reviewing The Words And The Days, Down Beat said “The album’s core sound rests with the two-horn lead: Rava and trombonist Gianluca Petrella. They’re a marvellous pair.” Meanwhile, the range of unique voices in the Rava group is expanding.

Enrico has always encouraged younger musicians, and pianist Giovanni Guidi (born 1985) is another real find, a player of great energy and imagination, also capable of an almost Bley-like sensitivity in his approach to ballads. “When I notice the gifts of a young musician, I immediately involve him in my groups. This is not motivated by altruism,” Rava insists. “I simply love playing with young musicians. As I continue to develop, I need to be surprised, and Giovanni Guidi is like Bollani and Petrella: he astounds me every time.”

Bassist Gabriele Evangelista (b. 1988), another young player of promise, works splendidly alongside widely-experienced drummer Fabrizio Sferra, whose resumé includes work with Chet Baker, Paul Bley and Kenny Wheeler. The quintet is augmented on several tracks by guitarist Giacomo Ancillotto, an up-and-coming player best known in Italy for his work with the Quartet.

Recorded at Arte Suono Studio in Udine in October 2010, with Manfred Eicher producing, Tribe encompasses both new compositions and tunes penned over a thirty year period.

“F. Express”, for instance, is a piece that goes back to the 1970s: Enrico introduced it in his Italian quartet with Franco D’Andrea, and then recorded it for the ECM album Opening Night in 1981. “Cornetteology”, meanwhile, celebrating Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry while also referencing Charlie Parker’s ”Ornithology”, was previously heard on Tati, Rava’s 2004 ECM recording with Stefano Bollani and Paul Motian. Enrico also transforms pieces documented elsewhere, like“Amnesia” and “Garbage Can Blues” first heard on Noir (Label Bleu) and “Planet Earth”, originally recorded on Secrets (Soul Note): like the melodies of many of his heroes in jazz, Rava’s themes give the soloists the information they need to make the music new.

The quintet continues to tour actively. In November, major appearances include the Enjoy Jazz Festival in Mannheim, Germany, and 2012 dates already in place include a USA tour in February and a special performance in Lisbon as part of a new series of ECM events.

In Italy, Rava recently published his autobiography “Incontri con musicisti straordinari. La storia del mio jazz” (Encounters with extraordinary musicians. The story of my jazz), which recounts his adventures with a wide range of international musicians including Steve Lacy, Carla Bley, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri and many others, and charts the development of his own work, up to and including the recording of Tribe.

Further biographical information and tour details at www.enricorava.com. Forthcoming concert details also at www.ecmrecords.com.

[David Ayers]

Those are like ancient man.

Here's what's upcoming:

PS it would be great if you could edit down those press releases a little...

[GA Russell]

I'm so sorry my posts don't meet your high expectations, David!

[David Ayers]

When you can snatch the pebble from my hand...

Like the look of the NEW new releases?

[Chuck Nessa]

When you can snatch the pebble from my hand...

Like the look of the NEW new releases?

Manfred seems to be in a dark place.