ECM: The Story of Our Listening

This 2014 Musica Jazz sampler approaches the art of compilation as a meta-statement rather than an inventory, offering four paired selections from albums by the Gary Burton Quartet, Ralph Towner and John Abercrombie, Sam Rivers, and the Miroslav Vitous Group. Keith Jarrett’s “Runes,” from Arbour Zena (ECM 1070), occupies the center as a ritual hinge. Burton opens the first chamber; Towner and Abercrombie narrow the light; Jarrett inhabits the interior court; Rivers fractures the floor plan; Vitous reveals that the exit has been another entrance all along. “Runes” blooms through a slow orchestral tremolo. Jarrett disturbs the crystalline stillness with narrow shafts of illumination while Charlie Haden’s bass falls in thick droplets, darkening the space it enters. When the piano withdraws, Haden wanders along the edge of perception, testing the boundary between musical presence and psychic afterimage. Jarrett returns from a private expedition carrying neither map nor explanation. His…