Chapter II
Story of his discography
1) The beginning: during the 60’s
2) His career as a project leader: in the 70’s
3) The Piano Solo
4) In the 80’s and the “Trio Standard”
1) The beginning: during the 60’s
Keith began performing in public very early. He obtained a scholarship for the Berklee School of Music in Boston where, in 1962, he formed his first trio.
In 1965 he moved to New York, where he recorded with Dan Jacobsby and The College All Stars, then worked freelance with the multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk and the clarinetist Tony Scott.
The following year he became a member of the Jazz Messengers, founded by the drummer Art Blakey, with Chuck Mangione on trumpet, Frank Mitchell on tenor sax and Reggie Johnson on double bass; participating in the 1966 on the album Buttercorn Lady.
In the same year Keith joined with the saxophonist Charles Lloyd's group, where the drummer Jack DeJohnette and the double bass player Cecil McBee were also playing. With the quartet, Jarrett performed everywhere and recorded abundantly, gaining a lot of experience for his maturation.
During its short existence, Lloyd's quartet recorded a total of eight albums for the Atlantic label. But at the beginning of 1968, Charles Lloyd decided to dissolve the quartet, which unfortunately will be lost completely.
Jarrett did not lose heart and recorded the first album under his own name for Vortex: Life Between the Exit Signs. With him the drummer Paul Motian and double bass player Charlie Haden.
When the album was released in the spring of 1968, the trio raised the interest of the critic. Down Beat magazine awarded Life Between the Exit Signs five stars for excellence.
The surprising maturity, convinced Jarrett to continue on the path he had taken after the dissolution of the Charles Lloyd Quartet.
But an offer arrived, that was difficult to refuse: to join the group of the great Miles Davis, with whom he left us memorable recording documents, during the last years of the sixties, such as: Live at Filmore, Live-Evil and Get Up with It. That experience in the field of jazz-rock allowed Jarrett to become famous also among the general public.
Unfortunately the collaboration between Miles and Keith only lasted for the space of the three albums recorded in 1970: Live-Evil, Live At Filmore and Get Up With It. Infact Jarrett didn't like that music, or rather he didn't like that kind of electronic sounds.
2) His career as a project leader: in the 70’s
During the 70s Jarrett was requested by numerous record companies (Atlantic, Impulse, CBS-Columbia and ECM) with which he was forced to record as many as fifty records within less than ten years.
Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett, recorded with the American vibraphonist in the summer of 1970, revealed a remarkable commonality of ideas between the two.
In 1973 the album Ruta and Daitya was released, recorded with his old partner Jack DeJohnette on drums. This was an album of seven duet performances that provided perhaps the last glimpse of the electric Keith Jarrett as he embarked on his famous anti-electronics crusade.
Between 1971 and 1976 the pianist formed a trio, with Charlie Hayden on double bass and Paul Motian on drums, which was soon to be increased with the addition of the black tenor-saxophonist Dewey Redman.
A few years after the birth of the American quartet, the pianist formed, with the support of the ECM, a parallel European quartet made up of Scandinavian musicians: the saxophonist Jan Garbareck, the double bass player Palle Daniellson and the drummer Jon Christensen.
Jarrett's experience in northern Europe seemed to give direction to his piano development. In fact, after having recorded the album The Survivor Suite for ECM in 1977, he dissolved the American quartet to devote himself to the European one, with which he toured the United States until 1979.
In that period he also began to perform as an absolute soloist and in 1980 he recorded, again for ECM, an album for solo piano and symphony orchestra: The Celestial Hawk, three movements written and performed with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Keene in a live concert at Carnegie Hall in New York.
The recorded production left by the pianist from Allentown is more than varied, concerts in piano solo, in trio, in quartet, various sideman formations (Miles Davis, Charles Lloyd), classical music.
On the other hand, Duo albums have been rare in all these years: the before mentioned Ruta and Daitya, and then Jasmine and Last Dance. In the CD Jasmine, published in 2010 by ECM Records, Jarrett returns to play with the double bass player Charlie Haden, and the two Maestros enjoy performing covers of some famous American standards such as For All We Know and Billie Holiday's Body and Soul.
“These are great love songs played by two musicians trying to leave as much of the original message intact as possible. I hope you can hear it.”[1]
[1] Alessandro Balossino, Keith Jarrett: improvvisazioni dall’anima, San Giuliano Milanese, 1996, Chinaski Edizioni, pg.37 “." , translated by the author.
3) The Piano Solo
In the 1970s, in addition to performing and recording with various groups, Jarrett also recorded a number of solo albums: Facing you (1971), Solo Concerts Bremen/Lausanne (1973), Koln Concert (1975), Staircase (1976) and the Sun Bear Concerts (1976), a ten-disc collection documenting much of his tour in Japan; all engraved for the ECM.
Facing You is therefore his first album recorded for solo piano, absolutely one of the masterpieces and one of the most significant albums of the last fifty years having profoundly influenced the pianists of the following generation.
We have already anticipated that Jarrett's collaboration with ECM has produced hours and hours of piano solos without accompaniment recorded live, which found absolute perfection in the Koln Concert.
After Facing You and The Koln Concert, the series of solo albums continues with the double CD Starcase and the colossal Sun Bear Concerts both from 1976, Concerts: Bregenz/Munchen from 1988.
In 1988, from a Parisian performance, the album Paris Concert was taken: 38 minutes of improvisation with typically classical sounds.
Then it was the turn of the Vienna Concert in 1991, according to Jarrett his finest improvisation. And here, in 1995, La Scala, testimony of the first time in which the Milanese theater welcomed a non-classical soloist.
At that time came the illness that kept Jarrett from the concert and recording halls for almost two years. Until in December 1997, as a Christmas present for his wife, Keith played the piano alone and recorded ten songs, ten love ballads dedicated to his beloved Rose Ann. The recording was then released on CD the following year by ECM Records with the title The melody at night, with you.
In 2002 Keith released the double CD Radiance, consisting of 17 parts, recorded live in October 2002 at the Osaka Festival Hall and the Metropolitan Festival Hall in Tokyo.
In September 2005 Jarrett performed at Carnegie Hall for the first solo piano concert in North America in ten years. The following year, the double The Carnegie Hall Concert was released.
In Testament the poetry prevails divided into the 8 parts of the concert of November 26, 2008 in Paris and the 12 parts of the concert in London on December 1 of the same year.
In 2011 the album Rio was released, recorded during the concert at the Theatro Municipal in Rio De Janeiro on April 9, 2011.
4) In the 80’s and the “Trio Standard”
During the piano solo phase, Keith Jarrett was keep playing in ensemble; in 1983 he released an album made together with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette. Thus was born the “Trio Standard”. The name of the group derives from the execution of standards.
Jarrett, Peacock and DeJohnette decomposed the piece into a mosaic where the single solos it was always possible to find the fragments that repeated and developed the basic motif. Standards-Volume I & Volume II and Changes were recorded with this formation.
The success of these albums and the consequent tours consecrate this new trio in the list of historical jazz formations. The concerts were reproposed by ECM in the Standards Live album which summarizes all the best of the trio performed in the concert of July 2 in Paris.
In addition to the publication of reworkings of classic standards, in 1992 the album Changeless was released on the ECM label.
On July 16, 2002 Jarrett, Peacock and DeJohnette returned to France during the 42nd Jazz Festival S'Antibes and Juan-les-Pins at the Pinède Gould, managing to put together a memorable concert and a splendid CD: Up for it.
