Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett (Allentown, Pennsylvania, May 8, 1945) is an American jazz pianist and musician.

He is one of the masters of avant-garde jazz, whose most outstanding production is a series of improvised pieces recorded live in Cologne, Paris, Milan, Vienna, Tokyo and other cities. These are probably his most famous works, but he is undoubtedly a huge virtuoso. Very versatile, Keith has also interpreted music by European Baroque authors such as Johann Sebastian Bach or Georg Friedrich Händel, alone or in various line-ups that include, among others, the baroque flute virtuoso Michala Petri, contemporary minimalist authors such as Arvo Pärt or contemporary jazz players such as Miles Davis, with whom he began his career, Chick Corea, Jan Garbarek, Gary Peacock, Charlie Haden and Jack DeJohnette among others.

He also performs pieces for classical piano, clavichord, harpsichord, and organ. He has recorded several classical music albums, interpreting works by Bach, Händel, Mozart and Shostakóvich, among others.

Jarrett has a reputation as an eccentric perfectionist and often vocalizes expressively while playing. His music agent is Steven Cloud.

After suffering two strokes in 2018 that left him with sequelae, he announced his retirement from acting in 2020.

Early Years

Keith Jarrett was born on May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to a mother of Hungarian descent and a father of French or Scotch-Irish descent. He grew up in suburban Allentown with significant early exposure to music.Jarrett possesses perfect pitch, and displayed prodigious musical talents as a young child. He began piano lessons just before his third birthday, and at age five he appeared on a television talent show hosted by swing bandleader Paul Whiteman. Jarrett gave his first formal piano concerto at the age of seven, playing works by composers such as Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Saint-Saëns, ending with two of his own compositions. Especially encouraged by his mother, Jarrett took intensive classical piano lessons with a series of teachers, including Eleanor Sokoloff of the Curtis Institute.

In his teens, as a student at Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, Jarrett learned jazz and quickly became proficient in it. In his teens he developed a strong interest in the contemporary jazz scene; with early inspired Dave Brubeck. At one point, he was offered an offer to study classical composition in Paris with the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger—an opportunity that pleased Jarrett's mother but which Jarrett, already leaning towards jazz, decided to turn down.

Following his graduation from Emmaus High School in 1963, Jarrett moved from Allentown to Boston where he attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music and played piano in local clubs. After a year he moved to New York where he played at the legendary Village Vanguard.

Psychedelic stage with Charles Lloyd

In New York, Art Blakey hires Jarrett to play with the Jazz Messengers. During a show with that group he was heard by Jack DeJohnette who (as he recalled years later) immediately recognized the talent of the unknown pianist and his unstoppable flow of ideas. DeJohnette talked to Jarrett and soon recommended him to his own bandleader, Charles Lloyd. The Charles Lloyd Quartet had formed shortly before and was exploring open and improvised forms while building soft melodies, and they moved in the terrain that was also being explored, albeit from a different stylistic background, by some of the psychedelic rock bands of the coast. west. Their 1966 album Forest Flower was one of the most successful jazz recordings of the mid-'60s and when they were invited to play The Fillmore in San Francisco, they won over the local hippie audience. The Quartet's tours throughout America and Europe, including in Moscow, made Jarrett a well-known musician in underground rock and jazz circles. He also laid the foundation for a lasting musical bond with drummer Jack DeJohnette (who also plays piano). The two would cooperate in many contexts during their later careers.

In those years, Jarrett also began recording his own tracks as the leader of small informal groups, at first in a trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Jarrett's first album as a leader, Life Between the Exit Signs (1967), was released on the Vortex label, followed by Restoration Ruin (1968), which Thom Jurek of Allmusic.com described it as "it is regarded primarily as a curio in their catalogue". Not only does Jarrett barely play the piano, but he plays every other instrument on what is essentially a Folk-rock album.. Unusually, he also sings.Another trio album with Haden and Motian, titled Somewhere Before, followed later in 1968, this one recorded live for Atlantic Records. The Charles Lloyd quartet with Jarrett, Ron McClure and DeJohnette came to an end in 1968, after the recording of the Soundtrack, due to disputes over money, as well as artistic differences.

Stage with Miles Davis

Keith Jarrett playing in the Miles Davis group

Jarrett was invited to join Miles Davis' group after the trumpeter heard him in a New York club (according to another account by Jarrett, Davis had brought his entire band to see the trio's own tour performance Jarrett's in Paris—they were practically the only audience, which made Jarrett cringe). During his stint with Davis, Jarrett played Fender Contempo electronic organ and Fender Rhodes electric piano, alternating with Chick Corea; they can be heard side by side on some recordings from the 1970s, for example at the August 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, which is preserved in the film Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue and at Bitches Brew Live. After Corea left the band in 1970, Jarrett often played electric piano and organ simultaneously. Despite his growing dislike of amplified music and electric instruments within jazz, Jarrett continued with the group out of respect for Davis and his desire to work with DeJohnette. Jarrett has often cited Davis as a vital influence, both musically and personally, on his own thinking about music and improvisation.

Miles Davis Group with Keith Jarrett - 1971

Jarrett is featured on several Davis albums: Miles Davis at Fillmore: Live at The Fillmore East, The Cellar Door Sessions (recorded December 16-19, 1970 at the Cellar Door Club in Washington D.C.). His keyboard play excels in "Live-Evil". Jarrett also plays electric organ on "Get Up with It". Some other tracks from this period were released much later.

The quartets of the seventies

From 1971 to 1976, Jarrett added saxophonist Dewey Redman to the existing trio with Haden and Motian (with whom they previously produced one more album as a trio, called The Mourning of A Star for Atlantic Records in 1971). The so-called "American quartet" he was often complemented by an extra percussionist, such as Danny Johnson, Guilherme Franco or Airto Moreira, and occasionally by guitarist Sam Brown. The members of the quartet played various instruments, Jarrett often playing soprano saxophone and percussion, as well as piano; Redman the musette, a Chinese double-reed instrument; and Motian and Haden on a variety of percussion. Haden also produced a variety of weird, percussive sounds with his acoustic bass, even running it through a wah-wah pedal for one track (& # 34; Mortgage on My Soul & # 34;, on the album Birth ). The group recorded two albums for Atlantic Records in 1971, El Juicio and Birth; another on Columbia Records called Expectations (which featured Sam Brown's guitar, plus strings and metal arrangements and for which Jarrett's contract with the label was terminated within a month of its release).

Byablue and Bop-Be, albums recorded for Impulse!, feature mainly compositions by Haden, Motian and Redman, as opposed to Jarrett's own, which dominated the previous albums. Jarrett's compositions and the strong musical identities of the group members gave this ensemble a very distinctive sound. The quartet's music is an amalgamation of free jazz, straight post-bop, gospel music, and exotic, Middle Eastern-sounding improvisations.

In the mid to late 1970s, along with the American quartet, Jarrett led a "European quartet" which was recorded by ECM. In 1974, after working with Gus Nement, Jean François Jenny-Clark and Aldo Romano, he created a new quartet in Europe with saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen. They played in a similar style to the American quartet, but with many of the avant-garde and Americana elements replaced by the European classical music and folk influences that characterized the work of ECM artists at the time. From 1974 is My Song, one of his most popular albums. That same year he recorded a session for string instruments together with the Südfunk Symphony Orchestra.

Jarrett became involved in a legal dispute after the release of the Gaucho album in 1980 by the American rock group Steely Dan. The album's song, credited to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, bore resemblance to Jarrett's, "Long As You Know You're Living Yours", from Jarretts European quartet 1974 album Belonging. When an interviewer for Musician magazine pointed out the similarity, Becker admitted that he loved Jarrett's composition, and Fagen said that they had been influenced by it. After his comments were published, Jarrett sued them, and Becker and Fagen were forced to add his name to the credits and include him in the royalties.

In 1976 he recorded as an organist at the Benedictine abbey of Ottobeuren.

Piano Solo

Jarrett recorded a few solo pieces under the direction of Miles Davis at the Washington music club The Cellar Door in December 1970. These were done on electric pianos (Rhodes and Contempo), which Jarrett did not want to play on. Act. Most of these recorded sets were released in 2007 at The Cellar Door Sessions with four Jarrett improvisations.

Jarrett's first album for ECM, Facing You (1971), was a solo piano performance recorded in the studio. He has continued to record piano albums in the studio on and off throughout his career, including Staircase (1976), Invocations / The Moth and The Flame (1981), and The Melody at Night, with You (1999). Book of Ways (1986) is a studio recording of harpsichord solos.

Studio albums are modestly successful releases in Jarrett's catalogue, but in 1973, Jarrett also began playing impromptu solo concerts, and it is the popularity of these voluminous concert recordings that made him one of the leading artists. best-selling jazz songs in history. The albums released from these concerts were Solo Concerts: Bremen / Lausanne (1973), to which Time magazine gave its 'Jazz Album of the Year' award; The Cologne Concerto (1975), which became the best-selling piano recording in history; and Sun Bear Concerts (1976) - a 10-LP (and later 6-CD) set..

Another of Jarrett's solo concertos, Dark Intervals (1987, Tokyo), had less of a free-form improvisation due to the brevity of the pieces. Sounding more like a set of short compositions, these pieces are nonetheless totally improvised.

Keith Jarrett in Antibes - 2003

After a hiatus, Jarrett returned to the solo improvised concerto format with the Paris Concerto (1990), Vienna Concerto (1991) and La Scala (1995). These later concertos tend to be more classically influenced than the earlier ones, reflecting his interest in composers like Bach and Shostakovich, and are for the most part less indebted to popular genres like blues and gospel. In the Vienna concert notes, Jarrett named the performance his crowning achievement and the fulfillment of all he aimed to achieve: "I have long courted fire, and many sparks have flown in the past, but the music in this recording he finally speaks the language of the flame itself ", he says in the liner notes.

Jarrett has commented that his best performances have been when he had the faintest notion of what he was going to play in the next moment. He also said that most people don't know "what he does," which ties in with what Miles Davis told him expressing bewilderment at how Jarrett could "play out of nowhere." # 3. 4;. In the Bremen/Lausanne album liner notes Jarrett states something to the effect that he is a conduit to the "Creator", something his mother had apparently discussed with him.

Jarrett's 100th solo performance in Japan was captured on video at Tokyo's Suntory Hall in April 1987, and released the same year as Solo Tribute. This is a set of almost all standard songs. Another video recording, Last Solo, was released in 1987 of a solo concert at the Kan-i Hoken hall in Tokyo in January 1984.

In the late 1990s, Jarrett was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and was unable to leave his home for long periods of time. It was during this period that he recorded The Melody at Night, with You, a solo piano effort consisting of a reinterpretation of some jazz standards. The album had originally been a Christmas gift to his second wife, Rose Anne.

By 2000, Jarrett had returned to touring, both solo and with the Standards Trio. Two 2002 solo concerts in Japan, were Jarrett's first solo concerts after his illness and were released on the 2005 CD Radiance (a complete concert in Osaka and excerpts from one in Tokyo). and the DVD Tokyo Solo 2006. In contrast to the previous concerts (which were generally a couple of 30-40 minute long continuous improvisations), the 2002 concerts consist of a series of shorter improvisations (some as short as a minute and a half, a few as short as 15 or 20 minutes).

In September 2005, at Carnegie Hall, Jarrett performed his first North American solo concert in over ten years, released a year later as a double CD, The Carnegie Hall Concert. In late 2008, he performed solo at the Salle Pleyel in Paris and at the Royal Festival Hall in London, marking the first time Jarrett had performed solo in London in 17 years. Recordings of these concerts were released in October 2009 on the album Paris / London: Testament.

Trio of standards

In 1983, at the suggestion of ECM boss Manfred Eicher, Jarrett asked bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette, with whom he had worked on Peacock's 1977 album Tales of Another, to record an album of jazz standards, simply titled Standards, Volume 1. Two more albums, Standards, Volume 2 and Changes, both recorded in the same session, followed soon after. The success of these albums and the ensuing tour of the group, which evolved into traditional acoustic post-bop, was enjoying a rise in the 1980s, and led this new trio to become one of the most jazz majors and certainly one of the most enduring as he continues to record and tour for over 25 years. The trio have recorded numerous live and studio albums consisting primarily of jazz repertoire material.

The Jarrett-Peacock-DeJohnette trio also produced recordings consisting largely of original material, including 1987's Changeless. Several of their albums contain an original track or two, some credited to Jarrett, but most are group improvisations. The live recordings Inside Out and Always Let Me Go (released in 2001 and 2002 respectively) marked a renewed interest by the trio in improvised free jazz. By this point in their history, the musical communication between these three men had become nothing short of telepathic, and their group improvisations often assume a complexity that sounds almost composed. The trio undertakes frequent world recital tours and is one of the few truly successful groups in jazz for playing straight-ahead (as opposed to smooth) and free jazz.

A related recording, At the Deer Head Inn (1992), is a live trio album recorded with Paul Motian filling in for DeJohnette, at the aforementioned club in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, 40 miles from Jarrett's hometown, where he had his first job as a jazz pianist. It was the first time Jarrett and Motian had played together since the American quartet's demise sixteen years earlier.

Classical music

Since the early '70s, Jarrett's success as a jazz musician has allowed him to pursue a parallel career as a composer and classical pianist, recording almost exclusively for ECM Records.

In The Light, an album made in 1973, consists of short pieces for piano, strings, and various chamber ensembles, including a string quartet and a wind quintet, and a piece for cellos and trombones. This collection demonstrates a young composer's affinity for a variety of classical styles.

Luminessence (1974) and Arbor Zena (1975) combine pieces composed for strings with improvisations by jazz musicians, including Jan Garbarek and Charlie Haden. The strings here have a moody, contemplative feel that is characteristic of the "ECM sound" from the '70s, and is also particularly well-suited to Garbarek's saxophone improvisations. Academically, these compositions are dismissed by many classical music aficionados as light, but Jarrett seemed to be working more towards a synthesis between composed and improvised music at this time, rather than the production of formal classical works.

Ritual (1977) is a solo piano piece composed by Dennis Russell Davies that is somewhat reminiscent of Jarrett's piano recordings.

The Celestial Hawk (1980) is a work for orchestra, percussion, and piano that Jarrett performed and recorded with the Syracuse Symphony conducted by Christopher Keene. This piece is the largest and longest of Jarrett's efforts as a classical composer.

Bridge of Light (1993) is the last recording of classical compositions to appear under the Jarrett name. The album contains three pieces written for a piano soloist with orchestra, and one for violin and piano. The pieces date from 1984 and 1990.

In 1988, New World Records released the CD Lou Harrison: Piano Concerto and Suite for Violin, Piano and Small Orchestra, featuring Jarrett on piano, with Naoto Otomo conducting the piano concerto with the New Japan Philharmonic. Robert Hughes conducted the Suite for violin, piano and small orchestra. In 1992 came the release of Jarrett's rendition of Peggy Glanville-Hicks's Etruscan Concerto, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Brooklyn Philharmonic. In 1995 Music Masters Jazz released a CD featuring Jarrett performing the solo piano part in Lousadzak, a 17-minute piano concerto by American composer Alan Hovhaness. The director was again Davies. Most of Jarrett's classical recordings are from an older repertoire, but he may have been introduced to this modern work by his sole manager George Avakian, who was a friend of the composer. Jarrett has also recorded classical works for ECM by composers such as Bach, Handel, Shostakovich and Arvo Pärt.

In 2003 he received the Polar Music Prize, an award granted by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 2004, Jarrett was awarded the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. The prize, generally associated with classical musicians and composers, had previously been given to only one other jazz musician – Miles Davis.

Personal life

Jarrett lives on an 18th century lowercase farmhouse in Oxford Township, New Jersey, in rural Warren County. He uses a converted barn as his recording studio.

In 1964 Jarrett married Margot Erney, a high school sweetheart from Emmaus with whom Jarrett had reconnected in Boston. The couple had two sons, Gabriel and Noah, but divorced in 1979. He and his second wife Rose Anne (née Colavito) divorced in 2010 after a 30-year marriage.

Jarrett has four younger brothers, two of whom are involved in music. Chris Jarrett is also a pianist, and Scott Jarrett is a producer and songwriter. Of the two sons from his first marriage, Noah Jarrett is a bassist and songwriter, while Gabriel is a Vermont-based drummer.

Jarrett has acknowledged that the public, and even fellow musicians, have sometimes been convinced that he is black, due to his appearance. He recounts an incident in which black jazz musician Ornette Coleman approached him backstage and said something to the effect of, "Man, you've got to be black, you've got to be black," to which Jarrett replied: I know. I'm working on it".

Selected discography

• Swinginging Big Sound(Don Jacoby and the College All-Stars), 1962
• Buttercorn Lady(Art Blakey and the New Jazz Messengers), 1966.
• Dream Weaver(Charles Lloyd Quartet), 1966.
• The Flowering of the Original Charles Lloyd Quartet Recorded in Concert(Charles Lloyd Quartet), 1966.
• Charles Lloyd in Europe(Charles Lloyd Quartet), 1966
• Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey(Charles Lloyd), 1967
• Love-In(Charles Lloyd Quartet), 1967
• Charles Lloyd in the Soviet Union(Charles Lloyd), 1967
• Life Between the Exit Signs, 1967, (Vortex)
• Restoration Ruin, 1968, (Vortex)
• Somewhere before, 1968, (Atlantic)
• The Mourning of a Star, 1971, (Atlantic)
• Facing You, 1971, (ECM)
• Birth, 1972, (Atlantic)
• The Judgement, 1972, (Atlantic)
• Expectations, 1972, (Columbia/Legacy)
• Ruta and Daitya1973, (ECM)
• Fort Yawuh1973, (Impulse)
• Solo Concerts: Bremen and Lausanne [live]1973, (ECM)
• In the Light1973, (ECM)
• Luminessence, 1974, (ECM)
• Treasure Island1974, (Impulse)
• Belonging, 1974, (ECM)
• Hamburg 74 1974, (DIME)
• Backhand1974, (Impulse)
• Death and the Flowers. 1975, (Impulse)
• Backhand1975, (Impulse)
• The Köln Concert [live]1975, (ECM)
• Shades1975, (Impulse)
• Mysteries1976, (Impulse)
• The Survivor's Suite1976, (ECM)
• Arbour Zena1976, (ECM)
• Staircase, 1977, (ECM)
• Bop-Be, 1977,(Impulse)
• My Song, 1977, (ECM)
• Byablue, 1977, (Impulse)
• Silence, 1977, (Impulse)
• Ritual, 1977, (ECM)
• Sun Bear Concerts Piano Solo. 1978, (ECM)
• Eyes of the Heart, 1979, (ECM)
• Nude Ants [live], 1979, (ECM)
• Invocations - The Month and the Flame, 1979, (ECM)
• Sacred Hymns(1980), (ECM)
• Heavenly Hawk (1981), (ECM)
• Concerts, 1982, (ECM)
• Standards, Vol. 1. 1983, (ECM)
• Changes. 1984, (ECM)
• Standards, Vol. 21985, (ECM)

• Spheres1985, (ECM)
• Spirits1986, (ECM)
• Book of Way (1986), (ECM)
• Still Live (1986), (ECM)
• Changeless (1987), (ECM)
• Dark Intervals , 1988 (ECM)
• J.S. Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Klavier Buch I1988, (ECM)
• Goldberg Variations1989, (ECM)
• Staff Mountains1989, (ECM)
• Works by Lou Harrison1989, (New World)
• Tribute [live]1989, (ECM)
• Paris Concert, 1990, (ECM)
• Bye Blackbird1991 (ECM)
• Bach:French Suites 1991, (ECM)
• J.S. Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Klavier Buch II1991 (ECM)
• The Cure1991 (ECM)
• Vienna Concert 1992, (ECM)
• Dmitri Shostakovich: 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 871992 (ECM)
• Sonata flutes (Keith Jarrett - Michala Petri)1992 (ECM)
• Sonatas for Recorder and Continuo (Keith Jarrett - Michala Petri)1992 (ECM)
• The French Suite 1993, (ECM)
• 3 Sonaten für Viola da Gamba und Cembalo [Kashkashian/Jarrett] 1994, (ECM)
• Bridge of Light 1994, (ECM)
• At the Deer Head Inn 1994, (ECM)
• Händel - Suites for Keyboard 1995, (ECM)
• Standards in Norway 1995, (ECM)
• Piano Concertos K. 467, 488, 595, Masonic Funeral Music K. 477, Symphony in G Minor K 550 - Jarrett - Stuttgarter Kammerorchester - Davies 1996, (ECM)
• The Scala [live]1997 (ECM)
• Tokyo '96 [live]1998 (ECM)
• Piano Concertos K.271,453,466,Adagio and Fugue K. 546 - Jarrett - Stuttgarter Kammerorchester - Davies, 1998, (ECM)
• The Melody at Night, with You 1999, (ECM)
• Whisper Not [live]2000 (ECM)

• Inside Out [live]2001 (ECM)
• Always Let Me Go: Live in Tokyo (2002), (ECM)
• Up for It: Live in Juan-Les-Pins [live], 2003, (ECM)
• The Out-of-Towners (2004), (ECM)
• Radiance [live], 2005, (ECM)
• Carnegie Hall [live]2006 (ECM)
• My Foolish Heart - Live in Montreux, 2007 (ECM)
• Paris/London - Testament, 2008 (ECM)
• Yesterday 2009, (ECM)
• Jasmine, 2010, (EMC) Keith Jarret (piano) / Charlie Haden (contract).
• Rio, 2011, (ECM) Keith Jarrett (piano).
• Somewhere Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette 2013 (ECM)
• Last Dance, 2014, (ECM) Keith Jarrett (Piano) / Charlie Haden
• Creation, 2015, (ECM) Keith Jarrett (Piano)
• A Multitude of Angels, 2016, (ECM), Keith Jarrett
• After the Fall , 2018, Keith Jarrett (Piano), Gary PeacockJack DeJohnette (ECM)
• La Fenice, 2018, Keith Jarrett (Piano), (ECM)