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.)

Keith Jarrett Trio
Whisper Not

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded July 5, 1999 at Palais des Congrès, Paris
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Following his intimate comeback from an illness that might have barred him from the keyboard forever, pianist Keith Jarrett closed another gap with Whisper Not, the first live album with his standards trio in three years. Once the needle of “Bouncin’ with Bud” drops, however, it’s as if there’d never been a skip in the record. Jarrett seems unable to contain the joy of being once again in his element, so that his chording behind Peacock’s first solo feels like a bird circling, waiting to dive: not in for the kill, but for the sheer thrill of his clip. And dive he does, navigating DeJohnette’s thermals with expert care, thus marking a triumphant return to the fold. That said, when later Jarrett comes into his vocal own on “Hallucinations,” he proves that this concert is more than that: it’s a reframing of what always was, and ever will be, a profound talent.

That the trio’s sound is brighter and more focused will be obvious to any longtime listener. There’s a special, scintillating quality to this album notable already in the title track, which opens with a characteristically wood-knotted intro before locking into a welcoming gait. Yet Jarrett positively fluoresces in the more downtempo turns. “Chelsea Bridge,” for one, moves with the magical fortitude of a classic fairytale—only this music is undeniably real. Some tender unpacking from Peacock sets the pianist to the delicate task of sorting those artifacts to heartwarming effect. His vivid approach to melody stands out further in “All My Tomorrows” and “Round Midnight,” both deep gazes inward that light candles in a post-storm blackout: not with fire but with an inextinguishable love for the musical process.

From “Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams” to George Shearing’s “Conception,” the set’s more upbeat turns have a tenderness all their own. On the same note, “Groovin’ High” might as well be the name of a school, for the trio’s performance of this Dizzy Gillespie tune is a master class in exposition. Peacock revels in the sound to which he is able to contribute so intelligently, while DeJohnette elicits visceral exchanges, ligaments to this as-yet-infallible body. “Sandu” further proves why Peacock and DeJohnette comprise one of the most intuitive rhythm sections in the business. They flow so organically, and with such unforced conviction, that it seems impossible to listen outside their spell. Each has his master moment: the bassist’s in “Prelude To A Kiss” and the drummer’s “Poinciana.” The latter is one of the most brilliant in the trio’s recorded output, of which only this concert’s encore, “When I Fall In Love,” has made it to disc before. Even more beautiful than one could hope for, it’s the perfect way to end a new beginning.

Welcome home.

<< Bruno Ganz: Wenn Wasser Wäre (ECM 1723 NS)
>> Herbert Henck: Piano Music (ECM 1726 NS)

Keith Jarrett
The Melody At Night, With You

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded 1998 at Cavelight Studio
Engineer: Keith Jarrett
Produced by Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher

The Melody At Night, With You was my first Keith Jarrett solo album. And perhaps it was in a way for Jarrett, too. It interprets some of the greatest names in the American songbook—Duke Ellington, the Gershwins, Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern, Oscar Levant, among others—yet tells their stories as if we’ve never heard them before. More than just another standards album in absence of his trio, this is the pianist at his purest. He approaches the music as a composer approaches a blank staff: which is to say, with wonder.

At the time of this recording, Jarrett was diagnosed with what was then known as fibromyalgia, a condition that variously affects muscles and nerves, leaving sufferers chronically fatigued. This meant that Jarrett was unable to perform, and for a while his fingers never touched a key. This in the wake of his highly successful Tokyo ’96, released after the affliction had taken root. Yet surely nothing could staunch the pilot light from which he had borrowed so much flame in his career, and it was this, along with his love for wife Rose Anne (to whom the album bears dedication), that informed his return to playing. To call this album intimate would be an understatement, recorded as it was under cover of darkness, gently, sweetly. Skin thus shed, he is a cause without a rebel, open to the vision of love that holds us in our darkest hour.

The album divides songs internally, balancing contradictory impulses in elegant weave. Gone are the transcendent moonwalks of yore. In their place are gravid statements of purpose. From the contact of “I Loves You Porgy,” the physicality of his playing is immediately apparent as every stretch of sinew and bone works itself back into flexible life. Treading a fine line between linear melody and cloudbursts of chords, between song and circumstance, it is the Rosetta Stone for all that issues from its stirrings. “I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good” similarly mixes ecstasy into regret, thereby revealing a contradiction of love that cannot be shaken. Jarrett’s voice emerges, the groan of a waking giant. “Don’t Ever Leave Me” balances uncertainty and conviction by way of his fall-off-the-bone storytelling.

“Someone To Watch Over Me” sits at the fulcrum. An unadulterated gaze into the heart of things, it opens a window with every note and breathes light into the “Meditation” that flows from his touching rendition of “Blame It On My Youth.” With this one realizes, if not already, that something profound is going on—not only for the miraculous tinge of recovery that permeates, but also because of the way it emphasizes the vitality of music, as if it simply must be heard. This would also seem to be the message encoded into “Something To Remember You By.” Here the balance is of silt and crystal, while in “Be My Love” it is tears and laughter. “I’m Through With Love” ends on a bittersweet note, a fleeting coda that is anything but in its scope. Jarrett fleshes out the program with a pair of traditional favorites. In both, he pours his soul in the endings. What with the chromatic appliqué in the descending tail of “My Wild Irish Rose” and the string game of the heart that is “Shenandoah,” there is nothing more to do than close one’s eyes and breathe.

In this respect, The Melody At Night, With You is also a love letter to the songs themselves, for by the end the gift of performance gets lost in the billowing curtain of time, lingering as the memory of a dream, now dispelled in the morning light for an intensity that would otherwise obliterate us.

If this is where Jarrett’s heart lives, may it never die.

<< Charles Lloyd: Voice In The Night (ECM 1674)
>> András Schiff/Peter Serkin: Music for Two Pianos (ECM 1676/77 NS)

Keith Jarrett Trio
Tokyo ’96

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded March 30, 1996 at Orchard Hall, Tokyo
Engineer: Toshio Yamanaka
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Keith Jarrett’s trend-setting standards trio returns to Japan in celebration of its 15th year in this commanding live recording, which from bare pianistic threads spins an up-tempo version of “It Could Happen To You” to kick things off just right. With DeJohnette’s brushes flying and Peacock likewise enamored, free and easy exchanges abound. At this point we’re already hooked, so that “Never Let Me Go” becomes a mantra to guide us through the rest. There’s so much tenderness from Jarrett here, it’s a wonder he can emote with so little vocal breach. This, along with Peacock’s soulful slides, makes for one of the most heartwarming tracks in the trio’s output. Peacock’s early lepidopteran solo in “Summer Night” traces Jarrett’s masterful story arc word for word and shifts into high gear for “John’s Abbey” in a chain of powerful music-making. The trio’s sparkling rendition of “Billie’s Bounce” is a splash of cold water on the face. Jarrett’s right hand slaloms through the left’s gentle punctuations before a concluding solo from DeJohnette puts the icing on this positively exuberant cake. It’s one of a few standout moments from the drummer, who relays hand percussion and hi-hat in “I’ll Remember April” and leads the trio into an organic fadeout. All of which makes the relatively brief “Mona Lisa” a magical moment. Painting with a dark and bar-lit hue, its grandeur is obscured, embraced, inhaled.

Two tracks find Jarrett drawing improvised pieces from the energies at hand. “Last Night When We Were Young” blends into “Caribbean Sky,” while “My Funny Valentine” morphs into “Song.” In each there is a hip nostalgia, Jarrett’s sweeping gestures the perfect foil for every tectonic shift the rhythm section brings topside. Like a mountain shadow looming in the twilight, the latter offers especial solace, standing as a vestige of times we have yet to know. DeJohnette’s quiet rumblings are a distant thunder, even as Peacock’s restless song offers the promise of a new day.

Were it not for the due process this trio brings to every verdict, it might be easy to let these live recordings blend into one another. Yet these are cases without perpetrators, whose crimes are absolved the moment they are committed. Like a virus that adapts to vaccinations, their creativity spreads with an all-consuming will to be felt. Only here, rather than pain and decay, there is affirmation, resurrection, and spirit. We encounter this most vividly in “Autumn Leaves,” which in addition to being one of the trio’s signatures finds delicate balance here through Jarrett’s anticipatory style. Jarrett makes block chords blossom with melody, just as he deepens the single note. In the wake of such marvel, perhaps only this rhythm section can sustain the flame with the skill that Peacock and DeJohnette possess in spades. DeJohnette’s brushes in particular keep up with every roll, while Peacock’s excitations somehow ring contemplatively.

Jarrett and his band mates carry a tune without ever letting us forget that they wouldn’t be here without that tune to begin with. Whether through bold, linear lines or atmospheric touches, the trio puts melody over matter, because in the end melody is all that matters.

<< Bent Sørensen: Birds and Bells (ECM 1665 NS)
>> Schönberg/Schubert: Klavierstücke (ECM 1667 NS)

Keith Jarrett
La Scala

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded February 13, 1995 at Teatro alla Scala, Milano
Remixed at Rainbow Studio by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

February 13, 1995 marks an historic event. It was the first time that Milan’s Teatro alla Scala allowed a jazz musician to headline. Yet Keith Jarrett is, of course, more than his moniker and brings a wealth of music that is no less operatic that what normally graces its stage. For in the same way that opera embodies a flowering intersection of text, acting, and sound, Jarrett unapologetically translates vibration, feeling, and commitment through the lens of the body until their collective prism opens like an eagle’s tail. So begins another of his improvised piano concerts, which in this case augurs a twitch in the skin of space-time until it bleeds.

The melodious unfolding of Part I is a self-fulfilling wish. I cannot help but read shades of childhood into its 45-minute sweep that materializes before our ears. I feel it in the parental awe of the more delicate moments; in the expulsion of air that, with the flick of a pedal, comes tumbling forth with sepia; in the self-referential diamonds sparkling within: shades of Köln, of Gurdjieff (though here he seems to be doing more “writing” than “reading”), of monuments yet to be discovered. Jarrett keeps his hands close together at first, as if to embrace the intimacy taking shape between them, caging a bird whose flight is still a dream. His fingers move in gradations in much the same way that sunlight changes its constitution according to the passage of clouds. As the density grows into a veritable corn maze, Jarrett wraps his mind around a solution and strains that path through the voice. He mixes his breath into those of everyone in attendance, rotating on an axis of love. The feeling of pasture is profound. Like sand between the toes, it is rare and welcome. Finger rolls paint window boxes with the lingering light of day, planting a summer’s worth of flowers in a single cluster. When they wilt, they are but one stem. Caught in the pondering flame that borrows them from sight and reworks their scent into something audible, their continuity is a magic unto itself, a sutra without words. Part I ends in stasis, flipping by gentle degrees the plane of its existence until a full and impenetrable sphere is left behind, which, while translucent, steels itself against the vagaries of interpretation, spinning until it can sing again.

Part II holds a microscope to an eddy of schisms. Brief touches from pedal and tight flowering runs culminate in a fast-forward ball bounce. The music accelerates, is compressed. Meticulously detailed explorations of the piano’s upper register unchain a host of fresh impressions. Particle by particle Jarrett builds a raincloud and flicks its contents in fingerfuls of inspiration. Ever so gradually, his left hand bespeaks a deeper gravity, tumbling over rocks and smoothing into the glassine surface of a faraway lake. There something of life lingers and the kiss of death feels as far away as the horizon. This melts into one of Jarrett’s deepest tunnels of light. He soars in a Gershwinian mode, coating the land with stardust before playing us out to stealthy footsteps, the wake of an unbridled tide.

Jarrett paints worlds of transitions, if not transitions of worlds. Each moment is the fragment of a larger meteorite, whose face can only be heard yet never seen, whose tears can be tasted but never shed. This makes his decision to conclude with a rendition of “Over the Rainbow” far beyond touching. And a rendition is what it truly is, for it must be worked through the body like breath itself until it expands. It is all the more heartwarming for the storm of bravos that drenches its fields before they’ve even had a chance to dry.

La Scala stands out in the Jarrett archive for becoming more absent as its intensity builds. He flushes out unspoken rhythms with stomping feet, painting not external vistas but intimate anatomical diagrams, so that when the chording becomes denser and the music more fully resolved, it feels like dissolution. The relationship between sound and effect, then, is not causal. Just because these styles inhabit the same music doesn’t mean they inhabit the same body. It’s more that Jarrett allows himself to be attuned to their shuffling, inscribing things in real time as if they were self-evident

The brilliance of these solo events manifests not only through the sheer volume of material that flows through him, seemingly translated from some ethereal source, but also through the potency of his melody-making, which at his touch produces a songbook that is timeless and can only be accessed from a place of wonder.

<< John Surman: Proverbs and Songs (ECM 1639)
>> Brahem/Surman/Holland: Thimar (ECM 1641)