ECM Records

ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) is an independent record label founded by Karl Egger, Manfred Eicher and Manfred Scheffner in Munich in 1969. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres. ECM's motto is "the most beautiful sound next to silence", taken from a 1971 review of ECM releases in Coda, a Canadian jazz magazine.

ECM has been distributed in the U.S. by Warner Bros. Records, PolyGram Records, BMG, and, since 1999, Universal Music, the successor of PolyGram, worldwide. Its album covers were profiled in two books: Sleeves of Desire and Windfall Light, both published by Lars Müller.

The first ECM release produced by Manfred Scheffner was pianist Mal Waldron's 1969 recording Free at Last. The label went on to release recordings by many prominent jazz musicians, including Paul Bley, Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Pat Metheny, Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Charlie Haden, John Abercrombie, Dave Liebman, Eberhard Weber, Egberto Gismonti, Dave Holland, Terje Rypdal, Stefano Bollani and Ralph Towner. The label has also released recordings in the world music genre by artists including Steve Tibbetts, Stephan Micus, Codona, Anouar Brahem, L. Shankar, Jon Hassell, and Naná Vasconcelos.

Manfred Eicher continues to take an active interest in the music released by ECM, acting as producer of the vast majority of its recordings, although Steve Lake, Thomas Stoewsand, Robert Hurwitz, Lee Townsend, Hans Wendl and Sun Chung have also produced discs for the label. The typical ECM session is just three days: two days to record, one day to mix. Many of the albums have been recorded with Jan Erik Kongshaug (of Talent Studios and later Rainbow Studios) in Oslo, Norway, as sound engineer; other engineers have included Martin Wieland (who recorded Jarrett's "The Köln Concert"), James Farber, Stefano Amerio and, on classical recordings, Peter Laenger.

The ECM New Series was created in 1984 to document Western classical works. It has released works by composers from the early (Thomas Tallis, Carlo Gesualdo, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina) to the contemporary (John Cage, Elliott Carter, Steve Reich and John Adams). The series was initiated for Arvo Pärt's record debut Tabula Rasa, which Eicher recorded and produced in 1977, 1983, and 1984. Since then Pärt and Eicher have built a strong relationship: all works premiere on recordings for the label and all are done in presence of the composer. Keith Jarrett, better known as a jazz musician, contributed together with Gidon Kremer amongst others to Tabula Rasa. He later recorded several classical works by Bach, Mozart, Shostakovich, and others for the series.

The three albums Music for 18 Musicians, Octet/Music for a Large Ensemble/Violin Phase, and Tehillim by Reich were recorded before 1984 (all with the composer performing) and were later moved to the classical department together with some by Meredith Monk, Thomas Demenga and Harald Weiss. Several of John Adams' works from his minimalist period have been released through the label as well, including Harmonium and Harmonielehre.

Over the years, many other works by contemporary composers such as Valentyn Sylvestrov, Tigran Mansurian, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Heinz Holliger, Giya Kancheli, György Kurtág, or Heiner Goebbels as well as the soundtracks of several works by the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard have been issued on the ECM New Series label. Interpreters who released records in classical genres include Kim Kashkashian, András Schiff, Gidon Kremer, the Hilliard Ensemble, Thomas Zehetmair, Carolin Widmann, Till Fellner, Herbert Henck, Alexei Lubimov, András Keller, Miklós Perényi, John Holloway, John Potter or most recently Patricia Kopatchinskaja.

On many releases, the orientations towards jazz and classical music of ECM are combined: For example, Garbarek's Officium (1994) features him playing saxophone solos over the Hilliard Ensemble singing Gregorian chant, early polyphony and Renaissance works. Garbarek's work with guitarist Ralph Towner continued, and has been influenced by 20th century chamber music as much as by jazz-oriented material. John Potter, formerly of the Hilliard Ensemble, recorded works by John Dowland with jazz saxophonist John Surman and others, and Surman's Proverbs and Songs is a suite of choral settings of Old Testament texts, recorded in Salisbury Cathedral. The label has also released unique works that fit into no obvious genre at all (like the records of composer Meredith Monk).