ECM

Thanks to its insistence on clarity of expression — as well as clarity of sound — the German label ECM Records has, since 1969, helped shape the way we listen to jazz and contemporary classical music.
- Giovanni Russonello, New York Times

The independent record label ECM – Edition of Contemporary Music – was founded by producer Manfred Eicher in 1969, and to date has issued more than 1700 albums spanning many idioms.

The special qualities of what began as a small cultural enterprise were soon recognised. In 1972, in its first article on ECM, Der Spiegel ran a report on a twenty-nine-year-old producer in Munich who was increasingly of interest to high-profile musicians in the United States. According to Der Spiegel, this was because ECM was now releasing the ‘best jazz recordings’ – ‘the gold standard for sound, presence and pressing’. At that point, the Munich label had only been in existence for two-and-a-half years. Manfred Eicher, born in Lindau, Germany, had studied double bass in Berlin. Having soon discovered his love for the music of artists such as Bill Evans, Paul Bley, Miles Davis and his bassist Paul Chambers, he became intensely preoccupied with jazz. As a production assistant at Deutsche Grammophon he had learnt what it was to strive for the highest standards in recordings of classical music. And he now started to record improvised music with the same precision and focus. 

Almost as a statement of intent, the first title issued by the new label was “Free at Last”, by the US pianist Mal Waldron. Pioneering recordings of artists such as Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Chick Corea, Paul Bley, Gary Burton, Egberto Gismonti, Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette and the Art Ensemble of Chicago established ECM’s reputation as a label to be reckoned with. By the late 1970s names such as Meredith Monk and Steve Reich regularly appeared in the ECM catalogue, and in 1984 the company introduced its New Series, dedicated to notated music. Launched to present the music of Arvo Pärt with “Tabula Rasa”, the New Series now ranges all the way from organa composed by Pérotin in Paris in 1200 through to contemporary composition. 

Pärt, and subsequently Giya Kancheli, Valentin Silvestrov and Tigran Mansurian, was introduced to new audiences in the West by ECM’s New Series; for many years now György Kurtág and Heinz Holliger have released important works on the Munich label. Artists such as the Hilliard Ensemble, Kim Kashkashian, Gidon Kremer, Anja Lechner, the Danish String Quartet, Thomas Zehetmair and András Schiff have presented listeners with outstanding performances of core classical repertoire but have also introduced them to exciting new discoveries. Both series – ECM and ECM New Series – have emphasised multi-genre or transcultural projects – from recordings by the improvising trio Codona - with Don Cherry, Collin Walcott and Nana Vasconcelos – to “ Officium”, which brought Jan Garbarek and the Hilliards together, and François Couturier’s Tarkovsky Quartet.

While the form and constancy of notated music have also found their way into improvisation, inspired interpretations of existing compositions convey a tangible sense of risk, spontaneity and improvisatory freedom. The British music critic and writer Paul Griffiths aptly pinpointed the unique status of ECM, describing it as ‘almost a musical genre in its own right – a genre with blurred boundaries but a definite centre, in some place where music is prized wherever it comes from, some time when nothing has yet quite happened finally, when even a recording – seemingly the end of the process – can show its value in opening a question, or more than one.’

From early on the model of a literary publishing house was an inspiration for the label. Many of the musicians who recorded their debut albums with ECM in their mid-twenties have kept faith with the label ever since. As Manfred Eicher once said in an interview, ‘Our work is based on the notion of permanence.’ In addition Eicher feels that ‘it is important that relationships also develop between the company’s artists; that’s good for their creative work’. As a record producer, he is a partner in the artistic process, involved in everything from the choice of recording venue to the musical shaping of the album to the cover design for the finished product. And on the subject of cover designs: ECM record sleeves, much admired and much imitated, have made design history, and the Swiss publisher Lars Müller Verlag has devoted two books to ECM’s cover art. 

ECM recordings are often described as having a transparent sound that is rich in overtones. But there is no one-size-fits-all ‘ECM sound’. Each recording is attuned to the sound of the players and singers, not vice versa. ‘Of course we take every possible care with the technology’, as Manfred Eicher has said, ‘But the deciding factor is always the music and the aesthetic ideas that go with it. That is what gives the sound its characteristics. The vessel is always shaped to fit its contents.’