Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945 in Allentown, Pennsylvania) is considered one of the most important living jazz piano players. His career started as a keyboardist for Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s, he has enjoyed a great deal of success in both classical and jazz music, as a group leader and a solo performer.

Solo concerts

In 1973, Jarrett began playing totally improvised solo concerts. Albums recorded at these concerts include Solo Concerts (Bremen/Lausanne) (1973), The Köln Concert (1975, one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time), the Sun Bear Concerts (five complete Japanese concert recordings from 1976, originally released as a box of ten LP records), Concerts (Bregenz/München) (1981), Paris Concert (1988), Vienna Concert (1991) and La Scala (1995). The München concert (more than an hour and a half long) has not been reissued on CD, apart from a ten minute section on the :rarum collection which was compiled by Jarrett himself. According to the ECM website however, a reissue is in the works.

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1973 - Bremen - Lausanne - The Köln Concert

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Jarrett commented that his best performances were during the times where he had the least amount of preconception of what he was going to play at the next moment. A possibly apocryphal account of one such performance had Jarrett staring at the piano for several minutes without playing; as the audience grew increasingly uncomfortable, one member shouted to Jarrett, "D sharp!", at which point the pianist said "Thank you!" and launched into an improvisation at speed.

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Another of his solo concerts, Dark Intervals (1987, Tokyo), is not so much a freeform improvisation but more a set of recited compositions, making it a very separate entity to the concerts listed above. In addition to the different form, it lacks the jazzy verve associated with the above concerts, preferring to go down a gloomier, more moody path.

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Solo studio albums of keyboard improvisations include Facing You (1971, his first album for ECM), Staircase (1976), and Book of Ways (1986, clavichord).

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In the late 1990s, Jarrett was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and was confined to his home for long periods of time. During this period, he recorded The Melody at Night, With You, a solo piano record consisting of jazz standards presented with very little of the reinterpretation in which he usually engages. The album had originally been a Christmas gift to his wife.

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1990s - Chronic fatigue syndrome

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By 2000, he had returned to touring, both solo and with the Standards Trio. In May 2005, ECM released Radiance (recorded 2002), a recording of Jarrett's first solo piano concerts following the CFS diagnosis which had threatened his performance career. In contrast with previous concerts (which were generally a pair of 30-40 minute continuous improvisations), the 2002 concerts consist of a linked series of shorter improvisations (as short as a minute and a half, none over a quarter of an hour). In September 2005 at Carnegie Hall, Jarrett performed his first solo concert in North America in more than ten years.

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