Grammy-nominated producer Eicher goes his own way

NEW YORK — Grammy Award-nominated producer Manfred Eicher has enjoyed some of his biggest successes at the helm of the independent ECM label by going with his instincts as a musician to make recordings other producers would have rejected as commercially unviable. Eicher, a classically trained bassist who recently garnered his ninth Grammy nomination for classical producer of the year, an award he won in 2002, turned around the fortunes of his fledgling label in 1975 by releasing jazz pianist Keith Jarrett’s live spontaneously improvised two-album set, “The Koln Concert,” which has sold nearly 4 million copies, making it the best-selling solo album in jazz history. These include Part’s “Adam’s Lament"; “String Paths,” the first ECM recording dedicated to Bulgarian Dobrinka Tabakova’s compositions, also a Grammy nominee for best classical compendium; Beethoven’s “Diabelli-Variationen” performed by world-renowned pianist Andras Schiff, and “Canto Oscuro,” a recital by pianist Anna Gourari with selections ranging from Bach to contemporary Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina. The New Series is also prominently represented in the recently released six-CD box set “Selected Signs III-VIII,” which Eicher intuitively compiled to create “sound environments” for a multimedia exhibition, “ECM — A Cultural Archaeology,” at Munich’s Haus der Kunst contemporary art museum last winter. “The hope really was that the listener would make new musical discoveries, and also hear even familiar music in new ways.” The exhibition traces ECM’s history back to 1969 when Eicher borrowed $4,000 to record American pianist Mal Waldron’s “Free at Last.” He called the label Edition of Contemporary Music and from the start paid meticulous attention to achieving state-of-the-art sound quality.