With Nothern Song, Steve Tibbetts made his ECM debut and introduced listeners to what remains one of the label’s most enchanting, if slowly unfolding, maps. The cover seems to tell us everything: silhouettes of islands superimposed on the journey that takes us to them, as if the dream of arrival were potent enough to burn itself across the rearview mirror of our lives. Tibbetts leaves a trail of quiet footprints easily obscured by “The Big Wind,” yet whose direction is not so easily forgotten. With circumpolar affinity and a sensitivity that is for all intents historical, Tibbetts traces the borders of our lives in “Form.” His shimmering guitar finds spirit in Marc Anderson’s verdant whispers. “Walking” continues in very much the same vein, only this time with a more pronounced wash of 12-string steel that eventually lifts us into an “Aerial View.”

More than just another Christmas album from Chicago, "Chicago Christmas" exceeds expectations especially when you consider recent personnel changes and the fact that this has all been done before. This time the songs are mostly originals with only two standards and one interesting cover of Bacharach/David's "What The World Needs Now"…

Vibraphonist-composer Tom van der Geld’s ECM initiation came by way of the JAPO sister label when, in 1976, the self-titled Children At Play introduced listeners to an album of uncompromising originality. Recorded in 1973, the same year of van der Geld’s permanent relocation to Germany (where the band’s reedman, Roger Jannotta, and drummer, Bill Elgart, would also find new homes), it’s a formative release not only for being Children At Play’s first, but also for sharing its uniquely sunlit sound with the world at large. Tropical and sweet, the album is a sparkling endeavor that favors the lived reality of jazz over its descriptive pitfalls. Patience (1978) was van der Geld’s first dip into ECM proper and stands out for its bright geography. This time, however, the tectonic plates shift more abstractly below with the heat of friction.

The 2xCD version is a definitive collection of most of the best songs from the first 30 years of Thunder, from Backstreet Symphony to Please Remain Seated, and contains at least 1 song from each of the band's 12 studio albums released to date. We've nicknamed it All Killer, No Filler, because it is.

On various tracks, Jon Hendricks' first album as a leader, released in 1959, features such major sidemen as altoist Pony Poindexter, guitarist Wes Montgomery, and both Nat and Cannonball Adderley. Hendricks - who was riding high in Lambert, Hendricks & Ross at the time - is in superb form on such numbers as "I'm Gonna Shout (Everything Started in the House of the Lord)," a couple of songs that Hendricks had written for Louis Jordan, Randy Weston's "Pretty Strange," "Social Call," and the jubilant "A Good Git-Together."

A composer of mainly instrumental music, with an emotionally driven style that crosses the genres of Easy Listening and Chillout with elements of Ambient, Lounge, Jazz, Blues, light Classical and Rock. Simplicity and emotion are his driving forces - if there is no passion, there is no music.

As yet to provide choice “vibes” for Kenny Wheeler’s around 6, in addition to his elusive but well-worth-owning Path, mallet man Tom van der Geld made his ECM debut with this, his second of three “Children At Play” recordings. Less specific than his later work with the group, which was perhaps never meant to be a stable collective/concept in the first place, Patience may require just that. That being said, the abstractions of the opening title track have a charm all their own, seeming to inhabit that blurry space between fading night and the coming dawn. This diurnal circle unrolls into a relatively straight line in the flute of multi-instrumentalist Roger Jannotta through the vibes’ infrared lobs.