A deep yet unsentimental emotional resonance and a patient, contemplative view of time whether relating to harmonic rhythm or human experience are complementary characteristics that run through his instrumental, vocal and theatrical catalog like a red thread, the composer inspired by disparate spirits from Wagner and Satie to Cage and Silvestrov. The ECM New Series released multiple recordings of Bryars music in the 1980s and early 90s, including the classic albums After the Requiem and Vita Nova. The first full ECM album from Bryars in decades is The Fifth Century, which includes the seven-part title work: a slowly evolving yet immediately involving setting of words by 17th-century English mystic Thomas Traherne, performed by the mixed choir of The Crossing with saxophone quartet PRISM. The album also features Two Love Songs, luminous a cappella settings of Petrarch for the women of The Crossing. The music within words, the humanity in breath, the sense of eternity within a moment or of a moment in eternity all are at play in Bryars latest music on ECM.

After tackling the sonatas for violin and piano of Bach, Busoni and Beethoven in 2017 – a “thoughtfully determined and subtly interconnected programme” according to Strad magazine –, the duo of Yuuko Shiokawa and András Schiff returns with striking renditions of Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 1 and Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 2. Brahms’s First Violin Sonata in G major, known as the “Regenliedsonate” (Rain Sonata)”, is presented in a lush interpretation and stands in evocative juxtaposition with Schumann’s at times vigorously driving Sonata in D minor. Devoting themselves completely to the music of these close composer-friends, Shiokawa and Schiff once again display their own rare duo understanding throughout this third joint undertaking for ECM’s New Series. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

English multi-instrumentalist John Surman has been known on a worldwide level, but never recognized as he deserved to be in the United States. A collaboration with John McLaughlin, or fellow Brits on the fusion or free jazz scene increased his cache a bit, but being a part of the ECM label had to have increased his visibility to a larger degree. This quite different recording of overdubbed woodwind and electronics has a suitable palate and soundscape profile for the European label, enhanced by the immaculate production values of the Rainbow Studio in Oslo, Norway, and fortified by Surman's heady and spacy revelations on this project of deep, introspective, and divine music. At his most heartfelt from the outset, a haunting refrain with flutes and recorder above synthesizers underpins a lilting bass clarinet melody on "Portrait of a Romantic," while the reverse sentiment of emptiness in a Terry Riley or Cluster like minimalism identifies "Not Love Perhaps" under Surman's soprano sax. "Roundelay" is stunning and unique to this set, with bass clarinet as an ostinato bass, buoying a full array of overdubbed saxophones sounding like an interactive quartet in a laid-back frame of sheer beauty.

Although being generally acknowledged as one of the leading composers of his native Switzerland, Othmar Schoeck (1886–1957) has never acquired a stable reputation outside the German-speaking world. This is partly due to his strong focus on the sung word: His output comprises eight operas, some 400 songs and a couple of smaller works for instrumental forces. Moreover, Schoeck’s essentially late-romantic style was considered démodé after the second world war when the avant-garde was arguing for a more rational and emotionally restricted approach to composition. One of his most personal works is the “Notturno” for baritone voice and string quartet. Written between 1931 and 1933 it served as a personal confession after an unhappy extra-marital love affair. Its five movements set verses by German 19th-century-poet Nikolaus Lenau and by the great Swiss writer Gottfried Keller. The highly differentiated interpretation by baritone Christian Gerhaher – one of the most distinguished young German “Lied” singers and a former disciple of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – and the Rosamunde Quartett offers a strong plea for Schoeck’s expressive music and sheds an exciting light on his artistic preoccupation with the dark abysses of human existence.

This is a fascinating collaboration between lyrical Italian jazz improvisers Paolo Fresu and Daniele di Bonaventura and the transfixing voices of A Filetta from Corsica. A Filetta, prize-winning vocal ensemble, internationally renowned as the standard-bearers of Corsican polyphony, make their ECM debut here. The appealing combination of sound-colours and idioms adds up to `Sketches of Corsica'. As the improvisers approach this regional music of universal appeal, Fresu's pensive, romantic trumpet inevitably brings Milesian associations to mind, and the ingenious bandoneon of di Bonaventura implies `chamber music' and `folk music' in every breath of the bellows.

Euripides wrote The Trojan Women in 415 B.C., but his tragic play about the aftermath of the fall of Troy continues to resonate many centuries after it was first performed. Eleni Karaindrou, best know for her film scores for Ulysses' Gaze and Eternity and a Day, composed this score for a 2001 production of The Trojan Women after being struck by the parallels between the ancient Greek story and the recent situation in the Balkans. Although she chose to use various folk instruments from around the Mediterranean, such as the lyre, an ancestor of the modern violin; the lauto, a Greek form of the lute; and the ney, an end-blown flute, her stark compositions are not folkloric recreations. Instead, she blends the ancient timbres of the instruments with a vocal chorus to create a sound that is not quite modern but not archaic either. Perhaps the best word to use in describing Karaindrou's austere, beautiful music is timeless.

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.

A one-man universe of sound who has learned to play hundreds of instruments from across the globe, which he utilizes in captivating and exotic ways. Collection includes: Implosions (1977); Til The End Of Time (1978); Wings Over Water (1982); Listen To The Rain (1983); East Of The Night (1985); Ocean (1986); The Music Of Stones (1989); Darkness And Light (1990); To The Evening Child (1992); Athos: A Journey To The Holy Mountain (1994); The Garden Of Mirrors (1997); Desert Poems (2001); Life (2004); On The Wing (2006); Bold As Light (2010).

First Circle is a Grammy Award winning album by Pat Metheny Group released in 1984. On the album Pat Metheny is joined by Lyle Mays on piano and keyboards, Steve Rodby on bass, drummer Paul Wertico and vocalist and percussionist Pedro Aznar. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance in 1985. Pat Metheny has remarked that this is an important album in the Group's history for a number of reasons, among them being that the Group's core lineup on the album remained unchanged for over 15 years and it was the final Group album released on the ECM record label.

If 1980's As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls was defined by Pat Metheny's charisma, its less accessible but certainly rewarding successor, Offramp, finds him leaning more toward the abstract. But as cerebral as Metheny gets on such atmospheric pieces as "Are You Going with Me?" and "Au Lait," his playing remains decidedly lyrical and melodic. Clearly influenced by Jim Hall, the thoughtful Metheny makes excellent use of space, choosing his notes wisely and reminding listeners that, while he has heavy-duty chops, he's not one to beat everybody over the head with them. Even when he picks up the tempo for the difficult and angular title song, he shuns empty musical acrobatics. Throughout the CD, Metheny enjoys a powerful rapport with keyboardist Lyle Mays, who also avoids exploiting his technique and opts for meaningful storytelling.

The double album Sleeper contains a previously unreleased live concert by Keith Jarrett's European quartet from the '70s, recorded at Tokyo's Nakano Sun Plaza on April 16, 1979. Together with saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson, and drummer Jon Christensen, Jarrett performs seven of his own compositions: "Personal Mountains," "Innocence," "So Tender," "Oasis," "Chant of the Soil," "Prism," and "New Dance" the latter song being the shortest here at seven minutes, while "Oasis" clocks in at over 28 minutes!

Recorded in 2001 live at the State Opera House in Munich, Out of Towners features the Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette trio in the kind of performance we've come to expect from them these last 21 years: Stellar. Being one of contemporary jazz's longest-running bands has its advantages; one of them is having nothing to prove. First and foremost, this band plays standards like no one else.

On this recording of The Seven Words, the Rosamunde String Quartet offers a compelling rendition of one of Haydn's most complex compositions. The Seven Words was originally composed for a full orchestra as a series of seven adagios, which were meant to be interludes during a congregation's meditations on the last seven words of Christ on the Cross. Haydn struggled with a way to compose seven connected pieces of music that were solemn and yet varied enough to keep the listener from getting bored. The members of the Rosamunde Quartet are technically brilliant as they demonstrate the composer's solutions to this musical puzzle. Even though the tempo is slow, they never let the music become ponderous or oppressive. But to Haydn, The Seven Words was more than just an aural conundrum. He felt the composition was perhaps his most sacred work, and the quartet plays this music with reverence for the composer's spiritual intentions. This is a profound piece of music, and the Rosamunde does it justice on each of its many levels.

It might be tempting to dismiss this Ralph Towner effort as New Age fluff, but the music is so gorgeous that any such considerations fall to the wayside. Yet the wayside is precisely where Towner sets his sights, which is to say that his interest lies in edges where musical idioms meet. He explores these lines, not unlike the blotted cover, with an ease of diction at the fret board that is recognizable and comforting. Drummer Peter Erskine shares the bill, but Towner adds a few synth touches for broader effect, as in “The Sigh,” which opens the session in a cleft of fluid energy.

If Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is simply described in terms of its materials and organization – 11 chords followed by 11 pieces built on those chords – then it might seem utterly dry and monotonous. The actual music, though, is far from lackluster. When this recording was released in 1978, the impact on the new music scene was immediate and overwhelming. Anyone who saw potential in minimalism and had hoped for a major breakthrough piece found it here. The beauty of its pulsing added-note harmonies and the sustained power and precision of the performance were the music's salient features; and instead of the sterile, electronic sound usually associated with minimalism, the music's warm resonance was a welcome change. Yet repeated listening brought out a subtle and important shift in Reich's conception: the patterns were no longer static repetitions moving in and out of phase with each other, but were now flexible units that grew organically and changed incrementally over the course of the work.