Patrick Bruce Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
Stephan Micus is a German musician and composer, whose musical style is heavily influenced by his study of traditional instruments and musical techniques from Japan, India, South America, and other countries. With the exception of his album The Music of Stones (1989), he plays all the instruments on his recordings, combining styles from different countries and using the instruments in unprecedented ways in each of his pieces. He often uses layers of a single instrument to create unusual combinations of sounds. He is one of the few ECM Records artists whose records are not produced by Manfred Eicher. He has mixed instruments from around the world, or used whatever was at hand: stones, ordinary flowerpots tuned with water, and his voice—singing improvised syllables over ten years before others made this approach fashionable.
Athos is an album by Stephan Micus recorded between November 1993 – February 1994 and released on ECM in 1994.
ECM is an independent record label founded by Karl Egger, Manfred Eicher and Manfred Scheffner in Munich in 1969. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres. ECM's motto is "the most beautiful sound next to silence", taken from a 1971 review of ECM releases in Coda, a Canadian jazz magazine.
The pedal steel guitar is a console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than other steel guitar designs. Like all steel guitars, it can play unlimited glissandi and deep vibrati—characteristics it shares with the human voice. Pedal steel is most commonly associated with Country music and Hawaiian music.
Steve Swallow is an American jazz bassist and composer, known for his collaborations with Jimmy Giuffre, Gary Burton, and Carla Bley. He was one of the first jazz double bassists to switch entirely to electric bass guitar.
David Holland is an English double bassist, bass guitarist, cellist, composer and bandleader who has been performing and recording for five decades. He has lived in the United States since the early 1970s.
Shankar Lakshminarayana, better known as L. Shankar, is an Indian violinist, singer and composer who also goes by the stage name Shenkar. Known for his innovative contributions to world music, he is often regarded as one of the pioneers of East-West fusion, blending the rich traditions of Indian classical with Western genres such as rock, pop, jazz, and electronic music. His extensive body of work spans a wide spectrum of genres, encompassing vocal and instrumental compositions. He has released 28 solo albums, the two latest being Full Moon and Over the Stars, which were released in September and August 2024, respectively. Shankar is credited with inventing the stereophonic Double violin (known as the LSD - L.Shankar Double Violin), which covers the orchestral string family's range.
Steve Tibbetts is an American guitarist and composer. He views the recording studio as a tool for creating sounds. Most of his albums include percussionist Marc Anderson.
Egberto Amin Gismonti is a Brazilian composer, guitarist and pianist.
The Garden of Mirrors is an album by Stephan Micus recorded between 1995–1996 and released on ECM the following year.
Stephen Paul Motian was an American jazz drummer, percussionist, and composer. He played an important role in freeing jazz drummers from strict time-keeping duties.
John Douglas Surman is an English jazz saxophone, clarinet, and synthesizer player, and composer of free jazz and modal jazz, often using themes from folk music. He has composed and performed music for dance performances and film soundtracks.
Ralph Towner is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and bandleader. He plays the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion, trumpet and French horn.
Michael Mantler is an Austrian avant-garde jazz trumpeter and composer of contemporary music.
Bill Connors is an American jazz guitarist who was a member of Chick Corea's band Return to Forever. After leaving Return to Forever, he recorded three acoustic albums and then four electric albums as a leader/soloist.
Ocean is a solo album by German composer and multi-instrumentalist Stephan Micus recorded in January 1986 and released on ECM later that year.
Fleuve is the second album credited to the Pierre Favre Ensemble, recorded in Switzerland in October 2005 and released on ECM October the following year—twenty two years after the ensemble's 1984 debut, Singing Drums, presenting a new line-up that departed from the previous incarnation's all-percussion sound. The septet now included harp, double clarinet, double bass, tuba, guitar, bass guitar, soprano saxophone, and serpent—an instrument rarely used in jazz.
Twilight Fields is an album by German multi-instrumentalist and composer Stephan Micus recorded in November 1987 and released on ECM the following year.
Daylight Ghosts is an album by Craig Taborn, with Chris Speed, Chris Lightcap, and Dave King. It was released by ECM Records in 2017.
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