Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett: Sleeper (ECM 2290/91)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
Sleeper

Keith Jarrett piano
Jan Garbarek tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, percussion
Palle Danielsson double-bass
Jon Christensen drums, percussion
Concert produced by AI Music (Toshinari Koinuma) in collaboration with Trio Records/ECM/Bose
Recorded live April 16, 1979 at Nakano Sun Plaza, Tokyo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Mixed 2012 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Keith Jarrett’s European quartet—with Scandinavian cohorts Jan Garbarek of the reeds, Palle Danielsson of the strings, and Jon Christensen of the sticks—was the missing link to his trio endeavors with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, finding a happy medium between the latter’s standards-based approach and his marathon improvised performances alone at the keyboard. The quartet boasted not only fine technique and dovetailed sense of timing, but also the fruit of its leader’s compositional labors during a period of career-defining development. Representing the pinnacle of five sporadic years, Sleeper documents a 1979 Tokyo show from the same tour that brought us Personal Mountains. That very tune kicks off this set of amethyst originals, Jarrett and Garbarek comprising the perfect hand-tooled leather for D&C’s riffling pages. Their Niagara pulse splashes this April canvas with blistering watercolor, Garbarek close behind as he leads us by the ear into “Innocence.” For this he adopts a folkish quality against support so synchronous, it’s as if it were responding to something as elemental as wind. And Jarrett likewise, as he pours on the syrup of “So Tender.” This unexpected travelogue proceeds at an inviting clip and features resplendent emoting from Jarrett, who manages to brighten even Christensen’s characteristic glitter. Garbarek both shouts and whispers, riding a wave so robust that every lick feels thematic while also trembling at the threshold of Jarrett’s spontaneous pulchritude. So do we proceed, funneling romance into an “Oasis” that can only be filled by a lifetime of love for music. The nearly half-hour take given here is reason enough to celebrate this record. From the opening Spirits-like incantations, infused with wooden flute and gamelan-like percussion, to the uplifting procession with which they end, Garbarek and Jarrett draw shades of gut-wrenching intensity. Despite its length, this track walks an intimate, ritualistic space. Majestic without being magisterial, it touches us like the energy that sustains it and flavors the waters of its namesake with the promise of restoration. “Chant Of The Soil” locks early and doesn’t let go. Bass and drums work like dolphins to keep us from drowning, enlivening Garbarek’s soulful phrasing with conviction, while “Prism” (another highlight from Personal Mountains) finds itself resurrected here in flowing dialogue before the invigorating circle of “New Dance” gives fresh meaning to the encore.

If ever it were possible for a recording to be even more alive than the day it was laid down, this is it—such is the value of its release. In addition to the symbiotic rhythm section, Garbarek naysayers may find themselves knocked on their rears by the exuberant, life-affirming themes issuing from his bell, each fitting snugly in Jarrett’s pianistic relief. A classic before it ever hit the shelves, Sleeper may just be the ECM event of the year and is, as its title implies, a dream to hear at long last.

Listen to samples here.


(Photo by Terje Mosnes)

Keith Jarrett: Vienna Concert (ECM 1481)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
Vienna Concert

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded July 13, 1991 at the Vienna State Opera
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Keith Jarrett

“I have courted the fire for a very long time, and many sparks have flown in the past, but the music on this recording speaks, finally, the language of the flame itself.” So writes Keith Jarrett in the liner notes to a stunning account of his solo improvised performance at the Vienna State Opera in July of 1991. In expressing as much, Jarrett articulates what is so difficult to articulate: that intangible source from which he gathers the energy to emote so freely at the keyboard.

Part I begins in solitude before a clearly rapt audience. Its sweet and comforting lullaby draws a paternal curtain around a prelude for the rolling dream to come. Jarrett digs his left hand into the soil, planting with his right a prairie’s worth of flowers, weeds, and wildlife. It is a plodding journey whose trail is brought about by many feet pulled from the muddy undertow and spun from threads of almost obsessive reflection. The comportment of this music plunges deeper even as it arches its neck ever skyward, arms lost and wings gained. Knowledge of how to use those wings is what Jarrett seems after, for the moment he sets feet to ground, he makes of the world a runway for the soul, tumbling his way into learning. His fingers dance in circles, kicking up a cyclone of activity and opening into a sweeping aerial view. He breaks apart the sun and shows us its inner shadows. In the end: only triumph and rapture, a body torn in two to unify the above and below, showing a harp-like touch in those final breaths. Like an expertly shucked cob of corn, it owes its life to weathered hands and grains hungry for mineral earth.

Part II is more suspended, forlorn and characterized by a watery, Byzantine touch. Jarrett plays the piano here as if strumming it, weaving a fairytale’s spell, light through a window whose glass is molten and alive. Tracing smiles through the sky in a swing built for tintinnabulation, he brands a sunset dotted and dashed by recollection. Quiet houses on the horizon, children’s laughter long-faded between them. Sticks that once were swords hunch into gnarled canes. Jarrett’s unfolding flower reaches its peak of sonic pollination and blends into a folk song from afar, from deep within, from inside and outside, from no one and all of us.

At some point, I’ve learned to stop comparing every Jarrett solo concert to the Köln. If the imagery it inspires in me is any indication, each is its own story. His is not a creative life spent climbing a single peak, but one that, by its end, will have left a landscape filled with them for as far as the eye can see.

<< Heiner Goebbels: SHADOW/Landscape With Argonauts (ECM 1480)
>> Meredith Monk: Facing North (ECM 1482 NS)

Keith Jarrett Trio: Tribute (ECM 1420/21)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Keith Jarrett Trio
Tribute

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded October 15, 1989, Philharmonie, Köln
Engineers: Jan Erik Kongshaug and O. Fries
Produced by Manfred Eicher

No one makes live records quite like the Keith Jarrett Trio, whose inimitable skills and synergy ensure us that every tune breathes with all the life it deserves. As one of the few groups that can draw in a crowd thousands of miles and years away into that indefinable moment of expression, it transcends the confines of the concert hall, of the jazz club, of the audience’s adoration. All of these recede the moment you put this music on and let it fill your own space and time with the love and passion what bore it. We hear this especially in the balladry, of which Jarrett proves an adept exponent in “Lover Man.” Dedicated (as all pieces on Tribute are to those who once performed them, hereafter in parentheses) to Lee Konitz, the piece expands such notions of genre to begin with, unraveling from characteristically somber piano intros a world of sentiment. Peacock is especially notable in his first solo of the night, tracing an outline that DeJohnette is more than happy to color in. Jarrett maintains enviable subtlety in his improvisations, working in a clever nod to “The Girl from Ipanema.” He dances on air, even as he plunges his hands into a watery keyboard and mixes the sediments until they shine. DeJohnette, meanwhile, works wonders with his snare, unfolding a ponderous yet somehow buoyant solo: a drop of melancholy in an otherwise joyful sea. All this in the opening number? Yes, it’s that good.

Such things are de rigueur in Jarrett Land. One could expound at great length, for example, on “I Hear A Rhapsody” (Jim Hall). From the fluid intro and swinging groove it dovetails to DeJohnette’s popcorn bursts, there’s so much to acknowledge for fear of doing the music injustice. DeJohnette and Peacock generally keep the flame low and steady as Jarrett turns all manner of somersaults, each a storm cloud waiting to burst, yet which instead couches rainbows. Down one of these Jarrett slides into a pot of golden applause. “Little Girl Blue” (Nancy Wilson) turns with the grace of a plumed bird bowing into the wind. Peacock again walks that fine line between heartbeat and fluster. The more up-tempo “Solar” (Bill Evans) finds Jarrett working his usual eddies into relief. One really notices the acoustics of the concert space, linking Jarrett’s submissions to the rhythm section’s stellar flip-flopping and moving us seamlessly into the exhilarating, sparkling piece of music-making that is “Sun Prayer.” A quintessential Jarrett tune if ever there was one, one feels in its shape a musical life lived to its fullest. DeJohnette flashes his powers as Jarrett weaves some of his densest pianism yet before baying into a translucent cove, where floats the detritus of a promise so enormous that it cannot help but embrace the world. “Just In Time” (Charlie Parker) delights with its odd timing, which sends Jarrett on a simply unstoppable journey as Peacock rides the DeJohnette train to Smoothville. The trio digs even deeper in quiet stunners like “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” (Coleman Hawkins), “All Of You” (Miles Davis), “It’s Easy To Remember” (John Coltrane), and “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men” (Anita O’Day), the latter graced by DeJohnette’s steam-engine brushes. A highlight in the album’s second half.

From the buoyant piano intro, “All The Things You Are” (Sonny Rollins) puts one in mind first of Gary Burton at the vibes before unleashing a rhythm section aflame, making for one of the trio’s most exhilarating tracks anywhere. More pure Jarrett follows in “U Dance.” This joyous romp seems porous, but would withstand even the sharpest bullets of criticism. A spirited turn from DeJohnette bridges us into the tune’s closing half, where we find ourselves still dancing even as the music recedes into the distance from which it spoke.

I typically don’t read other reviews before writing mine, but in my gathering of information for this one I took a look at the comments on Amazon, only to be shocked at one customer who proceeds to tell us how, listening to “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men” while driving, he (?) became so fed up with DeJohnette’s drumming that he rolled down his window and threw the CD onto the highway. Everyone is, of course, entitled to personal opinion, and my reviews are never meant to be prescriptive, but I find it baffling that anyone could react against DeJohnette so strongly on the basis of such an exhilarating album. Chalk it up to my drumming ignorance, but I daresay that DeJohnette’s is some of the best around. Among other things, on this recording he seems to have upped his snare work to something special in the grammar of his kit. I underscore this point only to prevent potential listeners from missing out on a tremendous experience.

Gorgeous to the last drop.

<< Jan Garbarek: I Took Up The Runes (ECM 1419)
>> Gesualdo: Tenebrae (ECM 1422/23 NS)

Keith Jarrett: Paris Concert (ECM 1401)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
Paris Concert

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded October 17, 1988 at Salle Pleyel, Paris
Engineer: Peter Laenger, Andreas Neubronner
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Arguably the most stunning live recording in Keith Jarrett’s solo archive, the Paris Concert may just surpass its Köln predecessor in the sheer naturalness of its unfolding. The recording consists of three tracks, the first of which is simply dated “October 17, 1988” and clocks in at nearly 40 minutes. The music finds depth in its power to spin a self-contained mythology, in its being a window through which one stares to see bits of self. Over a plodding low F he culls handfuls of nebulae, building towering structures of stone and song, and throwing from them streamers of melodies into the vales below until one of those melodies takes wing by the feathers of sunset. It is soft and pale, able to navigate entire continents with barely a flap, and writes across the sky a message for all: Just listen, and you will see. From a thick octave chain Jarrett hangs heavier and heavier ornaments. The development thereof is rigorous yet caged, seeming to run in place not because it cannot move forward but because it cannot look behind, and blossoms into a sustain-pedaled passage so ineffable that it transcends the boundaries of the concert hall, whispers light into our minds, and holds a finger to the lips of thought—a swansong that begins another life.

Jarrett spins his tapestries as might a skilled filmmaker, at once letting the actors bring their own experience to the project while at the same time guiding their story arc from somewhere off screen. The two epilogues are thus like alternate endings. “The Wind,” by jazz pianist Russ Freeman, opens with a Steve Reichian flourish and glides into a slow and bluesy love affair with shadows. This slow-motion tumble down the rabbit hole of the night ends with the patter of rainfall and leaves us to contemplate what we have just heard. The simply titled “Blues,” on the other hand, takes a standard progression and draws from it colors we never knew it had. It glows at Jarrett’s fingertips, distills the purity of his expressive vision, and gives us the resolution we crave.

A Keith Jarrett solo improvisation is, at its most selfless, a drop into an ocean of feeling far outside the realm of articulation. One feels it in the bones, in the brain, and most importantly in the heart, but always as one part of a thread stretching as far as listeners can see into both the past and the future. We encounter that thread as one might a rainbow: the closer we run toward it, the farther it travels away from us. Only when we look inward do we discover where it begins and ends.

<< Meredith Monk: Book of Days (ECM 1399 NS)
>> Agnes Buen Garnås/Jan Garbarek: Rosensfole (ECM 1402)

Keith Jarrett: Personal Mountains (ECM 1382)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Keith Jarrett
Personal Mountains

Keith Jarrett piano, percussion
Jan Garbarek tenor and soprano saxophones
Palle Danielsson bass
Jon Christensen drums
Recorded in concert, April 1979, Tokyo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Despite being recorded in 1979, it would be a full decade before this jewel of a live recording from Keith Jarrett’s unparalleled European quartet (with Jan Garbarek on saxophone, Palle Danielsson on bass, and Jon Christensen on drums) would find itself sleeved and catalogued at last. From note one Personal Mountains paints melodic vistas of great majesty wrapped in a bow of rarified execution. As throughout, Garbarek’s blustery tone in the title opener proclaims themes with crystal-clear diction across the widening sky of Jarrett’s pianism. Jarrett himself takes an early leap in this outing, riding the rhythm section like a thoroughbred into open fields. He turns night into day with every chord, the fullness of his sound accentuated especially by Christensen’s rolling thunder as he unravels wonder after wonder. Yet even as Garbarek works his chromatic magic for the betterment of something profound, Christensen and Danielsson are given no small spotlight in which to shuffle their dialogue into a hollering tumble. Thus are we jettisoned skyward into an unexpected turn of phrase. Garbarek constructs hang gliders of melody in the thick night, every dip a chance to rise again. Meanwhile, Jarrett sews our hearts into the folds of a time unbound, thus moving us smoothly into “Prism.” Our usher this time is Danielsson, who pulls Jarrett’s ballad energy through a brushed corridor. Jarrett has all he needs from Garbarek to burn the midnight oil with a sparkling tapestry of soloing. His gentle cascades then release us into “Oasis” before Garbarek’s sharply inclined theme breaks the waves. Jarrett is again wondrous, spinning the finest spider’s thread into a wheel of adhesive memories. Offset by Christensen’s vibrancy, he and the others forge a vision for all senses. Jarrett invites us all by his lonesome into the aptly titled “Innocence.” Like a candle that barely trembles in the rhythm section’s sleeping breaths, his playing makes string games of moonbeams with the conviction of a dream. Of the latter we hear but a snippet in “Late Night Willie.” This gentle groove—bluesy enough to have Jarrett whooping all the same—gives us a soulful Garbarek and an overall elasticity which hurls us into an even deeper appreciation for the art at hand.

There is something magical about the pairing of Garbarek and Jarrett that brings out the best in both. And with such fine rhythmic support—and, to be sure, Danielsson and Christensen are as much melodicians as they are rhythmatists—one can hardly ask for anything grander. Although this is a live recording, one would hardly know it from the rapt silence that embraces this music until the audience’s applause breaks the spell.

<< Jan Garbarek: Legend of The Seven Dreams (ECM 1381)
>> Terje Rypdal: The Singles Collection (ECM 1383)

Keith Jarrett: Dark Intervals (ECM 1379)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
Dark Intervals

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded April 11, 1987 at Suntory Hall, Tokyo
Engineer: Kimio Oikawa
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Keith Jarrett weaves a special kind of spell in his improvisations, one somehow connected to a greater humanity, for though the music and playing are ethereal, one is never mistaken that they are anything but earthly. Jarrett is not a mere vessel, but a creative force of flesh and bone whose fingers speak in ways we can only understand without words. This live recording from Tokyo’s Suntory Hall expands that flesh, and feels so intimate it might as well have grown away from others in the cave of his private studio.

In the roiling cascade of light and shadow that is “Opening,” there is much to ponder. At nearly 13 minutes, it is the set’s longest, and sweeps us away in an undercurrent of molten echoes. “Hymn” is a more resplendent foray into Jarrett’s emotional recesses, one that speaks as much to the future as it does to the past while embracing in its tender heart the impossibility of the present. Its light is always flecked with dust kicked up by the footsteps of a lost people whose only shelter is any that may be found. “Americana” breathes with a heaving gentility, one that soars even as it dreams on foot. “Entrance” walks with a gentle assurance onto the stage, trailing a monochromatic veil and finding solace in a skyward glance. “Parallels” is, ironically, the most skewed track on the album and yet also manages in its teetering journey to string a well-anchored tightrope between loss and resolve. “Fire Dance” is a spinning top of exaltation, a hand made of sparks stirring one’s emotional pot until it boils, while “Ritual Prayer” is proof positive of the lifetime’s worth of inspiration Jarrett must have absorbed from Gurdjieff. This piece is rich with spiritual beauty and is one of Jarrett’s most selfless exhalations ever recorded. “Recitative” is another gentle bob on the waters of introspection, a protracted fall into repentant pitch. There is forgiveness in this blindness, for only in the echo of a vibrating string can one feel the light of release.

<< Heinz Reber: MNAOMAI, MNOMAI (ECM 1378 NS)
>> Steve Tibbetts: Big Map Idea (ECM 1380)

Keith Jarrett: Book Of Ways (ECM 1344/45)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
Book Of Ways

Keith Jarrett clavichord
Recorded July 1986 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Trying to describe Keith Jarrett’s alchemical explorations of the clavichord is like trying to describe love: if you’ve never fallen into it, the words of others mean little. All I can do is share and hope my impressions might speak, for the album promises something so ineffable that it can only be expressed in music.

Over the course of nineteen improvisations, Jarrett transcends both the medium and the message in search of something untouched for centuries. He burrows into the heart of this nearly forgotten instrument, seeming to make music as if only after centuries of slumber. By the time he awakes, his body has fused with every molecule of metal and wood, so that he needs only step into a latter-day age, where the magic of technology allows us a glimpse of that anatomy, wavering and fair.

1
Like some vast lute, curled into a withering plant of dedicatory power, it wishes itself clean of all earthly things, finding balance in song where there can be no troubadours to sing.

2
It is a self-sustaining lantern, whose oil is memory and whose flame is the flick of a maiden’s tongue along the edges of speech.

3
It is a scribe in a dimly lit cave, where every note is the scrawl of a quill on cracked parchment, sipping nourishment from an inkwell.

4
It is a taste of birth on the mind’s palette. A tearful wish discarded like so many handkerchiefs along garden paths. A joyful reunion reflected in her broach. A portrait in miniature, forgotten in a decaying drawer next to her brittle volume of poetry. She hums, her throat wound like a string.

5
It is a dream, wistful yet morose, putting a stopper into the night’s hidden vial. There it holds us, ever thoughtful, winded like an errant pageboy cursed with an undeliverable charge.

6
It is a child of time who speaks through dance, our feet its only partners. It looks to itself for guidance, only to touch an anxious moth who hopes the window will melt away, as if its millennia of grime will somehow afford a view of the impossible horizon.

7
It tickles the feet of our childhood, making us laugh in ways we have since denied.

8
It trembles like a plucked string that, once slowed to show every nuance of its warbling activation, finds much to fear in its own echo.

9
It turns to every Baroque master who sat alone at a keyboard and painted the room with novel sounds.

10
It is a percussive message that knocks on every castle door and rattles the bones in its crypt.

11
It is a love letter, a heart unfolded into the map of another heart. A dewy pasture that remembers lovelier days when the torturous end of an age was not upon us.

12
It strums an unmade bed in the hopes of recreating the music that once rustled there, but alas, there is only the lingering scent of a love that can never be washed away.

13
It is a necklace of memories, each bead more translucent than the last.

14
It opens our eyes to the clouds and to the trembling Tree of Life that hangs the wash of history from its boughs.

15
It carries us down an eroded stairway, even as it lifts us to the top of the tower.

16
It is a forlorn carnation, every petal the leaf of a story whose only tether is its maternal stem.

17
It upholds a chivalrous decorum, tilting its hat to the unbroken gait of a faithful horse. Through thick and thin, it has batted neither tail nor eye at knighthood’s unstoppable demise.

18
It is a funereal ode, a pyre burning to its glowing orange roots.

19
It brings us full circle to the avenues from which that first shadow extended before a dying sun.

Not only does this recording show us a book of ways, but it also shows us the way of books, for it teaches us that the written word, like music, is but a stepping-stone to silent understanding.

<< Enrico Rava/Dino Saluzzi Quintet: Volver (ECM 1343)
>> Terje Rypdal & The Chasers: Blue (ECM 1346)

Keith Jarrett Trio: Standards Live (ECM 1317)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett Trio
Standards Live

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded July 2, 1985 at the Palais dis Congrès Studios de la Grand Armée
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Take one look at the thoughtful cover art of this seminal Keith Jarrett release, and you’ll gain immediate insight into what makes his trio click. Each curvaceous line brings a lifetime of movement, of study, and of passion to bear on the music at hand. And with these six standards resurrected to such profound levels, there’s nothing not to like.

Just let the groove of “Falling In Love With Love” have its way, and the quicksand of the trio’s genius has you by the heart. Jarrett is in his element, crying his way through sibilant improvisatory arcs. Peacock surfaces for an engaging solo, Jarrett watching from the sidelines with duly attentive chording before sharing an intuitive stichomythia with DeJohnette. Peacock grabs the spotlight again in “The Old Country,” in which piano and drums spread a subtle launching pad for his low yet adroit flights. Jarrett builds on these, dancing on air through every motivic change before putting the starlight back into “Stella By Starlight.” Ever the sonic chameleon in a world of primary colors, he achieves the musical equivalent of alchemy once his ever-faithful rhythm section dashes in its own mysterious elements. A magnetic bass solo draws DeJohnette’s cymbals like iron filings before ending in a forgiving embrace. “Too Young To Go Steady” receives an absorbing treatment, the band whipping up a soft peak that melts smoothly into resolution. Next is a spirited version of “The Way You Look Tonight,” which unpacks oodles of bliss and shows the trio form at its finest. A whoop-worthy solo from DeJohnette forms an enlivening bridge to the vamp, playing us out into “The Wrong Blues,” which does everything oh so right.

While all the tunes on this album are classic, the untouchable performances make them doubly so.

Beyond recommended.

<< Kim Kashkashian/Robert Levin: Elegies (ECM 1316 NS)
>> Stephan Micus: Ocean (ECM 1318)

Keith Jarrett: Spirits (ECM 1333/34)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
Spirits

Keith Jarrett piano, flutes, soprano saxophone, guitar, percussion
Recorded May through July 1985 at Cavelight Studios, New Jersey
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher

Spirits is more than a jewel in the rough. It is the rough of a jewel. By this, I mean to say that through its hard-won journey Keith Jarrett has peered into the heart of darkness that is life and compressed it into a diamond so honest that no amount of polishing will wear away its blemishes. Recorded at his home studio, then post-processed by ECM engineer Martin Wieland, this is a most personal album of boundless expression. Then again, so is every Jarrett album. The difference is in the instrumentation: an unusual array of flutes, keys, and percussion, overdubbed in various combinations and densities (Jarrett even picks up a guitar, which he treats more like a sitar). Jarrett also sings, wails as if in and of the earth, finding in Nature a single feather plucked from nowhere. Bird-less, it has no recourse to flight, and can only call to a sky it will never know.

Though splashed over two discs in 26 parts, this heartrending session takes breath into the same pair of lungs throughout. Moods range from jubilation to a burrowing pensiveness, but always with an ear attuned to catharsis. The nearly two-hour purge turns repression into a path, beginning deep in the heart of ritual, where drums and flutes tread in place of feet and throats, and ending in the recesses of a Renaissance dream, where shepherds, troubadours, and shamans share their slumber. Jarrett’s occasional chants flirt with the exigencies of articulation, all the while forming steady yet somehow ungraspable touchstones along the way. The expected pianism is kept to a graceful minimum, giving way instead to wondrous ruminations on soprano saxophone and other suspended airs.

In so many other hands, such an album would come across as a trite exercise in tribalism, but in Jarrett’s it emotes with full transparency. By far his most colorful release, it marks a shift in method. Where before he charted every possible recess of the structure at hand, here he allows that structure to build itself around him in a shelter of the psyche. The result is a freestanding insight into the pathos of creation. Probably not the one you’ll want to start with, but by no means a prism to bar from the light of your curiosity.

<< Paul Hindemith: Viola Sonatas (ECM 1330-32 NS)
>> Steve Tibbetts: Exploded View (ECM 1335)