Manfred Schoof, who was born in Magdeburg, has been regarded as one of Europe's outstanding jazz trumpeters since the mid-1960s. With his quintet and several other collaborations, he played a key role in the development of European free jazz. His album European Echoes, recorded under his own name in Bremen in June 1969, was released in the same year and was also the first LP on the newly founded FMP label. He invited the most important European free jazz musicians, who were still at the beginning of their careers at the time, to join him. In addition to Manfred Schoof (tp), they were the Germans Peter Brötzmann (ts), Gerd Dudek (ts), Alexander von Schlippenbach (p), Buschi Niebergall (b, btb) and Peter Kowald (b). From Europe there were Arjen Gorter (b), Han Bennink (dr) from the Netherlands, Paul Rutherford (tb), Evan Parker (ss, ts) and Derek Bailey (g) from Great Britain, Hugh Steinmetz (tp) from Denmark, Enrico Rava (tp) from Italy, Belgian Fred Van Hove (p) and Irene Schweizer (p) and Pierre Favre (dr) from Switzerland.

This 16-piece all-star ensemble under the direction of Manfred Schoof created a bridge between jazz and free improvisation in a mammoth session in which the artists fully exploited the sonic possibilities of their instruments beyond their original purpose and applied these textures in a jazz context. The result was a half-hour tidal wave of intense kinetic energy with melodic and rhythmic connections that give the chaos an orderly degree of control and overview. A rare and still underrated album within the entire jazz genre.