ECM and Manfred Eicher receive the National Concert Hall’s lifetime achievement award in Dublin

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Jazz

A woman standing on the stage of the National Concert Hall in Dublin holding the award, among the orchestra’s musicians, as a man in glasses holding a sheet of paper applauds beside a music stand

Dublin’s National Concert Hall has given a special 2026 award, the Special Recognition Lifetime Achievement Award, to Manfred Eicher and ECM Records, the label he founded in Munich in 1969. The hall’s CEO, Nigel Flegg, presented it on 30 October, and cellist Anja Lechner accepted it on Eicher’s behalf. She was the soloist that night in the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir’s concert with the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland.

“For more than fifty years, ECM has championed exceptional artists, fostered musical innovation and created a distinctive artistic legacy that transcends borders,” Flegg said. The hall ties the award to Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

It comes in the middle of the hall’s “ECM 2026” series. So far it has featured Heiner Goebbels’ music (11 October), Craig Taborn, the Estonian choir, an evening billed as “Arvo Pärt at 90” and a double bill of Arcanum and Savina Yannatou with Primavera en Salonico. Vijay Iyer gives a solo recital on 7 November, and András Schiff closes it on 12 December with Bach’s “The Art of Fugue”.

Text by Aina Torrents

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