The album Who We Are is the first studio recording of the collaboration between pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and saxophonist/composer Marius Neset. They are joined on the record by flautist Ingrid Softeland Neset and cellist Louisa Tuck. The music, composed by Neset, was recorded at Oslo's Rainbow Studio in the course of three days in December, 2023.

An apparently harmless phrase can hide something altogether darker. That quote neatly sums up Triosk’s second album The Headlight Serenade. Brilliantly recorded by the young Australian trio, the album’s crystal clarity makes it sound like it’s floating on air. Triosk’s inventiveness and enthusiasm to rethink musical boundaries makes The Headlight Serenade a striking, living work. Rarely is such cerebral music so engaging.

Moment Returns set a new standard for improvisational musicians working with electronics, as the band sought for playful new ways to combine the sound and unity of purpose of the great jazz piano trios with new compositional forms and the textures and processes of minimalism and electronic music. The result is warm and feline and quietly innovative, a triumph of musical charisma over mere technique.

Idiosyncratic, large-scale and in its fundamental disposition one of a kind, Florian Weber’s Imaginary Cycle, conceived for the unique instrumentation of brass ensemble and piano, is a hybrid of multiple musical languages that seamlessly blends the harmonious with the oblique. Here Weber presents a cycle in four parts, plus an opening and an epilogue, in which the German pianist is joined by a group of four euphoniums, a trombone quartet as well as flautist Anna-Lena Schnabel and Michel Godard on the seldomly used “serpent” brass instrument, together performing a work that blurs the line where improvisation ends and composition begins.

This perfectly harmonising duo focuses on strong contrasts and thrives on empathy and intense exchanges. – Deutschlandfunk. Having previously joined forces on several Louis Sclavis recordings for ECM, including the clarinettist’s last album Characters On A Wall, in recent years Sclavis and pianist Benjamin Moussay increasingly focused on their two-way communication, playing expansive and well-received concerts throughout Europe. Now, in a programme of originals – two-thirds from the pianist’s pen, the remaining third by the clarinettist – the French duo dreams up a world of chamber conversations that juxtaposes lyrical contemplation with whimsical inventiveness in a joyous, concentrated collaboration. Thoughtfully, the duo envelopes delicate themes in warm improvisations that never rush, but patiently explore the written material with rare creativity and in fluid dialogues. Recorded at Studios La Buissonne, Southern France in March 2024, Unfolding was produced by Manfred Eicher.

“Pure beauty is the common tone of Trygve Seim and Frode Haltli. There is something folk-song-like in this music – intersections where secular and sacred music meet to dance”. This is what the German weekly paper Die Zeit said on the duo’s debut release Yeraz back in 2008 and while the statement still holds up today, the rapport between the saxophonist and the accordionist has grown even more fluid in the meantime. On Our Time Trygve and Frode exchange counterpuntal glances, lyrical swells and textural explorations with grace, eloquence and utmost nuance, presenting a programme of originals, improvisations and evocative recastings of traditional folk songs from Ukraine and North-India. Recorded at the Himmelfahrtskirche in Munich, in 2023, and produced by Manfred Eicher, on Our Time the saxophonist and accordionist’s tones meet in a surreal and magical dance.

A requiem mass for drums, electronics and choir, 'The Undreamt-of Centre' is Laurence Pike's most ambitious solo album to date, pulling from Ligeti, Jon Hassell and Midori Takada in equal measure.

This Friday Sept 6 we’re releasing a session we recorded named ‘Infrared’. This was a fully improvised recording of drums, sax and taishokoto in a studio wired with overwhelming reverb pumping back at us. The recording was also captured in a beautifully processed film shot by Lisa IndigoBurns Wormsley.

The title of Breaking Stretch is a concise representation of Brennan’s envelope-pushing ambitions. Breaking references her desire to push herself and her bandmates to their limits, to mine the transcendent results of virtuosic imaginations confronted by unexpected challenges. Stretch captures her music’s intense elasticity, its ability to stretch from the taut and minutely focused to the wide-angled and reaching. Those extremes are depicted in the album’s striking artwork, a mix of astronomical and volcanic images, placing the cosmic and the subterranean side by side – the differences between the opposing poles, as in Brennan’s work, at times nearly indistinguishable.

Endlessness is a deep dive into the cycle of existence. The 45-minute album delicately spans 10 tracks with a continuous arpeggio playing throughout, creating an expansive, mesmerising celebration of life cycles and rebirth. Following Sinephro’s critically acclaimed 2021 debut album Space 1.8, Endlessness further elevates her as a transcendent and multi-dimensional composer, beautifully morphing jazz, orchestral, and electronic music.

This end-of-the-millennium quartet session probably best defines all the inherent contradictions in who ECM attracts to the label – what kind of musician records for them – and what concerns these artists and ECM's chief producer (and creator) Manfred Eicher hold in common. This set, although clearly fronted by Markus Stockhausen and Arild Andersen on brass and bass, respectively, allows space for the entire quartet to inform its direction. Héral and Rypdal are not musicians who can play with just anybody; their distinctive styles and strengths often go against the grain of contemporary European jazz and improvised music. Of the 11 compositions here, four are collectively written, with two each by Andersen and Stockhausen.

‘I keep thinking about how to lead a band from the drums in a way that gives the instrument a central role, but one which is more about shaping the music than displaying virtuosity,’ says Wolfgang Haffner. This way of working, a common thread throughout his career, is a key factor in ‘Life Rhythm’, his tenth album for ACT. Haffner may shun the virtuoso drummer/ bandleader stereotype – and do so intentionally – but ‘Life Rhythm’ nonetheless has the drums at its very heart. Back in 2022, Wolfgang Haffner was given the opportunity to play the first solo concert of his career, an event that started the sequence of events which have led to this album. He remembers: ‘That was an insane challenge. I had a decision to make: was I really going to play a drum solo … for a full hour? Of course not.’ This reflection encouraged Haffner, who has habitually composed his music at the piano, to make use of the drums in his songwriting process.

From the beginning of Blues Dream, the listener knows that something special is going on. The spare notes of Ron Miles' trumpet and the relaxed guitar work of Greg Leisz lay the groundwork for a spacious sound on the title cut. This openness remains throughout the album, even when alto and trombone are added into the mix. The instrumental "Ron Carter" begins with the loose, electrified feel of an early Miles Davis fusion piece, with Bill Frisell's distorted guitar exploring the space of the piece without resorting to excessive volume. The short and sweet "Pretty Stars Were Made to Shine" leans heavier on the country side, with steel guitar and Chet Atkins' fingerpicking dominating. The arrangements on Blues Dream are a big change from last year's solo effort, Ghost Town…

No composer looms over modern jazz quite like Johann Sebastian Bach, whose harmonic rigour seems to have provided the basis for bebop and all that followed. Listen to the endlessly mutating semiquavers tumbling from Charlie Parker’s saxophone and it could be the top line of a Bach fantasia; the jolting cycle of chords in John Coltrane’s Giant Steps could come straight from a Bach fugue and Bach’s contrapuntal techniques crop up in countless jazz pianists, from Bill Evans to Nina Simone. Bach certainly casts a long shadow over US pianist Brad Mehldau: even when he’s gently mutilating pieces by Radiohead, Nick Drake or the Beatles, he sounds like Glenn Gould ripping into the Goldberg Variations. Which is why it comes as no surprise to see Mehldau recording an entire album inspired by Bach. However, this is not a jazz album. Instead of riffing on Bach themes, as the likes of Jacques Loussier or the Modern Jazz Quartet have done in the past, After Bach sees Mehldau using Bach’s methodology. Mehldau plays five of Bach’s canonic 48 Preludes and Fugues, each followed by his own modern 21st-century response.

Born in 1968, Arve Henriksen studied at the Trondheim Conservatory from 1987-1991, and has worked as a freelance musician since 1989.