I’m sure it has been mentioned before, but this Luminessence series of classic ECM re-releases are actually better than the original releases. One reason is that albums originally released in the 1970s and early 1980s were affected by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) petrol bans in 1973 and 1979, which caused a market shortage of vinyl.

However, ECM somehow managed to maintain its high audio standards (when most of the majors conspicuously did not), albeit some recordings were thinner than these sumptuous 180g vinyl reissues, some of which come in redesigned gatefold album covers, and many with valuable liner notes added by Steve Lake (again, most of the originals did not come with this).

The star of this batch of re-releases is the Jan Garbarek Quartet’s Afric Pepperbird from 1970. It is numbered ECM 1007, and was the seventh ECM album ever released (preceded only by Mal Waldron, an ECM Just Music album, Paul Bley, Marion Brown, Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, and Wolfgang Dauner titles). It is an album of enormous significance, first because here was a recording that captured something of a ‘European approach to jazz’, and more particularly a ‘Nordic approach’.

Secondly, Eicher sent Keith Jarrett a copy of the album as an example of the artistic direction he saw the label following; this act played a role in the pianist coming to ECM. The remarkable thing about Afric Pepperbird is its timelessness. The mutually inspirational interaction of the musicians, all familiar with each other’s playing since their teens, drives the music to an exceptionally high level of creativity – despite the studio being situated next to a lift shaft which meant recording that had to cease when the lift was in use!

Garbarek and Jarrett held each other’s playing in high regard, prompting Jarrett to compose ‘Music for String Orchestra and Saxophone Composed by Keith Jarrett’, with the Strings of the Sudfunk Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart, conducted by Mladen Gutesha on the album Luminessence. Remarkably, it was recorded in the same week (April 1974) as Belonging, the now legendary debut of what became known as Jarrett’s ‘European Quartet’. Key to Garbarek’s performances on Luminessence is the way in which he is completely at one with the composer’s intent, structuring his solos around the needs of each composition, while finding a voice within it that did not alter its meaning. It is a remarkable album and a considerable achievement by two young men, Jarrett then 28 and Garbarek 27.

Although Azimuth – by John Taylor, his then wife Norma Winstone and their close friend Kenny Wheeler – is seldom celebrated to the extent it should be, it is a pluperfect integration of the monophonic trumpet and voice with the polyphonic piano in spontaneously conceived episodes that then produced something new and fresh in jazz. A meeting of acute musical minds still widely admired throughout the world of jazz it is, like Afric Pepperbird and Luminessence, a classic album, each one an essential in any contemporary collection of jazz recordings.