Manfred Eicher - Winner of the Honorary Award of SoundTrack_Cologne 10

With his label ECM, founded in 1969, he became world-famous. His recordings with jazz musicians such as Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek and Chick Corea set new standards: Manfred Eicher, the outstanding music producer of our time, will be awarded this year's Honorary Award of SoundTrack_Cologne. On Saturday November 23 at 2:30 pm, Manfred Eicher will be present for a discussion with the Cologne audience at the Kölnischer Kunstverein.

From the very outset Eicher saw himself as a recording producer who played an active role in the musical events in the studio. More than 1.600 albums were produced in this way - among others, ones with contemporary composers such as Arvo Pärt, György Kurtág, Alfred Schnittke, Heinz Holliger, Steve Reich or John Adams. The multiple Grammy-Award-winner took on the music production for films of Godard, Angelopoulos, Xavier Koller and Sandra Nettelbeck.

At 4:30 pm at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, following the discussion, the documentary "SOUNDS AND SILENCE" will take us on a journey through a world of sounds, tones and noise. The Swiss filmmakers Peter Guyer and Norbert Wiedner accompanied Manfred Eicher on his journeys to musicians around the globe. "SOUNDS AND SILENCE" is a musical road movie about the passionate odyssey of a music addict: a search for traces at concerts, in recording studios and backrooms with Arvo Pärt, Eleni Karaindrou, Dino Saluzzi, Kim Kashkashian, Jan Garbarek and others, one which succeeds in the exceptional: to capture the magic of the music. "Anyone who understands film as the school of hearing will have a hard time finding a better one" (FAZ). "The result is an immensely exciting, multi-faceted film, which portrays passion, patience and sympathetic listening in its observation of the strict, searching, stimulating enthusiast Eicher when he - like a conductor - carefully guides both players and recording process, and moulds the evanescent, intangible material of the most variable types of music into a highly successful acoustic presence: into a 'Stay awhile, you are so beautiful'." (TITEL-Kulturmagazin).