The ECM podcast series reaches it’s 50th episode with Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith, who discuss their new duo album Defiant Life – produced by Manfred Eicher. They talk about resistance, defiance, the art of the present, artistry and more. […]
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Billy Hart, who was born in 1940 in Washington, DC, is a jazz drummer and educator who has performed with some of the most important jazz musicians in history. Early on Hart performed in Washington, DC with soul artists such as Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, and was a sideman with the Montgomery Brothers (1961), Jimmy Smith (1964–6), and Wes Montgomery (1966–8). Following Montgomery’s death in 1968, Hart moved to New York, where he recorded with McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul, and played with Eddie Harris, Pharoah Sanders and Marian McPartland. Hart was a member of Herbie Hancock’s sextet (1969–73), and played with McCoy Tyner (1973–4), Stan Getz (1974–7), and Quest (1980s), in addition to extensive freelance playing (including recording with Miles Davis on On the Corner in 1972). Though Hart’s debut as leader on ECM, All Our Reasons, dates from 2011, he first recorded for the label back in 1974; his swinging beat and delicate cymbal tracery were heard with Bennie Maupin on the classic Jewel In The Lotus, and for ten years he was a member of the Charles Lloyd Quartet, playing on such influential albums as The Call, All My Relations, Canto and Lift Every Voice.
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From the very first note, Norway’s Jon Balke proposes a new sonic dimension with Skrifum, continuing a line of inquiry begun with Warp (2016) and Discourses (2020), solo piano albums which also processed the acoustic environment in which the music was heard. Skrifum (the Icelandic word for “write”) takes things a step further. With the aid of electronic audio tool the Spektrafon, which he helped develop, Balke is now able to directly manipulate ambient audio sound from the piano while playing – pulling out frequencies and sustaining them as chords of harmonics. This activated reverberation becomes new material for improvised dialogue, often with quite beautiful results. Jon Balke: “The Spektrafon’s sound feeds back in ways that demand space. I take that opportunity to play mostly monophonically and to focus on every single note and its position in the soundscape.” Skrifum was recorded in November 2023 at Village Recording in Copenhagen and edited and mastered at Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher and Jon Balke.
Skrifum
The independent record label ECM – Edition of Contemporary Music – was founded by producer Manfred Eicher in 1969, and to date has issued more than 1800 albums spanning many idioms.
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