Enrico Rava & ECM: a fifty-year story

On Tuesday 14 July, at 7 PM, HEX hosts a conversation dedicated to the long relationship between Enrico Rava and ECM, with Alberto Riva, and listening sessions drawn from the trumpeter's recent albums for the label.

Among the Italian musicians who found in ECM the space and the care they deserved, Rava occupies a place of his own: the greatest Italian jazz trumpeter, a figure who has crossed decades of music with elegance and rigour.

The story begins in New York, in 1974. Manfred Eicher, who had founded ECM only five years earlier, had heard Katcharpari, Rava's 1973 record, and reached out. They met in a bar, talked for a while, agreed on everything. A European tour followed, then the studio in Ludwigsburg with John Abercrombie, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen: The Pilgrim and the Stars, 1975, Rava's first album for ECM.

A relationship that never really stopped. When, after a long pause, Rava returned to the label with Easy Living, he said he felt at home again. Record after record, up to recent works such as On the Dance Floor and The Song Is You with Fred Hersch, and a new chapter still to come: Corners, with the Fearless Five and Joe Lovano, out on ECM in October.

The evening is part of the cycle HEX is dedicating to ECM, which opened on 18 June and closes on 31 July with a pop-up entirely devoted to the label.