The best of the ECM label


There is so much really good and well recorded music on the ECM label, but a lot is downright strange. Many of the artists are not well known and the music, new compositions, both the jazz and new label ECM, or classical. It is very hard to gauge what is worth a purchase, because of this.

I do find it interesting, that you can listen to the classical and more avant garde classical material and not find it easy to distinguish the two. Any choice is going to be highly personal, but some suggestions would be helpful.

To start, my personal favourite is
Khmer by Nils Petter Molvaer
david12
Not sure we share the same opinion as to what avant garde classical is but I thought I would share an odd ECM story from this last week, Albert Porter was kind enough to give me one of the few ECM discs that he did not care for-Gismonti's "Danca des Cabecas" and one of the sides is not Gismonti, in fact it is a single track of solo piano, Keith Jarrett maybe. I have been handling vinyl intensively since the early 80's and have only come across such an oddity a few times.

None mentioned Nils Petter Molvaer around ECM since 1997

The members of his band are also unique and creative musicians such as Eivind Aarset.

Eivind Aarset often in my mind correlates to another similar yet also unique guitarist that had his ECM years which is Bill Frisell. Both of them aren't major ECM artists unlike Gismonti or Jarrett, but definitely worth the elite label of world's most creative musicians.