40 Years of ECM Records

Concerts, symposium, ceremony and documentation as part of the Enjoy Jazz Festival

With a special commemorative festival, symposium and documentation, the Enjoy Jazz Festival honoured the historic achievements of the Edition for Contemporary Music (ECM). The ECM recording label was founded 40 years ago by the Munich producer Manfred Eicher. In the beginning ECM mainly concentrated on producing jazz releases. Later the ECM New Series began promoting a wide variety of modern musical styles.
Today ECM is one of the world's leading recording labels for contemporary music and is responsible for outstanding achievements in this area. Without the efforts of ECM, the recordings of numerous compositions from past decades would have been irretrievably lost or never released. ECM strengthened jazz and so-called "serious music" to an equal degree, established ties to both areas, and in so doing, encouraged European-American musical dialogue.
A distinctive feature of all the releases is the care and perfection ECM puts into its recordings, cover designs and accompanying texts. For this reason many well-known musicians and composers, such as Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Arvo Pärt and György Kurtág, have chosen to publish large parts of their oeuvre through ECM.

Artistic directors: Rainer Kern, Hans-Jürgen Linke, Wolfgang Sandner
Artists: John Abercrombie Quartet, Thomas Zehetmair, Egberto Gismonti, Alexandre Gismonti Duo, Keller Quartett, Terje Rypdal, Miroslav Vitous, Gerald Cleaver, Dino Saluzzi, Anja Lechner, Louis Sclavis Quintet, Ralph Towner, Paolo Fresu, Alexei Lubimov, Alexander Trostiansky, Kyrill Rybakov, Anouar Brahem, Enrico Rava;

Venue and schedule:
Castle of Mannheim, 22 - 25 October 2009

Contact

Enjoy Jazz

Bauamtsgasse 5

69117 Heidelberg

www.enjoyjazz.de (external link, opens in a new window)