Music Reviews: ECM Style Jazz

MQA is a plot to take over and ruin your music and make the devious and power hungry villain Bob Stuart wealthy. Maybe run the world. The reaction to MQA borders on that level of hysteria and for now it's kind of shut down or on hiatus (Lenbrook owns it) but the first demo of it I heard at a CES some years ago was unforgettable and made me a believer even if a later demo I attended with Rick Rubin made him a skeptic or worse and that surprised me.Keith... Read More

Afric Pepperbird by the Jan Garbarek Quartet with Terje Rypdal, Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen was an early ECM touchstone, and the beginning of five decades of cooperation between producer Manfred Eicher, engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug and the four Norwegian players. It gets its first vinyl reissue since 1976 in ECM's Luminessence series.

It’s tragic that, in the past decade, physical catastrophes have struck two of our greatest jazz masters in their prime. Pulmonary thrombosis stopped Sonny Rollins from blowing the saxophone; two strokes prevented Keith Jarrett from ever again playing the piano. At least Rollins was in peak form for an 80th birthday concert (captured on "Road Trip, Vol. 3)"; Jarrett stayed active barely past his 70th. (Both are still alive, at 89 and 72, respectively.) Lucky... Read More