斯蒂芬·米库斯(Stephan Micus)的音乐中没有撕心裂肺的喊叫，没有捶胸顿足的痛哭。然而，在聆听完一首首用古朴的乐器演绎的作品后，你会突然意识到自己的眼角已经湿润了。他的音乐中有种韵味会一直徘徊在你的耳际，心际。有时，你甚至会有一种时间凝滞，空间错离的感觉。米库斯的音乐世界不是所谓的第三世界音乐。或许，它类似于琼·哈瑟(Jon Hassel)所描绘的梦中的第四世界音乐。你将完全沉浸于一种前所未有的纯音乐的世界中。虽然他演奏的是西班牙、印度、日本、加纳、印尼、埃及等地的民族乐器，然而从那些各有千秋的乐器中出来的是一种叫做音乐的东西。只是它带上了米库斯个人的标签。既不是贾·沃伯(Jah Wobble)那类充满了异国情调的民族音乐大拼盘，也不是比尔·拉斯威尔(Bill Laswell)的异域电音杂烩饭。米库斯的音乐里面剔除了这个世界的火气，展现的是一个乐手心灵努力的过程。

“Matanë Malit” (Beyond the mountain), Elina Duni’s ECM debut, is a homage to Albania. A singer looking at her roots from a present-day vantage point as a musician engaged in improvisational processes. Jazz experience informs her exploration of Balkan folk songs – with attention to atmosphere, the shape of the sound, the tactility of the structures, the implications of the words, … “It’s about serving the song”, she explains, “and about reclaiming and reinventing it.” Duni found her route to Albanian songs after forays into classical music, blues and jazz standards. Digging deeper into the Balkan region’s troubled history, she has uncovered many songs of real beauty and power, older songs from her homeland and from its vast diaspora. “Matanë Malit” includes songs of lovers, heroes, workers, shepherds, exiles, songs of resistance. Traditional songs arranged by Elina Duni, and new music expressively moulded in the tradition.

Vladimir Godar's Mater is a moving cantata comprised of seven compositions for female voice, mixed choir and Baroque string orchestra playing on historic instruments. The work is a meditation on the circle of human life united under the archetypes of "woman" and "mother": protecting, consoling, mourning, but also as objects of praise and adoration. The texts come from Slovak lullabies, sacred Christian texts, Yiddish songs and a poem by James Joyce. The music is highly atmospheric and melodic, and fans of Arvo Part, Henryk Gorecki, John Tavener and early music will be drawn to this music.


The unifying element of Mater is one of the most remarkable figures in contemporary vocal art: Iva Bittova. Often compared to Laurie Anderson or Meredith Monk, Bittova's voice is mostly warm and tender but also displays a wide array of expressive shades. The Philadelphia Inquirer writes that Bittova "seems to operate from some musical ground zero - one that also puts you in touch with the most elemental purpose of music, and why you first came to love it."

Keenly anticipated follow-up to the beguiling and commercially successful Chants, Hymns and Dances album. Chants, Hymns and Dances with its striking juxtaposition of music by G.I.Gurdjieff and Tsabropoulos landed on classical charts around the world - and was for a time a Top 10 disc at amazon.com. Melos again features Tsabropoulos and Gurdjieff compositions, but reverses the ratio, with more Tsabropoulos to be heard, in an arc of material that incorporates three clearly-etched Gurdjieff tunes. Each piece on Melos is melodically-direct but also offers perspectives for expressive playing. Anja Lechner's profile has grown over the last years, most notably thanks to her recent album and touring with Dino Saluzzi. Their collaboration Ojos Negros was a 5 Star Album of the Year 2007 in Down Beat. Melos has a genre-crossing appeal to lovers of classical, world and jazz.

First ECM recording from Helena Tulve - the gifted young Estonian composer (born 1972) whose work speaks in its own unique language through a variety of chamber music settings and with a fluid approach to form, sound and sonority. The album begins with her travers for ensemble, which attracted much attention at the 1998 International Rostrum for Composers in Paris and progresses through more recent works including Lijnen, with the wonderful voice of Arianna Savall. Other works feature the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet and Silesian String Quartet. Tulve has been closely associated with Estonia's creative chamber group the NYYD Ensemble over the last decade and they deliver committed performances of her work also on this album under the direction of outstanding young conductor Olari Elts.

Frances-Marie Uitti and Paul Griffiths, together for the first time on disc, both making their ECM debuts as performers.Cellist Uitti is an innovator, creator of many new techniques for her instrument. The great composers of new music have collaborated with her – from Cage to Scelsi, from Carter to Nono, from Xenakis to Kurtág. She is herself a composer as well as an inspired interpreter, and also an improviser of the first rank. Paul Griffiths was the librettist for Elliott Carter’s opera “What Next?”. He is also one of the best-known – and one of the most highly-respected - writers on music, and has a growing reputation as a writer of fiction. His novel “Myself and Marco Polo” won the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
“There is still time” resists categorization, but the recording is special, and these “Scenes for Speaking Voice and Cello” should be heard.

Saxophonist Trygve Seim and accordionist Frode Haltli, key figures in the new Norwegian music, have over the years played together in many contexts - including Seim's acclaimed large ensemble recording Sangam and the collaborative The Source and Different Cikadas. This is the first recording of their long-running duo, covering originals and improvisations plus Bob Marley's Redemption Song, a tribute to Tom Waits (Waits for Waltz), music of Gurdjieff, and Armenian traditional music.

「古代藝術有其特定的內在含意……，在古遠的年代，人們並不寫書，他們將知識融入藝術作品裡，我們則藉由這些古代藝術結晶品中尋找到許多偉大的想法，只要你懂得如何閱讀它。」這是這張專輯內冊裡引述G. Gurdjieff所講的一段話，而從這段話中其實也非常清楚的闡明了這張音樂專輯所企圖達成的方向。

The Hilliard Ensemble最早成立於1974年，其風格主要是專注在文藝復興、前巴洛克、巴洛克時期的人聲詩歌吟唱，陣中成員起初都是男性，之後慢慢才有女性成員加入。Hilliard Ensemble追求的是一種純粹的和諧和聲，而他們也以此作為鑽研中古世紀音樂最重要的中心思想。因此，聆聽這張改自巴哈作品〈Ciaccona, D小調〉與小提琴手Christoph Poppen合作的西低可以聽出他們是非常恪守巴哈及那一中古時期音樂的嚴謹與莊嚴，其聖慈的和聲及慢板的提琴拉奏，都在在顯露了基督宗教的精神是如何深植在整個巴洛克的人文精神，當然也是深刻的在巴哈的聖樂裡反映出來。那是一種超越死亡、生命與時間之河的內在尊嚴與聖潔。

The untitled ECM double-album debut of young Norwegian saxophonist, composer and improviser Mette Henriette Martedatter Rølvåg is an arrestingly original musical statement. 'Jazz' players and 'classical' players are drawn together in her ensembles, but the music shapes its own world, outside genre definitions. Mette Henriette is interlacing form and freedom in fresh ways here, as her intense and focused tenor saxophone sound moves inside compositions of sometimes disarming fragility. In this music, vulnerability can be as potent a force as full-tilt blowing, but there is a place for both. The recording's expressive and emotional range is wide. Disc one here features trio music with Mette Henriette, pianist Johan Lindvall and cellist Katrine Schiøtt. Disc two has Mette's "sinfonietta" with thirteen players. Line-up of the larger group includes some names familiar to ECM listeners - trumpeter Eivind Lønning, drummer Per Oddvar Johansen, and the members of the Cikada Quartet - all pooling creative energies to serve Mette's music. The album was recorded at sessions in Oslo in May and August 2014, and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Trio (CD 1)
Mette Henriette: saxophone
Katrine Schiøtt: cello
Johan Lindvall: piano
Ensemble (CD 2)
Mette Henriette: saxophone
Eivind Lønning: trumpet
Henrik Nørstebø: trombone
Andreas Rokseth: bandoneon
Johan Lindvall: piano
Sara Övinge: violin
Karin Hellqvist: violin
Odd Hannisdal: violin
Bendik Bjørnstad Foss: viola
Ingvild Nesdal Sandnes: violoncello
Katrine Schiøtt: violincello
Per Zanussi: bass
Per Oddvar Johansen: drums, saw

Following last year’s completion of his highly-praised Beethoven cycle András Schiff returns to Bach with a superb interpretation of the six “Partitas”, recorded live in September 2007 at Neumarkt Reitstadl one of the best piano music venues in Eurpoe. The cycle, which in 1731 was the first group of works to be published by Bach himself, represents a unique stylistic synthesis of the suite form with a particular emphasis on most varied and imaginative opening movements. In his 1802 biography of Bach, Nikolaus Forkel famously wrote that “such splendid compositions for the clavier had not been seen or heard before… so brilliant, harmonious, expressive and constantly novel are they.” Compared to his London studio recording of 1983 this second rendering on disc demonstrates Schiff’s stylistic development towards more freedom, sonic depth and sheer pleasure of phrasing. The rather unorthodox sequence of partitas – 5 – 3 – 1 – 2 – 4 – 6 – draws an ascending line of keys leading from G major to e minor.

Norwegian drummer/composer Thomas Strønen presents a revised edition of his acoustic collective Time Is A Blind Guide, now trimmed to quintet size, and with a new pianist in Wakayama-born Ayumi Tanaka. Tanaka has spoken of seeking associative connections between Japan and Norway in her improvising, a tendency Strønen seems to be encouraging with his space-conscious writing for the ensemble, letting in more light. As on the group’s eponymously-titled and critically-lauded debut album there are excellent contributions from the string players – the quintet effectively contains both a string trio and a piano trio – and Manfred Eicher’s production brings out all the fine detail in the grain of the collective sound and the halo of its overtones, captured in the famously-responsive acoustic of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo in March 2017.