Manfred Eicher speaks to music journalist Zachary Moldof in New York City.

Here’s an archival interview with the great Manfred Eicher, founder of Edition of Contemporary Music aka ECM. The interview was conducted in 2015 by our friend Zachary Moldof, a former music journalist who now runs a skateboarding non-profit called Skatebud, and featured in an independently published zine called Foreverglades. It is published here for the first time online.

Eicher, who rarely agrees to interviews, talks about his early musical life, how the label first started, his approach to curation, the ECM New Series, inspirations, and more! In particular, Eicher’s views on building long-term relationships with his artists (some who have been releasing music on the label for decades) and his approach to spontaneity in the studio truly illustrate why he is one of the greatest label founders / producers to ever do it. To date, the label has issued over 1,800 records and doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon…

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How did you get started making music?

My mother gave me a violin when I was 6 years old and she thought I should learn the violin so I did. She used to be a singer for classical music. I played violin till i was 14 and then I discovered I also liked jazz and improvised music and I started to play the bass.

How did you originally come into contact with jazz?

I heard early records like Kind of Blue. Kind of Blue was one very important record with Bill Evans playing with Miles. And I had a friend who gave me jazz records and I wanted to play the bass.

You started playing jazz in your hometown or you had to travel?

In my hometown I learned jazz and I continued to play classical music. I also played chamber music and studied music. I decided to study music in Berlin, and after that I became a professional musician. I studied in Berlin and played in the orchestra just for a year and then decided to become a producer. Someone offered me a little portion of money to start. There was an electro shop in Berlin whose owner had a very good jazz distribution, it was a mail order service. They sold stereo equipment, and he was later one of the founders of NAD. He was interested in jazz and gave us the money to begin with and that was the beginning of 1969 when ECM started.

He funded the label with Karl Hegger from the mail order distribution Jazz by Post. Mr Hegger was the financier, and I was chosen to do the artistic work. That was 1969, and since then we’re still working in the same format. From the very beginning I was actually able to do what I felt I would like to do musically. I had total creative direction. In the beginning there wasn’t much of a concept or a so-called vision, there was just an idea: how can I get into contact with the musicians that I know from before, and the people who are making the kind of music that I like. From the beginning I tried to be clearly oriented in a chamber music approach in improvised music, I tried to be alert to sound quality, and the direction of aesthetic design.

Before this were you doing any other kind of art?

No. But I was in close contact with people from the art field. Many of my closest friends were very good painters. I was always surrounded by either painters, or writers, or theatre people. From the beginning I had an affinity for these art forms as well.

So it was a creative community?

I wouldn’t say a community. I was coming from a small town Lindau to Lake Constance, and these other painters were in the same little village. When I went to Berlin we stayed in good contact. We were talking about the first record sleeves, and how to make it different than the existing covers. We were very young and we were excited to do something else and do something new, and that’s what we tried. I was diving into the music more and more and to our surprise it was also successful, and the musicians seemed to trust the idea and the quality of the recordings. So we continued.

Did you have previous experience or training with recording or were you learning along the way?

I learned along the way to large degree. I was very innocent. I spent some time record- ing with Deutsch Gramophone for classical music as an assistant. I was able to learn from great engineers how they do things. I sharpened the ideas a bit, but technically I had no knowledge. I actually had no knowledge of the technical side, but I knew how to with people from Neuman, and Schoepps. Then I met Jan Erik Kongshaug in Oslo in 1970 for the first time. He was also a beginner like myself–an engineer-and Martin Wieland in Stuttgart. Those were the first engineers I worked with in the beginning. 

“Every great artist has a great intuition and spontaneity, but some people tend to write and revise their writing until they’re finished before they go in the studio to record. But spontaneity and open-mindedness is extremely important to the creative process.”

They were folks you brought on as a producer?

They were all new in the business also. We were all learning together more or less, and finding out, and we had an affinity for each other, so we became a team. In the beginning that was the team every time we made a record. And in New York we would also record with Tony May and James Beggar (?). So we had 3 studios: one in Stuttgart, one in Oslo, and one in New York where I made the first recordings.

In the beginning you were traveling around making music with different artists?

Not only in the beginning but I’m still traveling around making records. We have to go where the music is. Very often we flew musicians from New York to Oslo because it was more practical. We could do a beautiful recording, it’s a good team, and everybody knows the placement for the microphones, and we could be more concentrated on the music because the technical side was already, so to say, pre-discussed. It was a good time to try out new thing. Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette–all the american music–Gary Burton. In Stuttgart with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, or Pat Metheny’s first record. Return to Forever was done in New York with Tony May, and so on.

As the creative director of the label, does traveling around inspire you in different ways?

Of course. I’m a traveler. I love to travel and I like to go and leave my place to do record- ings elsewhere in order to capture the atmosphere around there. It’s very important to bring some kind of inspiring elements into a session. That has to do not only with music, but life, and experience of how things travel.

At what point did it become a formula?

No formula. It was very intuitively decided. We had the music we thought, “Ok now we have to put the record sleeve around it.” What should it be, in which direction do we go? There was a time where everyone had a portrait of the musician, or a quasi-artwork extracted from big artworks. There were good covers, and there were not so good covers. We just tried to make another cover, whether it was good or not I left to the people. But there was something I thought needed to be different from other record labels and so we did it on a very personal basis. The music sounded different, so the cover looked different. So it was slow to happen, but the covers were a consistent way that people identified the label.

And there were two books about the covers of the records. Were those things that other people came to you to produce?

They’re done by a very good Swiss publisher who is known for art books. They asked us if they could make a book on the covers.

So were you giving them direction, or they were just coming to you for approval? 

They had a choice of many covers, and we collaborated with their art director, but it was their final decision what covers were chosen. But we contributed to the direction. It was a mutual agreement which covers were there, but the placement of the covers were the decision of the publisher.

With the covers that were photographs that you did, was that one photog or a group?

We had a group of photographers. From the very beginning we had the idea that photographers should come to the sessions. There was a very good photographer here in the US Deborah Feingold who joined many of our sessions. Then we had people in Europe like Roberto Masotti who also traveled with us to various studios and sessions. So I like to have the photographers come to the recordings. And then the artwork was done independently in our studio with the graphic artist Barbara Wojirsch who I worked with for a long time. She did mostly graphics in the beginning, and later we started using photographs.

Having the photogs and designers sit in on the sessions were you just saying "hey come out check out the music," or were you giving them a prompt that there was something specific that you wanted to happen?

The photographer was very important to capture the momentum, and take the atmosphere in as part of the artwork. It wasn’t just random things, it was very well chosen pictures, and first you have to choose the photographer as well.

How did you first start to have relationships with the artists you were recording? 

There’s not much of a relationship when you have a recording first. You have to just have an affinity to the music.

“There was a time when there was a magic around. It wasn’t coming from opinion makers, but the public themselves, what they like. They went to record shops and checked it out themselves.”

How were you getting connected to the artists?

I met people before when I played myself, or I saw them in concert so I contacted them or I got to know people in a recording session and made contact with them and then later on there was of course a relationship starting and continuing. I like to start with musicians when they’re young, and then develop something together. And most of the recordings that we have done from the beginning, or most of the musicians I’m still in very close contact with. These people made their first recordings with us and they developed something and continued. Some of them left after 10 or 15 years and did something else, but that’s normal. But I was interested in continuously traveling with artistic ideas and musicians who shared these ideas.

Did you set out to say we're only going to do jazz? Or were those the majority of the people you knew?

I also knew classical music because I studied it. But we started with jazz in 1969, and in 1982 I heard the music of Arvo Pärt for the first time and tried to contact him and this was the beginning of the New Series. I thought that we needed to differentiate between jazz and improvised music, and written music. We already had wonderful recordings of Meredith Monk which is quasi-written, written and improvised, or sketched and improvised. There was a recording by Steve Reich Music for 18 musicians, which was his first big release to the world. Then we did two other records Tehillim and Large Ensemble. And we had also worked with John Adams. But when Arvo Part came into the picture I thought, “Now is the time to have a new series.” Then all those artists appeared on the New Series, but Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa was the first album.

In 1982 was it a different kind of dynamic? Did lots of people know what ECM was? Compared to when you were starting out trying to build something, was it different when you were getting in touch with the artists now?

Naturally in the beginning we were known as a jazz label. In the 80s things were very different, we had no digital life, we had no communication like today this kind of over-communicated nonsense that is traveling around was not there. People had a much better focus on everything, and we had a stronger identity. I thought this was a creative time. Beginning with the 60s, these evolutions into new directions were very significant for ECM. I believe it was a good statement when we started the new series with Tabula Rasa. We had a recording with Skeeter Kramer (?) and Jarrett called Fortress(?) that was a link between the people who improvise and the people who listen to classical music. It wasn’t a planned strategic decision to bring them together. It was a mutual decision between two musicians. I think this was a very good beginning and we had a good chance for a good start because we did different music for both channels. We started with great musicians: Jan Garbarek, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, Jack DeJohnette, Ralph Towner, Gary Peacock, there’s so many people I could name. They were really musicians that had something to say, something else to say, something new to say, and very energetic. Then came Gary Burton and Pat Metheny, and from this came another stream with Bill Frisell, and so on. So many things evolved out of this.

Were artists coming to you?

Naturally both ways. Communication always works in both ways. Sometimes a musi- cian would come to us and say, “I would like to make a record.” And sometimes I knocked at the door, or I found a musician for the first time, heard a musician that some- one else brought to a session and became interested in the bass player, the guitar player, the violin player, whatever. You have to have good antennas and understand what is right for your musical direction. And I think they were beautiful things to do.

Besides travel, what are some things that inspire you?

Traveling is only one thing. The most inspiring thing is to get in touch with what I’m involved with. It’s movies, it’s books, it’s music naturally so what inspires me is life. Just to get to see things, and listen, and develop things.

What are some of your favorite cities to visit?

New York is one of them. There are many good cities. I love to be in Paris, or Barcelona,

or somewhere far in the north in Estonia. Many places.

Do you seek out certain things in these cities?

No. I’m very spontaneous and intuitive. I’m not looking for anything. I just walk a

and see where I like it, and then I sit for a while.

Do you find places you like and return to those places?

Yes exactly, I often don’t look around for other places. I return to those places and feel

good there.

What are your favorites in New York?

It’s difficult because there’s many.

How about on this trip?

This trip is difficult, it’s very busy with work. I got here Saturday, and Saturday I have to fly back.

Do you always stay here?

I always stay at this hotel because it used to be an Air France hotel. I flew Air France a lot in the 70s and 80s, and since then I’m here. It works because the location is easy. 53rd is the studio, 57th is the hotel. I can walk the whole time, and it’s close to the park.

Where do you live?

I live in Munich.

Do you walk at home?

If I have the time I walk around, but I also go to my home town on the Lake of Constance. It’s a beautiful area with a large lake and mountains. Now and then I go there.

Have you seen any good movies lately?

Not lately I must say. Lately I’ve been watching older movies by Bresson like Balthazar. I tend to like these movies a lot. And I’ve realized how much inspiration they gave me.

Do you ever worry about what you're gonna do next?

No. I don’t worry about anything really. I just try to get my schedule in order to do what I have to do and sometimes it’s a bit too intense with the traveling. But when I’m in a city and start working, and I’m diving into this work, and then it’s done I’m coming out of it again and have a little fermata a power (?) and go to the next project. and I like to work with contrasting things so that the projects aren’t that similar. I don’t want to fall into a pattern of routine. I work against that kind of schema.

How much time do you think you spend at home each year vs. away working? 

I’m travelling very often. I travel a lot and my intervals in Munich are only a few days. I’d like to be there more often, but I have to travel a lot in order to do what I’m doing.

Are there any projects that really stand out to you?

I’ve been doing this since 1969. I’ve produced more than 1,500 records. Each record has its own story. There are many good memories, or there’s something to reflect on. It’s difficult to pick out one because there’s many that have a special memory around them.

But there are many recordings we made that set a certain trend and that was the good thing that we were not following already existing trends, but sometimes we were able to create them and set them. And so many people followed these kinds of things and influenced things. That’s not a bad thing in retrospect.

When you start a trend, as it becomes more popular and people pick up on it, have you already started doing something else?

Yes. But, the word trend is not exactly what I meant. I just meant we have done recordings that nobody has done before. And often other people try to find out why they’re successful, and in which ways they can learn from them. It’s a normal thing that every- one is doing. Now, I often realize that we’ve brought musicians together that never played together before, and it worked, and now other people have taken that risk as well, so that’s a good thing to see. It’s not important in terms of public success, it’s important as an artistic statement that radiates to other musicians and other artists in other fields, and they capture this moment and realize that there’s something there that has meaning for their own work. Such as Arvo Part, who influenced and inspired Gerhard Richter, and vice-a-versa. So I’m happy to hear that these connections are happening. And because it comes from consistent work on a theme and a subject that needs to be developed. Arvo Part was entirely unknown when we came out with Tabula Rasa in 1984. No one heard about Arvo Part as a composer so there was quite an inspiring moment for us to see how much these kinds of things did in all the years to come. It was like following a meteor- oid from the sky because something was there that was unheard of for these times. So then later people found out, and you think about Arvo Part today: he’s the most played composer in concerts of this time. So that’s something.

And when you think about Keith Jarrett and how many people he has influenced. He can set up concert in Europe with 3 weeks advance notice and sell out the halls, and when he travels around for solos it’s such a remarkable artistic evolution that he started. And we started together in 1970 and we’re still working together like the beginning in the sense of he has never changed his music into fashionable or trendy musical ideas be- cause he was such a great artist from the very beginning developing his playing and his vision. Then I can look back and say something was done in the right way.

“Everybody thinks they can make everything now. They can make pictures with an iPhone and they think they’re Cartier-Bresson. And yes, it can be done like this, but there is a big difference when you look at quality.”

What do you think is the value of risk and spontaneity in the creative process? 

I think the value is that every great artist has a great intuition and spontaneity, but some people tend to write and revise their writing until they’re finished before they go in the studio to record. So then there’s less spontaneity in the music, but then there’s spontaneity in decision making, and in the risks we’re taking. But spontaneity and open-mindedness is extremely important to the creative process.

Do you think that translates to how you run ECM? The same value of risk and spontaneity?

Yes. You see something and decide on the spot sometimes. If you have momentum and say “I like that, I’d like to do more with that.” That’s very important if you have that kind of flexibility, and independence. You also need a budget for doing every project so you have to really think about it very carefully. Times are not so good these days. All the digital toys, facilities, and craziness I believe this digital time is extremely difficult. Especially for our genre of music. It’s about quality of sound, quality of distribution, quality of communication. It all became much more difficult. People think it’s much more easy but it’s much more difficult to find the people that you’re looking for. It’s extremely difficult.

It used to be so important to go to a book shop or a record shop and have someone there that understands what they’re doing. Someone who was inspired by the music or the books. A person who had an affinity for the works, and could identify you when you come to the store, “Ah maybe he would like to hear this better than that, and she would probably read this book instead of that.” This is missing today. You have no dialog any- more. The dialog is virtual. You have the dialog with all of these toys, and there’s too much traffic in everything and you’re bombarded. To go in a music shop, to listen to music, and to go home with records is a beautiful thing.

I think the large record companies are responsible. They destroyed all the distribution. Here in the US, instead of trying to help the good shops survive they decided to go to digital distribution and so we’re struggling. There’s only Amazon, iTunes, and a few other aggregators. There’s no shops anymore. In Europe we have some shops where you can still go and talk to people, and compare the music before you buy it. We have great shops in Berlin, and Munich, and Paris. Here in the US it seems like there is a renaissance happening. People are starting to value record shops again. But it will not be able to come back to what it was. Marketing and promotion has a totally different meaning, and it’s much more difficult to communicate what you do in the music field because everything looks the same, everything sounds the same, everything is promoted the same way.

When I think about how little space there is for music in the New York Times or other papers, it’s a big change over the years. I’m quite disillusioned. In the old days the press were alert to a lot of things in a different way than today. Less of the sensational, more quiet stuff. And also there was a time when there was a magic around. It wasn’t coming from opinion makers, but the public themselves, what they like. They went to record shops and checked it out themselves. Now we are all dependent on these opinion makers who have their opinions strongly offered and don’t write about things they don’t like. They only write about the things they like. It’s natural, but it’s not the best information. How can you find out what there is if you have no visibility any more?

Radio stations were extremely important also in order to hear music in long forms, hear a whole symphony, and don’t segment it. Like on spotify there’s a salad-like offering, but there’s no concept of form, no concept of dramaturgy, there’s no concept of landmark albums. If you buy a book you read it from beginning to end. The writer has thought out how it starts and how it ends. In the music field people think they can just cut in wherever they like. If you make an album you spend a lot of time on the sequencing. How it starts and how it ends is very important, where the silence appears, and all those kinds of things. If that’s not possible anymore, if I can’t offer that to people, how can you find out how the album was intended to be?

I don’t want to be on Spotify until it’s clear that dramaturgy is respected. I want to set our conditions too. We’re not streaming. It’s also unclear to me how the income is distributed, it’s not clear how this developed. Until I have a better understanding, and a better solution for how this can be done in a satisfying way we won’t join. You can subscribe for $10 per month to music. Go to your grocery shop, try to make an arrangement like this in any other marketplace. Can I obtain everything? Yes, but you have to pay depending on what you buy. Would you ever think that any kind of marketplace would offer you a deal like that. Why do we have to ruin music by giving it for free, or for very little money?

If you’re not participating you’re not part of the world anymore. We need to reset musicians, smaller labels, all the way up to the big labels. We have to think about how to reset so that the artistic demands and needs are met. We spend so much time before we make the music, and we spend a lot of money making the record trying to make it sound as good as possible, to make a very special sound sculpture. Why is it then, that the sound is diminished and should be given away almost for nothing? Why is music the victim? Because some people made the wrong decisions at the wrong time.

Everybody thinks they can make everything now. They can make pictures with an iPhone and they think they’re Cartier-Bresson. And yes, it can be done like this, but there is a big difference when you look at quality. There’s a big difference why certain artists, or authors have something to say that no one else is saying. It doesn’t come out of the blue. It’s work, it’s genuine work and genuine artistic desire, a genuine artistic vision that needs to be there. If everything goes this way I think the mainstream will have a very bad quality and there will be great things around, but if the mainstream comes to dictate everything then we’ll be in trouble.

Do you still find time to play?

No, but I don’t want to play. If I had to play bass I’d have to rehearse a lot. I don’t miss it. I have done so many musical projects with so many musical ingredients that I can contribute. I’m a player without playing the instruments. I have other instruments to play.