ECM Records

German producer Manfred Eicher opened his own music label ECM Records in 1969 in Munich. The first album was Mel Waldron's album, Free at last . For ten years, the main artists of the label were Keith Jarrett , Teri Ripdal , Gary Burton , Arild Andersen , Gary Peacock , Dave Holland and others. Many of them remained loyal to the company and subsequently, releasing releases only or mainly on ECM Records.

In 1984, in The ECM New Series, the label began releasing records of academic contemporary musicians ( John Cage , Elliott Carter , Steve Reich ^[5] , John Coolidge Adams , Harald Weiss ) and the past ( Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina , Carlo Jesuldo , Thomas Tallis ). The basis for the launch of the series was the work of Tabula Rasa Arvo Pärt , who has since become a permanent resident of the label ^[6] . In the following years, the company published CDs of other contemporary composers, whose work in one way or another intersects with musical minimalism : Meredith Monk , Gia Kancheli , Valentina Silvestrova . In the same series, some soundtracks for the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Theo Angelopoulos were released (in particular, the label works closely with the permanent composer of the films Angelopoulos Eleni Karaindru ). At the same time, the label does not share academic and jazz trends, which is confirmed by the recordings of works by classical composers performed by jazz musicians: Keith Jarrett , John Serman , Jan Garbarek and others.

In 2002 and 2004, the company released a series of collections of the best works of the permanent artists of the label under the title : rarum . So, the compilations of the following musicians saw the light: Keith Jarrett , Ian Garbarek , Chick Koria , Gary Burton , Bill Frisell , Art Ensemble of Chicago , Teri Ripdal , John Serman , Bobo Stenson , Pat Matini , Dave Holland , Egberto Gismonti , Jack De John Abercrombie , Carla Bley , Paul Motian , Tomasz Shtanko , Eberhard Weber , Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen .

In 2012, an exhibition dedicated to ECM, A Cultural Archeology, was held at the Munich House of Art . It served as the beginning for a series of concerts by artists of the label, as well as a series of film screenings of the work of directors related to ECM or simply close in spirit to them - Jean-Luc Godard , Theo Angelopoulos , Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman . The exhibition was also shown in Seoul .

Since its founding, Manfred Eicher, the label’s label, has not only solved administrative tasks, but also acted as a producer and helped musicians find their own style. The emphasis was not only on the technique and manner of performing artists, much attention was paid to studio work, which attracted talented sound engineers. So, more than seven hundred records were recorded in Oslo with the participation of Jan-Eric Conshaug ^[7] .

A typical program for recording an album on ECM is two days in the studio, one day for mixing.

ECM Records was repeatedly recognized as the best label of the year: according to Down Beat magazine (1980, 2008-2010, 2012-2015), according to the Association of Jazz Journalists (2007, 2012-2014), according to the MIDEM festival (2005 and 2007), JazzWeek magazines (2011) and JazzTimes (2013) ^[8] .

The label has repeatedly released soundtracks for films by famous filmmakers. The founder of the company is not only a film enthusiast, he also acted as the director, along with Hanz Butler, of the film “Holocene”, based on the novel by Max Frisch “Man appears in the Holocene era”.

A fruitful creative union has developed between Manfred Eicher and Godard , whose soundtracks for films have traditionally been released on the ECM, moreover, Eicher himself has acted several times as the musical director of films by the French author, as well as such directors as Xavier Koller, Christian Fry and Sandra Nettelbek.

No less close relations connect the company and the Greek composer Eleni Karaindra , the author of music to a significant part of Theo Angelopoulos films. On the label, musical compositions for the films: “The Look of Ulysses ”, “ Eternity and One Day ”, “ Dust of Time ” were published. Actor Bruno Ganz , who starred in Angelopoulos, recorded on ECM Records two records with poems by Friedrich Hölderlin , poems by Thomas Eliot and Jorgos Seferis .

In addition, at different times, ECM Records released CDs dedicated to outstanding directors: Re: Pasolini, Italian pianist Stefano Bataglia (in memory of Pier Paolo Pazolini ); trumpeter Tomasz Shtanko recorded the album Matka Joanna , as a tribute to Jerzy Kavalerovich , he dedicated yet another work to the Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda ; saxophonist Louis Sklavis published his works for the film by Charles Vanel ; Ketil Björnstad wrote La Notte under the influence of films by Michelangelo Antonioni , and in 2014 John Abercrombie recorded a disc that contains allusions to Alfred Hitchcock's films ; French pianist Francois Couturier, Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek , composers Arvo Pärt and Stefan Kovacs Tikmeyer dedicated their albums to Andrei Tarkovsky .

A certain connection with the cinema can be traced in the art material. So, the booklet of one of the albums of the Hilliard Ensemble , released on ECM, contains photographs from films by Ingmar Bergman .

Documentary filmmakers have also repeatedly addressed the topic of creating and developing a label. In 1986, a 60-minute tape about the history of the company and its artists was shot by Jan Horn, and in 2010, Peter Geier and Norbert Weidmer. In 2014, a documentary was released about the life and work of American jazzman, ECM artist Charles Lloyd.

Over the years, ECM has produced video discs with concerts of concerts by Eleni Caraindra , Mark Sinan, Keith Jarrett and Standard Trio

Records of many Russian musicians, as well as immigrants from the USSR, for example, Arvo Pärt from Estonia, Gidon Kremer from Latvia and Valentin Silvestrov from Ukraine, were released under the ECM brand.

List of Russian label musicians:

• pianist Alexey Lyubimov
• pianist Valery Afanasyev
• multi-instrumentalist Arkady Shilkloper
• cellist Mstislav Rostropovich
• composer Sofia Gubaidulina
• composer Boris Joffe
• Katrina Krimsky - American pianist of Russian origin

In addition, the soundtrack for the film " Return " by Andrei Zvyagintsev was published at ECM

• ECM Records Album List

• Journal Hall: Mikhail Butov's CD Review
• Manfred Eicher: “What could be more mysterious than clarity”
• Browse ECM Artist Albums