There is something wonderfully unhurried about Andy Sheppard’s latest project. Rather than chasing volume, virtuosity or obvious drama, Salt Catchers settles into the spaces between notes — an intimate new trio recording that brings the British saxophonist together with Italian pianist Rita Marcotulli and French double bassist Michel Benita.
Released by ECM on 11 September 2026, the album was recorded in March 2025 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, Switzerland, with Manfred Eicher producing. It is Sheppard’s latest ECM project and introduces a trio whose chemistry is built around melody, atmosphere and close musical conversation.
Image credit: Adam Cuerden, Paolo Fresu, Carla Bley e Andy Sheppard, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Three musicians, one remarkably spacious sound
The most striking thing about Salt Catchers is its instrumentation. There are no drums here. Instead, Sheppard’s tenor and soprano saxophones, Marcotulli’s piano and Benita’s double bass create an unusually open sonic landscape, allowing individual phrases to hang in the air before another player answers.
That spaciousness is very much in keeping with Sheppard’s ECM work, but this is notsimply a continuation of one of his earlier groups. Marcotulli and Benita are musicians Sheppard has known for a long time and worked with in live settings, although Salt Catchers marks the first time the three have recorded together as a collective.
The album contains nine tracks, eight written by Sheppard and one — the beautifully understated “Lawns” — by the late American composer and pianist Carla Bley. The remaining programme includes the title track alongside “Elevation”, “Encantos”, “Draw You In Stars”, “This Too – Three Hills”, “Salgado”, “Those That Left” and “Irene”.
A familiar musical connection
Bley’s presence on Salt Catchers carries particular resonance. Sheppard spent decadesworking with Bley and bassist Steve Swallow, recording a series of celebrated trio albums including Trios, Andando el Tiempo and Life Goes On. “Lawns” therefore placesa small but significant thread of that history inside this new trio.
It also makes Salt Catchers feel less like a reset than another chapter in Sheppard’s long-running interest in lyrical, highly conversational jazz. His ECM catalogue has previously taken him through the exploratory Trio Libero, the Andy Sheppard Quartet and various collaborations with Bley and Swallow. The new recording pares the formatback even further, giving the music plenty of room to breathe.
And Marcotulli is hardly a newcomer to Sheppard's musical world. The pair have collaborated previously, including on recordings such as Koine, On the Edge of a PerfectMoment and Us and Them. Her long experience as a pianist and composer gives the trio another distinctive melodic voice rather than simply a conventional rhythm-section role.
Rita Marcotulli. Image credit: Hreinn Gudlaugsson, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
An album built on restraint
The title track gives the record its centre of gravity, but the overall impression is lessabout one grand statement than a sequence of carefully balanced encounters. ECM describes the music as characterised by melodic beauty, delicate harmony and thoughtful interplay — a description that fits the drumless configuration particularly well.
There is also a sense of continuity in the recording location. Sheppard has repeatedly returned to the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano for important ECM sessions, including Trio Libero and other projects. The hall has consequently become part of the sonic geography surrounding some of his most intimate recordings.
Salt Catchers arrives, then, as a record concerned with detail rather than spectacle. Sheppard’s saxophone remains the unmistakable focal voice, but Marcotulli and Benita are never reduced to accompaniment. The three musicians operate more like three sides of the same conversation — sometimes answering, sometimes shadowing, sometimes simply allowing silence to do part of the work.
For listeners who enjoy their jazz spacious, melodic and finely textured, Salt Catchersoffers another intriguing entry in Andy Sheppard’s ECM journey — and a meeting of three musicians whose shared history finally gets the recording it has been waiting for.