ECM

Anouar Brahem (Arabic: أنور ابراهم) is a Tunisian oud (middle eastern lute) player and composer who is widely regarded as an innovator in his field. Performing for primarily a jazz audience, he fuses arabic classical music, folk music and jazz and has been recording since at least 1991 after becoming prominent in his own country in the late 1980s. Brahem began studying the oud at age 10 under the tutelage of Ali Sitri at the National Conservatory of Music in Tunis. In 1987, after six years in Paris, he spent two years as the director of the Ensemble Musical De Ia Ville De Tunis.

Ralph Towner is an American acoustic guitarist. He also plays piano, synthesizer, and trumpet. Born in 1940 in Chehalis, Washington, Towner is one of the most diversely talented musicians of the past half-century, and has made notable recordings of jazz, classical music, folk music, and world music. He began his career as a conservatory-trained classical guitarist, then joined world music pioneer Paul Winter's "Consort" ensemble in the late 1960s.

Gary Burton (b. January 23, 1943, Anderson, Indiana) is an American jazz vibraphonist and composer. Having been self-taught on the vibraphone, Burton developed a style of four-mallet chording as an alternative to the usual two-mallets. This approach caused Burton to be heralded as an innovator and his sound and technique were widely imitated. Burton has composed for and played with a variety of well-known jazz musicians, including Carla Bley, Gato Barbieri, Jimmy Knepper, Keith Jarrett...

The trio of Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz and Michal Miskiewicz is one of the most outstanding contemporary jazz groups. Their friend and mentor trumpeter Tomasz Stańko has said, “In the entire history of Polish jazz we've never had a band like this one. They just keep getting better and better.” It was through Stańko's ECM recording Soul of Things, recorded 2001, that the wider world first had a hint of the capacity of Wasilewski/Kurkiewicz/Miskiewicz.