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ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) is a record label founded in 1969 by Manfred Eicher. ECM initially concentrated on jazz, releasing records by many important artists including pianists Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea, saxophonists Jan Garbarek and Anthony Braxton, vibraphone player Gary Burton, drummers John Christensen and Paul Motian, the Pat Metheny Group, Eberhard Weber's Colors and the Art Ensemble of Chicago among many others.
It later moved into other areas, releasing records of various world musics, and also putting out classical music. The off-shoot ECM New Series was created in the 1980s to concentrate on classical works - it has released work by a wide variety of composers, from the early (such as Thomas Tallis) to the contemporary (such as Arvo Pärt). On several releases, the jazz and classical sides of ECM are combined: Jarrett has made several records of Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, and Gabarek's Officium (1994) sees him playing saxophone solos over the Hilliard Ensemble singing Gregorian chant, early polyphony and Renaissance works.
The label has also released genre-crossing and difficult-to-classify work by the likes of Stephan Micus and Meredith Monk.
The typical ECM session is three days; two to record, one to mix; and Eicher, in general, dislikes effects such as overdubbing
The label has had its share of US distribution changes during its current history. It had been handled by both BMG and WEA once but it has had the better success with Universal Music (Polydor was the first distributor, then PolyGram, now Universal Classics and Jazz).
Most recently, ECM released a collection of CDs called ":rarum". This time, instead of the label brass assembling a collection of greatest hits by their artists past and present, Eicher let the artists do it themselves. The collections are 1 disc or 2-disc sets and are available.
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