It all began during a snowy Christmas in 1999: saxophonist Jonas Knutsson met up for the first time with guitarist Johan Norberg to do some spontaneous recording sessions at Norberg’s flat, and got carried away during several hours of playing. They reached such a level of mutual understanding that the recordings were passed between friends of the two Swedish musicians for the next few years. Then Knutsson and Norberg listened again to the recordings - and decided to go to a proper studio. The result is a CD which both moves between and merges jazz and Swedish folk elements: "Norrland". The nature of the deep understanding between two musicians: thus "Norrland" can be described. Knutsson and Norberg cultivate the fine shadings, and a sensitive dialogue. They create floating, but in some ways plausible, sounds: tender, but never harmless musical images of the landscape…

A fresh and open music, delicate and space-conscious, is shaped as drummer Thomas Strønen and Ayumi Tanaka, previously heard in the ensemble Time Is A Blind Guide on Lucus, resurface in a new trio with clarinettist/singer/percussionist Marthe Lea. The group first came together at Oslo’s Royal Academy of Music, where for two years the players would meet each week for exploratory music making. Strønen: “We always played freely- drifting between elements of contemporary classical music, folk music, jazz, whatever we were inspired by. Sometimes the music was very quiet and minimalistic: playing together generated some special experiences.” The spontaneous spirit of the music is reflected in the trio’s debut recording, which was made at the Lugano radio studio and produced by Manfred Eicher. With the exception of the title piece, based on a traditional Norwegian tune, the music on Bayou was collectively created in the moment.

The second ECM album from this Polish-Swedish-British edition of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet follows the critically-heralded Matka Joanna. As Jazz Journal wrote, 'Trumpeter Stanko's vibrant breadth of tone and poetic feeling for cross-rhythmic drama are second to none.' Leosia marks a further progression, incorporating six first-rate Stanko compositions in his brooding 'Slavic' style, darker than the darkest Miles (and incorporating a tribute to Lautréamont, literature's Count of Darkness), as well as bracing and exploratory duo and trio improvisations, and solos of the higherst calibre by all concerned. The group has an unusual claim on idiomatic completeness; it seems to summarize, in highly original manner, many of the important developments of jazz of the last 30 years…

Recorded live at the Paris Olympia, Live in Paris offers listeners Diana Krall's understanding of the musical techniques of composition, piano, and vocal improvisation on 12 songs from the Great American Songbooks of Cole Porter,Harold Arlen, George and Ira Gershwin, and contemporary artists Joni Mitchell and Billy Joel. Accompanied by the award-winning Anthony Wilson on guitar, John Pisano on acoustic guitar, John Clayton on bass, Jeff Hamilton on drums, and Paulinho Da Costa on percussion as well as the Orchestra Symphonies European on "Let's Fall in Love" and "I've Got You Under My Skin," the lovely vocalist heightens your listening pleasures with distinctive phrasings and tangible pathways to inside the creative imagination by getting inside harmony, the changes, and melodic structures…

In the '70s, pianist Richard Beirach pioneered a distinctive type of ethereal jazz, characterized by lush, polytonal harmonies and frequent outbursts of angular, high-velocity lines that broke up the austere moods of his compositions. This beautiful trio outing with bassist George Mraz and drummer Jack DeJohnette is classic Beirach, and as apt an example of the "ECM sound" as one will find. The piano reverberates in concert hall fashion, even as the bass and drums interact with a looseness, and often an explosiveness, that is anything but cold and removed. There are only five tracks on Elm, but because each presents a different aspect of Beirach's music, the album is satisfying and quite whole. The opener, "Sea Priestess," presents deceptively simple harmonies over a lilting even-eighth groove…

Featuring recordings from both Pat Metheny's solo albums and Pat Metheny Group releases, Works is an excellent introduction to the artist who helped make ECM Records a successful "boutique" record label. This collection includes seven excellent recordings originally released in the late '70s and early '80s. Works features Metheny's partner, keyboardist extraordinaire Lyle Mays, on four tracks. Metheny and Mays are truly musical soul mates - rarely do two musicians complement each other as well as they do. "It's for You," penned by the duo, is one of the most moving instrumental compositions ever recorded – Metheny wastes no notes during the soaring guitar solo on this beautiful recording. In fact, every track on Works is stunning.

Mixing up his pitches just to keep his fans off balance as always, Metheny returns to the strict jazz-guitar trio format for the first time in a decade, in league with a couple of combative, unintimidated partners. At the age of 45, Metheny leaves no doubt that he has become a masterful jazz player, thoroughly at home with even the most convoluted bebop licks ("What Do You Want?") yet still as open as ever to ideas outside the narrow mainstream, as illustrated in the country-western-tinged phrasing on "The Sun in Montreal." Bassist Larry Grenadier propels his own voice prominently into the texture, even when walking the fours, and drummer Bill Stewart does not hesitate to go against the grain of Metheny's ideas…

On this basic piano trio CD, Eric Reed is quite assertive on many different levels. His piano playing is maturing, growing stronger and deeper, stripping himself of clichés and past influences. He's chosen to take established songs and standards and modify them to his liking. A fine rhythm section of bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Gregory Hutchinson moves the music forward, and, as you might expect, the songs are based on his New York, New York experience. You'd be hard pressed, upon hearing his take of the old Harpers Bizarre Merseybeat Top 40 hit "59th St. Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" to recognize it from the original. Reed has re-harmonized it beautifully into a modern jazz vehicle for his own melodic trappings…

Live in New York 1.24.04 is the second recording, and first live recording, by Nicholas Payton's electric jazz band Sonic Trance. It was recorded live at the 2004 International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) conference in New York City. The recording originally circulated as a bootleg, but became so popular that Payton authorized a limited release by Kufala Recordings, a label that specializes in authorized live recordings.

This is already the third album of the working band BLAER, founded in 2012 by the composer and pianist Maja Nydegger. YELLOW is the result of a longstanding and diligent collaboration. The band concept sets on a balanced group sound and a calm, focussed flow of music.

Harry Lime, the charming but dastardly anti-hero in the classic 1949 film noir The Third Man, famously dissed Switzerland saying "they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." The renegade Swiss quintet Le Rex isn’t making up for lost time, but there’s an urgency and creative ferocity to their music that would make Lime reconsider his unfair denigration. Featuring four expert horn players and drums, the band is a rising force on the European music scene, with an irresistibly grooving sound honed on the street and designed for maximum impact in clubs and concert halls.
Le Rex’s fourth album 'Escape of the Fire Ants' is the band’s most confident and cohesive, marked by consistently compelling compositions, careening melodies and thick, lapidary harmonies…

Recorded at the historic Washington, D.C. club, Bohemian Caverns, on November 3, 2012, the album features a blistering set that captures Payton’s now renowned prowess on the trumpet - while simultaneously playing the Fender Rhodes piano. His genius and unmistakable originality is on wide display for this recording.
The hashtag, #BAM, stands for Black American Music. The #BAM movement created by Nicholas, states the revolutionary, yet evident, idea that music of the Black American diaspora is more similar than dissimilar. Black American Music speaks of his and all music descending from the Black American experience, including spirituals, gospel, blues, so-called jazz and soul…

This album is dedicated to Duke Ellington, and it features Duke Ellington tunes - but overall the set is a very personal moment from pianist Masaru Imada - maybe one of his strongest dates of the 70s! The music opens up with that beautifully creative Japanese piano trio approach of the 70s - lots of new ideas and new styles brimming forth throughout, but always in a way that's respectful of tradition while pushing things forward - swinging back to familiar modes one minute, then soaring forth with a personal spirit the next. Masaru's trio-mates here are a great match - the excellent Isoo Fukui on bass and Tetsujiro Obara on drums.

Though based in multiple musical realms, pianist Alain Mallet's ambitious Mutt Slang projects coalesce into a world that exudes 'exotic' yet ultimately feels familiar, the roots of its various components meeting somewhere deep within. Sharing the musical landscape with young musicians from Palestine, Brazil, Italy, Israel, Japan, Bulgaria, Panama, Ireland, Puerto Rico and the US, the complexity of their backgrounds - musically, ethnically, and otherwise, permeates the session, suffusing Mallet's compositions with an undeniable energy and life. "Mutt Slang is very much the result of this convergence of all the musics I love, of digging to get to their shared soul and rebuild something fresh, in order to discover where I belong and give others a chance to do the same." - Alain Mallet