ECM Records
ECM Records ( for Edition of Contemporary Music ) in 1969 a Munich based record label. It is true in some areas of contemporary jazz and contemporary classical music as a leader and has published more than 1200 albums (up to 2013). ECM has always remained independent, the distribution is, however, country-specific processed through distribution partners - for example, in Germany, France, Japan, Canada and the United States by the United Group Universal Music Group.
ECM was founded by Manfred Eicher, Initiator and financier was Karl Egger, who is the managing director of the company to this day for a long time and put the premises in Munich's Pasing available. Eicher is since the founding producer and manager of ECM. Today the label in Graefelfing is established.
History
The first production was the album Free at Last by pianist Mal Waldron. It was followed by the production of a collective Just Music to Alfred Harth, a purchased license as a trio album Paul Bley with Gary Peacock and Afternoon of a Faun Georgia of the ensemble of Marion Brown, in which, inter alia, Anthony Braxton and Chick Corea and Bennie Maupin, Jeanne Lee and Andrew Cyrille played.
ECM brought in January 1970 Waldron's Free At Last in a first edition of 500 copies on the market. Thanks to the enthusiasm for Waldron in Japan followed by the end of two more pressings. ECM is thus successful in business. Eicher produced after Electroacoustic Music of the Music Improvisation Company to Derek Bailey, Hugh Davies, Evan Parker and percussionist Jamie Muir, a plate of Wolfgang Dauner Trio (output) and Robin Kenyatta Girl from Martinique. For recordings with Jan Garbarek, he went to Oslo, where he met the sound engineer Jan Erik Haug Kong. He let the bassist Barre Phillips and Dave Holland meet in the studio, with Bobo Stenson and the band of Terje Rypdal as well as on the Chick Corea Trio ( with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul ). Eicher 1971 bought the rights to broadcast a recording of a concert in Paris, in which the resultant of this trio with Anthony Braxton Quartet of his Creative Music facing music presented (the first double album of ECM).
The label initially focused on avant-garde jazz and European free form. Starting in 1972, then came increasingly added productions of American jazz musicians who no longer felt right because of the rock music trends supervised by the major record companies.
In November 1971 Eicher went for the first time with Keith Jarrett into the studio to record the solo album Facing You. It was followed by the production großorchestrale In the Light and first managed by ECM solo tour of Keith Jarrett. In 1974, the ECM triple album Solo Concerts Bremen / Lausanne out with two of the first freely improvised solo concerts Jarrett that emerged during this tour. A year later, the label released from the same artist The Köln Concert, the most successful and best-selling piano concert of our time.
Since 1984, ECM released under the title ECM New Series classical music. It is dedicated to both the ECM re-recording of early music ( eg Thomas Tallis ) and the first recording of contemporary composers (for example, by Arvo Pärt, whose Tabula Rasa put the beginning of this sub-label, or by György Kurtág ).
With the sales Universal Music ECM has extended its long -standing close cooperation in 2011 contracted the long term.
Program
Some ECM productions combine jazz and classical music, especially the groundbreaking album Officium 1994, which commenced Jan Garbarek together with the Hilliard Ensemble. For singing of the ensemble from the 13th to 16th centuries designed Garbarek sax solos. Other productions combine within the meaning of ethno-jazz, non-European musical cultures with the jazz idiom, for example, numerous albums of the Tunisian composer and oud virtuoso Anouar Brahem.
As a trademark of ECM is especially true of the outstanding sound standard of his recordings for which is responsible for most productions Jan Erik Haug Kong as a sound engineer. Eicher was able to achieve with the musicians and engineers his own musical ideas.
Important for the appearance of the label is also the striking cover design. For the cover first graphic designer Barbara Wojirsch was responsible. In the 1980s, it was followed by Dieter Rehm with a very similar approach.
ECM also distributes the albums of the label WATT with music by Carla Bley, Michael Mantler, Karen Mantler and Steve Swallow and Brazilian label Egberto Gismonti CARMO. Furthermore, it was sold through the ECM label JAPO, appeared on the albums by Mal Waldron Abdullah Ibrahim, Herbert Joos, Manfred Schoof, Urs Leimgruber and others.
Numerous filmmakers such as Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider) or Theo Angelopoulos (Landscape in the Mist) fall back on the music label ECM. Since 1991, a particularly intense collaboration with Jean- Luc Godard.
Special Projects
In 1996, ECM out a book with the title Sleeves of Desire, which dealt with the history of the cover art of the label and all previously published designs auflistete. The book was published in 2009, the wind, the light. ECM and the picture continues to deepen this subject; It contains pictures of the cover and lyrics by Thomas Steinfeld, Geoff Andrew, Catherine Epprecht, Ketil Bjørnstad and publisher Lars Müller.
The book Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM contains an extensive, compiled by Steve Lake and Paul Griffiths history of the label, for which about 20 authors, including Manfred Eicher itself, contributed posts. Is supplemented the book with statements on the label of over 100 musicians, groups, and associated with ECM artists such as director Jean -Luc Godard and the cover designer Dieter Rehm.
Nils Petter Molvaer released his debut album Khmer, a work that went into new territory with popular electronica elements, two CD singles and a video - this was initially a one-off experiment of ECM. In autumn 2009, ECM released DVDs of movies: In addition to the realized Eicher film Holocene by Max Frisch also a DVD of four short films by Godard, which produced this between 1993 and 2002 appeared.