ECM – The Fourth Decade

This rare ECM sampler from 2008 gathers selections from the label’s fourth decade of existence, yet the sequence feels less retrospective than prophetic. Its selections cross successive thresholds, revealing musicians at the moment when technique blurs into vision. Producer Manfred Eicher’s gift has often involved recognizing those latent selves, then constructing the acoustic conditions in which they can emerge. The subtitle, “new artists, new music,” names more than a marketing premise. These artists sound new because the music has recalibrated the coordinates by which they understand themselves. The passage begins with the Wolfert Brederode Quartet’s Currents (ECM 2004), the Dutch pianist’s ECM debut as leader. “Common Fields” introduces both that album and this collection, serving as invocation and orientation. Brederode’s piano arpeggios curl at the edges, pale crests gathering above an invisible depth. Claudio Puntin’s clarinet wanders ashore as a vessel emptied of passengers,…