Naxos Music UK has taken on the physical distribution of ECM Records & ECM New Series in the UK and Ireland. The independent record label ECM – Edition of Contemporary Music – was founded by producer Manfred Eicher in 1969, and to date has issued more than 1700 albums spanning many idioms. Pioneering recordings of artists such as Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Chick Corea, Paul Bley, Egberto Gismonti and Pat Metheny established ECM’s reputation as a jazz label to be reckoned with. By the late 1970s names such as Meredith Monk and Steve Reich regularly appeared in the ECM catalogue, and forty years ago in 1984 the company launched its New Series imprint, dedicated to notated music. The first record on the New Series was Arvo Pärt’s ‘Tabula rasa’, which introduced a new soundworld to classical music listeners. ECM is known for its abiding relationships with its artists and for encouraging creative collaborations between them; indeed, the model of a literary publishing house was an inspiration for Eicher from the outset.
New Series albums feature composers such as György Kurtág, Valentin Silvestrov, Meredith Monk and Dobrinka Tabakova, and renowned interpreters such as András Schiff, the Hilliard Ensemble, Kim Kashkashian, Anja Lechner and the Danish String Quartet. The next generation of improvising artists are currently making waves on both sides of the Atlantic: Avishai Cohen, Tord Gustavsen, Mette Henriette, Vijay Iyer and Oded Tzur to name but a few. And legendary musicians such as John Surman, Gidon Kremer and Norma Winstone continue to release new albums on the label, decades after their first recordings.