ECM

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. 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. 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.’