The Visual Language of ECM
Edited by Lars Müller

18,5 x 26 cm, 448 pages
ca. 1300 illustrations, softcover

The catalogue to the critically-acclaimed ECM exhibition at Munich’s Haus der Kunst is a handsome hardback volume, with rare photos, film stills, album artwork and drafts, and essays by Diedrich Diederichsen, Okwui Enwezor, Kodwo Eshun, Renée Green, Markus Müller, Wolfgang Sandner, and Jürg Stenzl. The book also contains a comprehensive chronology and discography of the ECM label, and biographies of artists and authors, as well as an extensive round-table talk with Manfred Eicher, Okwui Enwezor, Steve Lake, Karl Lippegaus, and Markus Müller. Available in English and German editions.

Edited by Okwui Enwezor and Markus Müller, Prestel Verlag, 2012
 
Hardcover book, 304 pages, 23 x 27 cm, 111 color images, 127 b/w images, faux leather binding with banderole

This remarkable handbook of almost 700 pages, originally conceived to accompany ECM’s 40th year celebrations, includes all of the officially released albums issued on ECM - and its subsidiary JAPO - from 1969 until 2010. Album covers are shown in colour (sometimes with alternate designs), and there is a section of Japan-only releases alongside the full international range of titles, as well as an individual album guide and capsule reviews in Japanese. All discographical information, including titles, musicians, recording locations etc. is in English, so the book will also be useful reference work for the non-Japanese reader/listener, and for collectors in general.

Catalogue editor Kenny Inaoka, currently editor-in-chief of the Jazz Tokyo web site, was ECM’s label manager in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s, working with Trio Records.

First released in Georgian and Russian editions in 2009, this collection of "sketches" reprises pieces which Giya Kancheli wrote for film and theatre while concurrently embarking on his work as composer of symphonic and chamber music: "No wonder then, that certain themes originally intended for plays and films made their way into my larger works or that the large forms themselves sometimes contained episodes reminiscent of incidental music."

In his introduction Kancheli writes that "The simplicity of presentation does not preclude but rather encourages freedom of interpretation, particularly for those with a gift for improvising", an observation already emphasized in an outstanding recording based on these pieces, "Themes from the Songbook".

This volume includes Kancheli music from 33 films and plays, plus short texts by theatre director Robert Sturua, film directors Georgi Danelia and Eldar Shengelaya, and painter/writer/director Rezo Gabriadze (whose drawings are also scattered through the book). Text: English.