Keith Jarrett’s Solo Albums
At some point on this blog I had said I was planning to review all of Jarrett’s solo recordings here.
Well, I haven’t written about them in a long time. Nicely enough, a reader comment, inquiring about a live concert by Jarrett she heard on the radio a long time ago, brought me back on track.
I’m still not sure, but most likely the album she is looking for is one of Jarrett’s best ever solo piano recordings, Bremen/Lausanne, actually one of my 25 Essential Jazz albums.
Therefore, let’s talk about another excellent Jarrett solo album I’ve had for a long time:
Keith Jarrett: Paris Concert (ECM 1990)
This is not one of Jarrett’s longest solo albums, containing just a single concert. It mainly consists of one impressive continuous improvisation of more than 38 minutes, simply titled “October 17, 1988”.
The concert starts sounding like Jarrett is actually doing a Bach concert, he plays something that could be a slow Präludium, indicating that Jarrett clearly knows his counterpoint.
This is not totally surprising, Jarrett was actually playing a lot of Bach at the time, e.g. his recording of the Goldberg Variations was released just one year later after this concert was recorded in 1988 at Salle Pleyel. (Side note: I’m not such a fan of Jarrett’s classical recordings on their own, but am very happy how they influenced his Jazz playing).
About 9 to 10 minutes in this evolves into a more hypnotic part, with the left hand in a steady bass pattern over which the right hand freely improvises.
Later, around the 20 minutes mark, the music becomes increasingly minimal, but probably even more beautiful and mesmerizing. He quickly evolves back into a much more powerful improvisation.
After the main course you get two smaller pieces, simply called The Wind and Blues, both of which are highly enjoyable.
The only downside of this album is Jarrett’s really annoying tendency to hum along with his music. I sincerely hope one day artificial intelligence will be good enough to remove his singing from his otherwise fantastic albums.
This is clearly one of his best ever solo efforts, and should be in every Jarrett lover’s collection.
My rating: 5 stars
You can find it here (Qobuz)
musicophilesblog - From Keith Jarrett to Johannes Brahms 
This goes right to the top of the ‘to listen’ list. I also need to dig back into some more classical.
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Isn’t it great that there’s always more music to discover? I’ve been following your blog closely as well and found some treasures.
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Yep, that’s the beauty of rhe thing.
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Not containing a singe concert, just the second set. The first set, another very strong part, suffers from many coughs. May be that the reason to shorten the release.
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Thanks for your feedback! To clarify, by single concert I meant as opposed to the albums that contain concerts from several venues like A Multitude of Angels or Bremen/Lausanne.
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Finally got a chance to listen. Excellent as usual. I’ve never heard any solo Jarrett that I didn’t like. That said, I notice that you frequently review his solo stuff. Is that your preference? And even if it is, how do you feel about his other works in general, trio, etc.? A broad question I know, but ….
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Hi Jim, no I totally love his trio work as well. It’s just that I in a very early blog post mentioned that I wanted to review all of the solo albums at one point. This is just following through on this promise. Given how much he recorded that is a bit of a challenge but over the years we eventually get there.
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This is one of my all-time favorite records. This said, I for one am not at all bothered by this humming. It’s part of how the music gets to be, if not part of the music itself. But I realize that opinions differ on this.
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Thanks for your feedback. I can try to ignore the humming, but it’s not easy…. That said, the music is really worth it.
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