Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert

[rostasi]

Yeah, Common Mama!

[mikeweil]

The Koln Concert sounds like New Age to me.

I listen to it from time to time, and I don't mind it, but I think that it's overrated.

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IIRC new age music was not a label to sell things when the Köln Concert was first released. But the newage pianists - George Winston in particular - owe a lot to Jarrett - they watered him down as far as possible.

Overrated? I dunno - I think it's largely a matter of taste. But I have to admit I too prefer him as an ensemble player, especially in the "American" quartet of the 1970's. And I prefer solo piano with a little more "meat" - or more lyricism - but again, it's all a matter of taste.

[jazzbo]

Wow, more lyricism than Jarrett on Koln?

Jarrett's solo stuff I have to say IS my kind of stuff. Listening to Radiance disc one right now. . . . Great.

[skeith]

I like Koln very much and not sure I would prefer Bremen. My favorite solo is Facing You.

Probably I prefer the quartet stuff to the solo.

[rostasi]

I think Facing You would be a favorite for me too,

but I'll take Cecil or Mischa when it comes to solo outings.

[andybleaden]

nope ( as in I mean yep!)

I have to say the Koln Concert touches me (but not in the Frank Bough way!)

I love this cd and play it loads both on cd and MP3

If I have time with noone around then it is his piano playing that fills the rafters.....very loud and very selfish time for little ol ME!

It does the thing that only a few recrods do for me....

I know it so I know what is coming next all over the piece and that thrills me in a record.

I also have zillions of keith jarrett and the bremen etc concerts are very very good too but this one has a special place along in the desert island disc collection.( and that is a hard fought place!)

Mind you I would have loved to have seen this or even a dvd ...then I would go away and die happy

Edited September 16, 2005 by andybleaden

[Free For All]

I have a major sentimental attachment to this recording having first acquired it while in college in the 70s.

At the time it was a) fun to listen to high, and 2) an excellent make-out record.

Very hypnotic and rhythmically pulsating. Oh yeah, baby!

I don't listen to it all that often these days (although I may have to now that this thread has brought it back to mind), but I will always have fond memories of it.

Or at least what I can actually remember.

[rostasi]

So Thom Jurek was right?

[Free For All]

So Thom Jurek was right?

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Surprisingly enough, in this case maybe he was! :rsmile:

"Every pot-smoking and dazed and confused college kid — and a few of the more sophisticated ones in high school — owned this...."

"This may have been the album every stoner wanted in his collection "because the chicks dug it"."

[jazzbo]

Wow. I was in the wrong college. Well, I definitely was for a hundred reasons, and one reason was there were very few women, and those that were there weren't in to these lps as far as I can tell!

[Free For All]

Wow.  I was in the wrong college.  Well, I definitely was for a hundred reasons, and one reason was there were very few women, and those that were there weren't in to these lps as far as I can tell!

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Well, Lon, you're probably better off......a little less wine, women, weed and song and a little more scholarly acquisition of pertinent knowledge prob'ly wouldn't not o' hurt me none.....

...although we did have some bad-ass jam sessions....

[jazzbo]

I don't know how much scholarly acquisition I managed in my two years of the "life of the mind" at UC.

I do know I met the woman of my dreams. . . though we didn't hook up romantically til many years later!

I couldn't hack two more years there, and it ruined college for me, I never did complete college, and when I firs stepped in there I was intending to have a long academic career!

Ah well. . . can't blame "The Koln Concert"!

[Free For All]

I do know I met the woman of my dreams. . . though we didn't hook up romantically til many years later!

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I also met my wife in college (in 1977) and we dated off and on over the years before finally marrying in 1999.

Better the devil you know, I guess!

OK, sorry for the off-topic everyone........

[Guest akanalog]

that's what i was saying. this was good make out music in college.

some women owned it, at least at my school.

[RDK]

A bit off-topic, but I don't want to start a new thread for it -

Why aren't Jarrett's compositions covered more by other artists? I was recently listening to My Song, and especially tunes like "My Song" and "Country" seem like they should be jazz standards. And yet, after a quick search at AMG, it seems that no one's covered them. In fact, I can't think of any Jarrett covers off the top of my head.

[7/4]

There was a local fusion band that turned the Windup into a Dregs sort of thing.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

The hip people play his stuff. Prism used to be a favorite of mine to do, also Innocence and New Dance and other European quartet material, but you gotta have a group that knows or will learn the stuff. There have been a few, such as Pat Metheny playing great high-energy versions of The Wind-Up (only live) as well as recording My Song on his recent solo guitar album. Other pieces like Coral have been done by Gary Burton. And then there's that whole album of cover versions.

What I wish is that he *himself* would play his own stuff more. I'd love to hear what the trio could do with some of the older material, from all periods. That's something that Metheny really works at doing - he covers his entire history during concerts. He used to claim the band was 100% "backward compatible", meaning they could play *every* piece of his from the first to the last. Don't know if they still are after the numerous recent personnel shifts, but I bet he could do just about anything by leaving out some of those auxiliary guys.

Mike

[Guy Berger]

I started a thread a while back about performances by others of American Quartet pieces. (Too lazy to find a link.) Not as many exist as you would expect given Jarrett's excellence as a composer, but there are a few noteworthy examples (Branford Marsalis doing "Rose Petals", Steve Khan doing "Common Mama").

The most bizarre (which I haven't heard) is the Flying Luttenbachers' performance of a theme from the Survivor's Suite.

Guy

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Looks like I kind of got my wish (see final paragraph) - except I wasn't there to hear it.

(But kind of sad to see how low the NYT has sunk in headline creativity.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/arts/music/28jarr.html

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September 28, 2005

Keith Jarrett: Alone Again (Naturally)

By NATE CHINEN

No living jazz pianist has wrung more drama from the solo recital than Keith Jarrett. His vaulting, improvised concerts - melodic marathons, gleaming with significance - brought him international acclaim in the 1970's, along with a sizeable audience. His album "The Köln Concert" (ECM), issued 30 years ago, ranks among the best-selling solo piano recordings of all time.

But Mr. Jarrett, who has described the solo regimen as an ordeal, has devoted most of his attention to trio playing in recent years. "Radiance" (ECM), released this year, is his first live solo recording in a decade, and his appearance at Carnegie Hall on Monday night was the first North American solo recital in nearly as long. This added up to a major event.

As on "Radiance," Mr. Jarrett divided the concert into discrete episodes, each pointing toward the next. He began with a rumbling overture that summoned the stern angularity of modern classical music. Then, in quick succession: an indirectly bluesy vamp tune, a mournfully chiming morsel of flamenco, and a bouquet of harplike glissandi. He was dancing gracefully around a theme, but these first few extemporizations were mere miniatures, suggestive yet incomplete.

The more compelling pieces were haunted by familiar song structures. Mr. Jarrett closed the first half of the concert with a troubled but consonant melody that would have sounded at home in a movie score.

During the second half, he followed a New Orleans strut with a yearning gospel hymn. The evening's most jazzlike number was a complex concoction offhandedly evocative of Thelonious Monk; Mr. Jarrett embellished it with boogie-woogie flourishes, stomping rhythms and a hard-charging bebop line in octaves.

Touch is a big part of his technique; there's a buttery quality to his piano articulation that softens any dissonance. So his avant-garde gestures, which always stop short of atonality, can seem both courageous and reasonable; and on ballads, his tone fulfills a voluptuous melancholy. The final piece bridged the gap, with a round of pastel tremolos over a syncopated Middle Eastern drone.

Mr. Jarrett has likened his solo concerts to athletic contests, and at times his exertions underscored the point. He grunted, moaned and sighed along with his melodies; he rose from his bench to stoop over the keys. His entire body swayed and convulsed, as if his hands were affixed not to a piano but to a source of electrical current. (In fact, he has used that metaphor, too.)

The audience read these ecstasies as deeply heroic. Mr. Jarrett was called back for five separate encores: a ballad and a blues, both improvised, and the evening's first three bona fide compositions, including the vintage original "My Song" and the standard "Time on My Hands." He basked in each ovation with an appreciative good humor; he seemed to be having a good time.

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Mike