Guitar Music from ECM

The three-LP box set Guitar Music from ECM, released in 1981, was conceived by ECM’s French branch as more than a sampler. Coordinated by Hans Wendl and Gérard Desfoux, it gathers seven guitarists whose six- and twelve-string vocabularies had already helped make the Munich label resistant to category. Just over a decade old, ECM had nearly sixty relevant albums from which to choose, so the six sides became an exercise in severe abundance. Each selection is both evidence and omission, a small aperture onto an expanding country. Jean-Marc Bailleux’s liner notes attempt to chart that country through a triangle marked JAZZ, ROCK, and CLASSICAL. The thought experiment is useful if only because the music keeps escaping it. Terje Rypdal and Egberto Gismonti occupy the center through their commitment to composition and orchestration; John Abercrombie, Pat Metheny, Bill Connors, Mick Goodrick, and Ralph Towner pull the figure toward different borders. Yet the anthology’s deeper subject is the…