"It's my life" ... Manfred Eicher, founder of the ECM record label. Photograph: Richard Schroeder/ECM Records
Manfred Eicher discusses his genre-defying label ECM, home of Keith Jarrett, Arvo Pärt and priceless recordings of free jazz greats
Francis MarmandeGuardian Weekly, Tuesday 26 March 2013 14.00 GMT
On 9 July Manfred Eicher will be 70. He does not look his age, more like an amiable ascetic with a tidy moustache, medium-length grey hair, dressed in a shirt and jeans. Not a man of many words, his eyes casting slightly anxious glances here and there, but he is very attentive to others. In 1969 he founded Edition of Contemporary Music, aka ECM, in Munich. Okwui Enwezor, the head of Munich's Haus der Kunst, recently curated ECM – A Cultural Archaeology, assisted by historian Markus Müller. The exhibition has been a huge success, but what is there to show about a record label? Does ECM represent a work, an action, perhaps even an exception? "No," Eicher replies gently, "it's my life. What matters to me is the sense of being alive every day." So what was it all about? A retrospective, an installation, a display of record sleeves, photographs? "I'm not sure Munich remembers us," Eicher adds. He often says "us".
Much to my surprise the exhibition manages to conjure up much of ECM's magic. It centres on a room decorated with red neon lights, where a Jean-Luc Godard film loops endlessly. "To begin with I was puzzled by the idea of an exhibition," Eicher says. "I just let them get on with it. It's very moving."
From Tokyo to Vancouver, ECM is known for its top-notch artists, arty typeface, old-style photos, in short its style. Being an ECM artist allows self-expression in a community no-one would disown. Eicher must read a lot because in an attempt to explain the sort of independent label he wanted to set up, he describes it as "the equivalent of Gallimard, POL [as in Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens], or Minuit". He grew up on the shores of Lake Constance. Discovering jazz turned him into a double-bass player, the linchpin of any band. He could have joined the Berlin Philharmonic or worked as a sound engineer for Deutsche Grammophon, but he preferred free jazz and revolt.
read more: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/mar/26/manfred-eicher-ecm-jazz-review
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