Keith Jarrett
No End

Keith Jarrett electric guitars, Fender bass, drums, tablas, percussion, voice, recorder, piano
Recorded 1986 at Cavelight Studio, New Jersey
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
An ECM Production

There seems to be no end to Keith Jarrett’s output, so what better title for this archival gem? Recorded directly to cassette in his personal studio in 1986, No End is in many ways the secular counterpart to Spirits, produced under similar circumstances not a year before. Where that earlier album was something of a catharsis for its one-man band, here the emphasis is on essentials. What’s most delightful to hear in this recording is the foundational emphasis on rhythm. Jarrett has always had a flair for syncopation, and here we can experience that impetus in all its naked precision, conveyed by means less mitigated that we’re used to hearing. Foremost in his toolkit are electric guitar, bass, and drums, with hardly a piano lick in earshot. Girded by a refreshing sense of freedom, an inexhaustible creativity that simply must manifest at the intersection of body and instruments, it spins the wheel consistently and spontaneously.

Because so much music has followed this album, it is perhaps inevitable that any comparisons should be retroactive. The opening section, for example, may put one in mind of John Zorn’s film soundtracks—notably downtempo segments of The Big Gundown and Notes on Marie Menken—both in terms of its fecund atmosphere and because of a penchant for Phrygian scales. Gunslinging surf guitar and steady percussion add ornament and charisma. Likewise the mournful sweep of Part XII, which evokes a brand of desolation not out of place in a spaghetti western. Jarrett’s Gibson electric forges a beautiful scene. Indeed, his picking is the loveliest revelation of the album. Slack-jawed and expressive, it emotes with commitment.

There are many details to be savored throughout, such as the vocoder-ish backing vocals, the complementary tribal beats, the occasional deep pocket (e.g., Parts VII & XVI), and the touch of blues that creeps in to finish. Although the piano makes a noticeable appearance only halfway through, Jarrett brings a pianistic approach to the entire assembly, as if each instrument represented a finger in the symphonic economy of his keyboarding. Psychedelic touches are few and far between, blooming only in the more protracted grooves and instances of staggered layering. In the latter regard, Part XVIII is a welcome departure from the regularity that surrounds it, an altered state unto itself.

The beauty of No End is its possibility. It could soundtrack a spy film, for at times its motives seem playfully clandestine. It could just easily stand alone, as here: a valuable experience for the Jarrett enthusiast. The free-flowing jam aesthetic and nostalgic patina of the home recording are in full effect. Tape hiss and distorted max-outs emphasize the fact that this music has come to us out of time and context, wearing the clothing in which it was buried and which it wears under the spotlight of this new millennium.

More of a want than a need for the collector’s shelf, No End might have achieved its purposes in one disc instead of two. Either way, its length serves to emphasize a consistency of vision. As Jarrett avers in his liner notes, “Music is the strongest medicine I know,” thereby dismantling any critical ammunition for what ultimately amounts to an honest slice of sonic pie from one of the greatest musical minds of our time.

(To hear samples of No End, click here.)

Keith Jarrett
The Carnegie Hall Concert

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded live September 26, 2005
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Executive Producer: Manfred Eicher

After a long preparatory breath, the experienced gardener digs his fingers into the soil: this is what it feels like to put on Keith Jarrett’s The Carnegie Hall Concert. The ensuing harvest offers a veritable rainbow of sonic fruits and vegetables, each with its distinct shape, texture, and flavor. Such is Jarrett’s post-millennial approach, which finds just as much depth in the self-fulfilling vignette as in the arcing narratives of years past. From heartaching lyricism (Part III) to mystical convolutions (Part IV), elegiac resolutions (Part V) to anthemic revelries (Part VII), the language of contrast is alive and well.

The concert’s most intuitive moments emerge in the latter half, wherein Jarrett makes a landscape audible by touch alone. Part VIII evokes the undulating line of purple hills. Part IX is the campfire at field center and the dancers who make the most of its warmth in the encroaching twilight. The tenth and final improvisation is a culmination of impending forces, a smoothing of wrinkles in the bed sheets of experience that leaves a most pristine surface for slumber.

The strangely satisfying mix of parallels and cross-hatchings one can expect to hear in any Jarrett solo program are all here to be savored, an expectation that bears out naturally for avid listeners, enchantingly for newcomers. Either way, Jarrett seems less interested in surprising anyone—himself least of all—throughout this nonetheless monumental performance. Rather, he bathes in the music’s unfolding as might a child watch clouds go by overhead. What we have, then, are readings of amorphous shapes: faces, figures, and objects that fuse and separate, congeal and dissolve.

Such depths might have been enough, but Jarrett felt it appropriate to append five encores, together an autobiographical compendium that cuts across his career like a knife through cake. Each original layer reveals something true and undying within him. “The Good America” is the sweet icing, beneath which “Paint My Heart Red” beats with a pulsing stratum of fruit. “My Song” references the classic 1978 album of the same name. The enthusiastic applause discloses the surprise of recognition. The audience has been given a gift of long ago, a nostalgic prism that still refracts for all who lend an ear. The downright edible vamp of “True Blues” makes for a rich, chocolaty foundation, while the concert’s only standard, “Time On My Hands,” lights the candles on top, inhales, and lets the ensuing blast of adoration blow them out.

The Carnegie Hall Concert is, of course, just one of many wondrous pieces of an unparalleled archive. Ultimately, comparisons to Jarrett’s influential appearances in Köln, Tokyo, and Milan need not apply. Each is its own animal with unique cadences and features, and together they nurse an ecosystem of timeless ingenuity.

Keith Jarrett
Paris/London – Testament

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded in concert
November 26, 2008 at Salle Pleyel, Paris
December 1, 2008 at Royal Festival Hall, London
Producer: Keith Jarrett
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

“Communication is all. Being is all.”
–Keith Jarrett

Since the release of his endlessly influential live record The Köln Concert, Keith Jarrett has done more than any other at the keyboard to clarify improvisation’s infinite shape. When basking in the music that pours from his fingertips, it’s easy to wax poetically from one’s armchair about the effortless brilliance with which he seems to play. Yet Jarrett wants us to know that the process is not all intuition, for often—as is true of the concerts documented here—the physical and emotional challenges are intense, unrelenting. In his liner notes, he lays out the taxing nature of his efforts, saying, “It is NOT natural to sit at a piano, bring no material, clear your mind completely of musical ideas, and play something that is of lasting value and brand new.” He further mentions that the role of the audience has always been of the “utmost chemical importance” and is more apt to change the dynamics of the performance than any technical concerns, such as those that permeate the lore of Köln. Whether it’s a concert hall, a microphone, or the ether itself, every adlib needs an ear.

On November 26, 2008, Jarrett put this theory into practice when he took the stage at Salle Pleyel in Paris for the first of two ad hoc solo concerts. Although a noticeably bipolar performance, it also draws many intersections of contact between extremes. Over a glorious 70 minutes of music in eight parts, Jarrett works an asana of fixation and letting go and touches hand to heart in sporadic gestures of deference. Like water set to boil but which is turned down at the last moment, it skirts the edge of conversion from liquid to gas. At some moments Jarrett’s spontaneous motifs funnel into a single dream of flight, realized in his unbridled feeling for thermals that only he can see. Such depth is palpable in Parts III and VIII, both of which make sweeping peace of untapped wisdom, now opened like a book to reveal an as-yet-unwritten past. With every shake of the snow globe, Jarrett seeks new patterns. Whether in the mournful procession of Part V or the jazzier syncopations of VI, we can feel a working-through that gnaws the edges of philosophy. The final section synthesizes what came before. At once elegiac and scintillating, it finishes with a deluge of ephemeral signifiers.

The London concert, recorded five days later, is clothed by even more intense variety. One can not only hear but feel the debates raging inside Jarrett, who with Part I renders the rib cage a ladder to radiance and catches an eddying wind in Part II, kicking up leaves and dry soil. In this concert, too, the sheer breadth of Jarrett’s sweep is staggering in a way rarely heard since the early concerts. From Part III to the concluding XII, every step of this journey flirts with optimism, though gnarled eyes mark the wood grain periodically along the way. Gospel progressions infuse spiritual longing with living resolution, fingers digging into every chord like hands into soil, while Parts VII and X vamp across vales of blues. In likeminded vein, Parts IV and VIII hark to the divine tracings of Köln in some of his most unmitigated playing since that fateful performance. Sparkling and transcendent, they cascade over themselves in a constant rebirthing process. This is what lies at the heart of his craft: a total oneness with the elements. It’s like discovering the inner workings of a clock you once believed ran on magic, only to realize that in those gears lies the deeper magic of the ingenuity that set them running.

No such program would be complete without some jazzier flashpoints, and these we get in Parts VI and XI, both of which feel like ballads lost from the American Songbook that have wandered into view after a long redemption. Though haggard, they convey perseverance through their melodies. Close to elegies but ultimately wishes fulfilled, they touch with a caress that feels like mountains and sky.

Most impressive about the Paris and London concerts is their scope. Jarrett’s hands wander independently of one another while also keeping at least an artery pulsing between them. Jarrett knows the piano like he knows his own voice; for him they are one and the same. He does not surrender to what he creates, for surrender implies an advantage of which to be taken. The beauty of it all is that one need listen only once to live off the memory for a lifetime.

(To hear samples of Paris/London – Testament, click here.)