![]() He often accompanied his playing with ecstatic cries and moans. In a live setting, the presence of an audience seemed to propel Jarrett into an orgasmic state of rapture. (At the time it was highly unusual for a record label to record and release an entire tour, but it further illustrates ECM’s dedication to Jarrett, as well as Jarrett’s versatility from one night to the next.) 1,” which blends the bittersweet romanticism of Bill Evans with the precise melodic clarity of Ahmad Jamal (both pianists influenced Jarrett profoundly).Īrguably more beautiful is “Kyoto Part 1,” a 43-minute improvisation that begins as a luminous nocturne and opened Jarrett’s Sun Bear Concerts, a 10-LP box set chronicling the pianist’s Japanese tour in 1976. It’s best represented on the opening side, “Bremen, J– Pt. The performance is riveting from beginning to end, but the opening and longest improvisation, “Part 1,” is magical in the way the music begins tentatively and gradually unfurls to create a richly embroidered tapestry of sound.įor some Jarrett devotees, 1973’s Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne, a 3-LP set recorded in Germany and Switzerland, represents the pinnacle of his improvised work. Ultimately, the resulting double LP captured the pianist at his most mellifluous. Jarrett, fatigued by travel and sleep deprivation, hated the sound of the concert hall’s less-than-perfect piano and played the concert while wearing a back brace. The 66-minute performance was a triumph over adversity. The most appropriate place to begin our journey is with his famed solo recitals, beginning with a selection from 1975’s The Köln Concert, one of Keith Jarrett’s best pieces. For the introduction that follows, we’ve decided to focus exclusively on his exceptional keyboard work. Although he is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, his signature instrument is the pianoforte. The group was prolific and long-lasting, producing some of Jarrett’s most satisfying works during its 26-year lifetime.įor an artist like Jarrett, selecting 20 of his best pieces is no easy task. In 1983, the pianist put together the Standards Trio, devoted to reinterpreting the repertoire of the Great American Songbook. Given the wide scope of his talent and musical interests, Jarrett also ventured away from jazz into the world of classical music, wrote orchestral works, and performed in a variety of different settings. Listen to the best Keith Jarrett pieces on Apple Music and Spotify. While Jarrett continued to play solo concerts, he also simultaneously led two different but equally remarkable quartets during the 70s the avant-garde “American Quartet” and a less outré group comprising Scandinavian musicians dubbed the “European Quartet.” Four years later, Jarrett became a jazz superstar with the release of The Köln Concert, the most successful solo jazz album ever in terms of sales. In 1971, Jarrett began a career-long association with ECM, producer Manfred Eicher’s Munich-based label. A year later, in 1966 – the year Jarrett made his first solo record – the pianist joined saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s groundbreaking quartet, and in 1970, played electric organ with Miles Davis‘ boundary-breaking avant-jazz-rock band. In his late teens, Jarrett attended Boston’s prestigious Berklee School Of Music before moving to New York in 1965, where drummer Art Blakey recruited him for the vacant piano chair in his famous hard bop group, The Jazz Messengers. He started playing piano at the age of three, then appeared on a TV talent show a year later, and gave his first concert at the age of seven. One of the most influential piano players of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is Keith Jarrett, a musical polymath renowned for his lengthy, spontaneously composed solo recitals.Ī child piano prodigy gifted with perfect pitch, Jarrett was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1945. From the jaw-dropping keyboard pyrotechnics of Art Tatum and the percussive minimalism of Thelonious Monk to the melancholy lushness of Bill Evans, jazz has produced many outstanding and unique pianists.
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