Keith Jarrett | |
|---|---|
 Jarrett in 1975 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | (1945-05-08)May 8, 1945 (age 80) Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Genres | Jazz,classical,jazz fusion,free improvisation |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer |
| Instrument(s) | Piano,harpsichord |
| Years active | 1966–2018 |
| Labels | Atlantic,Columbia,ECM,Impulse!,Universal Classics |
| Website | keith-jarrett |
Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American pianist andcomposer.[1] Jarrett started his career withArt Blakey and later moved on to play withCharles Lloyd andMiles Davis. Since the early 1970s, he has also been a group leader and solo performer injazz,jazz fusion, andclassical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, including Western classical music,gospel,blues, and ethnicfolk music.
His albumThe Köln Concert, released in 1975, is the best-selling piano recording in history.[2] In 2008, he was inducted intoDownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in the magazine's 73rd Annual Readers' Poll.[3]
In 2003, Jarrett received thePolar Music Prize and was the first recipient to be recognized with prizes for both contemporary and classical music.[4] In 2004, he received theLéonie Sonning Music Prize.
In February 2018, Jarrett suffered astroke and has been unable to perform since. A second stroke in May 2018 left him partially paralyzed and unable to play with his left hand.[5]
Jarrett was born on May 8, 1945, inAllentown, Pennsylvania,[1] to a mother ofSlovenian descent. Jarrett's grandmother was born inSegovci, nearApače inSlovenia.[6] Jarrett's father was of mostlyGerman descent.[7] He grew up in suburban Allentown with significant early exposure to music.[8]
Jarrett possessesabsolute pitch and displayed prodigious musical talents as a young child. He began piano lessons before his third birthday. At age five, he appeared on a television talent program hosted by swing bandleaderPaul Whiteman.[9] He performed in his first formal piano recital at the age of seven, playing works by composers such asBach,Beethoven,Mozart, andSaint-Saëns, and ending with two of his own compositions.[10] Encouraged by his mother, he took classical piano lessons with a series of teachers, includingEleanor Sokoloff of theCurtis Institute of Music inPhiladelphia.
Jarrett attendedEmmaus High School inEmmaus, Pennsylvania, where he learnedjazz and became proficient in it. He developed a strong interest incontemporary jazz, and was inspired by aDave Brubeck performance he attended inNew Hope.[11] He was invited to study classical composition in Paris withNadia Boulanger, but he was already leaning toward jazz and turned it down.[12]
After his graduation from Emmaus High School in 1963, Jarrett moved toBoston to attendBerklee College of Music and playcocktail piano in local Boston clubs.
In 1964, Jarrett moved toNew York City, where he played at theVillage Vanguard inGreenwich Village.[13]Art Blakey hired Jarrett to play withThe Jazz Messengers. Jarrett's appearance on the Messengers' live albumButtercorn Lady marked his commercial recording debut.[14] However, there was friction between Blakey and Jarrett, and Jarrett left after four months of touring.[15]
During a show he was noticed byJack DeJohnette, who recommended Jarrett to his band leaderCharles Lloyd.[16] The Charles Lloyd Quartet had formed not long before and were exploring open, improvised forms while building supple grooves, and they were moving into terrain that was also being explored, although from another stylistic background, by some of the psychedelic rock bands of the West Coast.[17] Their 1966 albumForest Flower was one of the most successful jazz recordings of the mid-1960s.[18] They were invited to playThe Fillmore in San Francisco, and won over the localhippie audience.[19] The quartet toured across the U.S. and Europe, including appearances in Leningrad and Moscow.[19] Their concert at London'sRoyal Albert Hall was attended byThe Beatles.[20] The band was profiled inTime andHarper's Magazine,[19] which made Jarrett a popular musician in rock and jazz. The tour also laid the foundation for a lasting musical bond with DeJohnette.[17]
Jarrett began to record his own tracks as a leader of small groups at first in a trio withCharlie Haden andPaul Motian.Life Between the Exit Signs (1967), his first album as a band leader, was released byVortex followed byRestoration Ruin (1968), which Thom Jurek ofAllMusic wrote was "a curiosity in his catalog".[13] Not only does Jarrett barely touch the piano, but he plays all the other instruments on what is essentially afolk-rock album. Unusually, he also sings.[13]Somewhere Before, another trio album with Haden and Motian, was released in 1968 onAtlantic Records.
The Charles Lloyd Quartet with Jarrett,Ron McClure, and DeJohnette came to an end in 1968 after their recording ofSoundtrack because of money disputes and artistic differences.[21] Jarrett was asked to join theMiles Davis group after the trumpeter heard him in a New York City club.[22] During his tenure with Davis, Jarrett played bothelectronic organ andRhodes piano, alternating withChick Corea. The two appear side by side on some 1970 recordings, including theIsle of Wight Festival performance of August 1970 in the filmMiles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue and onBitches Brew Live. After Corea left in 1970, Jarrett often played electric piano and organ simultaneously.[23] Despite his growing dislike of amplified music and electric instruments within jazz, Jarrett continued with the group out of respect for Davis and because of his desire to work with DeJohnette. Jarrett has often cited Davis as a vital musical and personal influence on his own thinking about music and improvisation.[24]
Jarrett performs on several Davis albums, includingMiles Davis at Fillmore, recorded June 17–20, 1970 atFillmore East in New York City, andThe Cellar Door Sessions 1970, recorded December 16–19, 1970 atThe Cellar Door club in Washington, D.C.. His keyboard playing features prominently onLive-Evil and he plays electric organ onGet Up with It. Some other tracks from this period were released much later.[25]
DeJohnette left Davis' band in the middle of 1971, and Jarrett followed in December.[26] Jarrett later reflected: "When Jack left I knew I was going to have to leave ... Nobody knew what Jack knew and could do what he could do simultaneously. That was the end of the flexibility of the band".[26]
In 1971, Jarrett, Haden, and Motian participated in a four-day session forAtlantic Records during which they recorded the trio albumThe Mourning of a Star and two albums,El Juicio (The Judgement) andBirth, on which the trio was augmented by saxophonistDewey Redman.[27] Redman became an official member of the group, which later became known as the "American quartet". They would go on to record over a dozen albums over five years.[27] The group was often supplemented by an extra percussionist, such as Danny Johnson,Guilherme Franco, orAirto Moreira, and occasionally by guitaristSam Brown.
Later in 1971, the quartet, with Brown and Moreira, recordedExpectations forColumbia Records, with string and brass arrangements by Jarrett.[27] However, Columbia suddenly dropped Jarrett in favor ofHerbie Hancock,[28] and Jarrett's manager negotiated a contract withImpulse! Records,[29] for whom the group would record eight albums.
The quartet members played various instruments. Jarrett played soprano saxophone, recorder, banjo, percussion, and piano. Redman playedmusette, a Chinese double-reed instrument, and percussion, and Motian and Haden played a variety of percussion. Haden also produced a variety of unusual plucked and percussive sounds with his acoustic bass, running it through awah-wah pedal for one track ("Mortgage on My Soul" on the albumBirth).[30]Byablue andBop-Be, albums recorded for Impulse!, feature the compositions of Haden, Motian and Redman, as opposed to Jarrett's own, which dominated the previous albums. Jarrett's compositions and the musical identities of the group members gave this ensemble a distinctive sound. The quartet's music is an amalgam of free jazz, straight-ahead post-bop, gospel music, and exotic, Middle-Eastern-sounding improvisations.
During this time, Jarrett received a letter from producerManfred Eicher asking if he would like to record for the relatively newECM label.[31] Jarrett was impressed by the fact that Eicher was primarily concerned with musical quality, as opposed to financial gain.[32] Jarrett's American quartet released two albums,The Survivors' Suite andEyes of the Heart, on ECM, and the label also issuedRuta and Daitya, consisting of duo tracks featuring Jarrett and DeJohnette recorded in early 1971 and tracks with Miles Davis after Jarrett gave tapes of the session to Eicher.[29]
In 1972, Eicher proposed that Jarrett work with Norwegian saxophonistJan Garbarek, whom Jarrett had met while in Europe with Charles Lloyd during the late 1960s.[33] Their initial collaborations laid the groundwork for what would become known as the "European quartet", which also featuredPalle Danielsson on bass andJon Christensen on drums.[34] The group recorded five albums for ECM, each played in a style similar to that of the American quartet but with many of the avant-garde and Americana elements replaced by the European folk and classical music influences that characterized the work of ECM artists at the time.
Jarrett recorded a few solo pieces live under the guidance ofMiles Davis atthe Cellar Door inWashington, D.C., in December 1970. These were done on electric pianos (Rhodes andContempo).[35] Most parts of these recorded sets were released in 2007 onThe Cellar Door Sessions, featuring four improvisations by Jarrett.
Jarrett's first album for ECM,Facing You was released in 1971. He has continued to record solo studio piano albums intermittently throughout his career, includingStaircase (1976),Invocations/The Moth and the Flame (1981), andThe Melody at Night, with You (1999).Book of Ways (1986) is a studio recording ofclavichord solos.
In 1973, Jarrett began playing totallyimprovised solo concerts, and it is the popularity of these concert recordings that made him one of the best-selling jazz artists in history. Albums released from these concerts wereSolo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne (1973), whichTime magazine named "Jazz Album of the Year",The Köln Concert (1975), which became the best-selling piano recording in history,All About Jazz, andSun Bear Concerts (1976), a 10-LP (and later 6-CD) box set. Another of Jarrett's solo concerts,Dark Intervals, was released in 1987.
After a hiatus, Jarrett returned to extended solo improvised concert format withParis Concert (1990),Vienna Concert (1991), Live at the Royal Festival Hall (1991) andLa Scala (1995). These later concerts tend to be more influenced by classical music than the earlier ones, reflecting his interest in composers such asBach andShostakovich. In the liner notes toVienna Concert, Jarrett named the performance his greatest achievement and the fulfillment of everything he was aiming to accomplish. "I have courted the fire for a very long time, and many sparks have flown in the past, but the music on this recording speaks, finally, the language of the flame itself", he wrote.[36]
Jarrett has commented that his best performances have been when he has had only the slightest notion of what he was going to play at the next moment. He also said that most people don't know "what he does" which relates to what Miles Davis said to him expressing bewilderment as to how Jarrett could "play from nothing".[37]
Jarrett's 100th solo performance inJapan was captured on video at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, in April 1987, and released the same year asSolo Tribute. This is a set of almost all standard songs. Another video recording,Last Solo, was released in 1987 from a solo concert at Kan-i Hoken hall in Tokyo in January 1984.
In the late 1990s, Jarrett was diagnosed withchronic fatigue syndrome[13] and was unable to leave his home for long periods of time. During this period, he recordedThe Melody at Night, with You, a solo piano effort consisting of jazz standards. The album had originally been a Christmas gift to his second wife, Rose Anne.[38]
By 2000, Jarrett had returned to touring, both solo and with the Standards Trio. Two 2002 solo concerts in Japan, Jarrett's first solo piano concerts following his illness, were released on the 2005 CDRadiance (a complete concert inOsaka and excerpts from one in Tokyo) and the 2006 DVDTokyo Solo (the entire Tokyo performance). In contrast with previous concerts (which were generally a pair of continuous improvisations 30–40 minutes long), the 2002 concerts consist of a linked series of shorter improvisations (some as short as a minute and a half).
In September 2005, atCarnegie Hall, Jarrett performed his first solo concert in North America in more than ten years, released a year later as a double-CD set,The Carnegie Hall Concert. In late 2008, he performed solo in theSalle Pleyel in Paris and at London'sRoyal Festival Hall, marking the first time Jarrett played solo in London in 17 years. Recordings of these concerts were released in October 2009 on the albumParis / London: Testament. The 2005 documentaryThe Art of Improvisation, broadcast onBBC Two on November 12, 2021 concluded with his trio performing a recognizable version of "Basin Street Blues".[39]
In 1983, at the suggestion of ECM headManfred Eicher,[40] Jarrett asked bassistGary Peacock and drummerJack DeJohnette, with whom he had worked on Peacock's 1977 albumTales of Another, to record an album ofjazz standards, simply titledStandards, Vol. 1. Two more albums,Standards, Vol. 2 andChanges, both recorded at the same session, followed soon after. The success of these albums and the group's ensuing tour, which came as traditional acoustic post-bop was enjoying an upswing in the early 1980s, led to this new standards trio becoming one of the premierworking groups in jazz, and certainly one of the most enduring, continuing to record and tour for more than 25 years. The Trio went on to record numerous live and studio albums consisting primarily of jazz repertory material.
The Jarrett-Peacock-DeJohnette trio also produced recordings that consist largely of challenging original material, including 1987'sChangeless. Several of the standards albums contain an original track or two, some attributed to Jarrett, but most are improvisations on jazz standards. The live recordingsInside Out andAlways Let Me Go (released in 2001 and 2002 respectively) marked a renewed interest by the trio in wholly improvisedfree jazz. By this point in their history, the musical communication among these three men had become nothing short of telepathic, and their group improvisations frequently take on a complexity that sounds almost composed.[41] The standards trio undertook frequent world tours of recital halls (the only venues Jarrett, a notorious stickler for acoustics, will play) and was one of the few truly successful jazz groups to play both straight-ahead (as opposed tosmooth) and free jazz.[42]
A related recording,At the Deer Head Inn (1992), is a live album of standards recorded withPaul Motian replacing DeJohnette, at the venue inDelaware 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 demise of the American quartet sixteen years earlier.
The Standard Trio disbanded in 2014 after more than 30 years.[43] The final concert of Keith Jarrett's trio was on November 30, 2014 at theNew Jersey Performing Arts Center,Newark, New Jersey. The last encore wasThelonious Monk's composition "Straight, No Chaser". Peacock died in September 2020.
Since the early 1970s, Jarrett's success as a jazz musician has enabled him to maintain a parallel career as a classical composer and pianist, recording almost exclusively for ECM Records.In the Light, an album made in 1973, consists of short pieces for solo piano, strings, and various chamber ensembles, including a string quartet and a brass quintet, and a piece for cellos and trombones. This collection demonstrates a young composer's affinity for a variety of classical styles.[44]
Luminessence (1974) andArbour Zena (1975) both combine composed pieces for strings with improvising jazz musicians, includingJan Garbarek andCharlie Haden. The strings here have a moody, contemplative feel that is characteristic of the "ECM sound" of the 1970s, and is also particularly well suited to Garbarek's keening saxophone improvisations. From an academic standpoint, these compositions are dismissed by many classical music aficionados as lightweight, but Jarrett appeared to be working more towards a synthesis between composed and improvised music at this time, rather than the production of formal classical works.[45] From this point on, however, his classical work would adhere to more conventional disciplines.
Ritual (1977) is a composed solo piano piece recorded byDennis Russell Davies that is somewhat reminiscent of Jarrett's own solo piano recordings.
The Celestial Hawk (1980) is a piece for orchestra, percussion, and piano that Jarrett performed and recorded with the Syracuse Symphony underChristopher 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 Jarrett's name. The album contains three pieces written for a soloist with orchestra, and one for violin and piano. The pieces date from 1984 and 1990.
In 1988, New World Records released the CDLou Harrison: Piano Concerto and Suite for Violin, Piano and Small Orchestra, featuring Jarrett on piano, with Naoto Otomo conducting the piano concerto with theNew Japan Philharmonic. Robert Hughes conducted the Suite for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra. In 1992 came the release of Jarrett's performance ofPeggy Glanville-Hicks'sEtruscan Concerto, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting theBrooklyn Philharmonic. This was released on Music Masters Classics, with pieces byLou Harrison andTerry Riley. In 1995 Music Masters Jazz released a CD on which one track featured Jarrett performing the solo piano part inLousadzak, a 17-minute piano concerto by American composerAlan Hovhaness. The conductor again was Davies. Most of Jarrett's classical recordings are of older repertoire, but he may have been introduced to this modern work by his one-time managerGeorge Avakian, who was a friend of the composer. Jarrett has also recorded classical works for ECM by composers such asBach,Handel,Shostakovich, andArvo Pärt.
In 2004, Jarrett was awarded theLéonie Sonning Music Prize.[46] Usually associated with classical musicians and composers,Miles Davis is the only other jazz performer to have won it.
Jarrett has also playedharpsichord,clavichord, organ,soprano saxophone, and drums. He often played saxophone and various forms of percussion in the American quartet, though his recordings since the breakup of that group have rarely featured these instruments. On the majority of his recordings in the last 20 years, he has played acoustic piano only. He has spoken with some regret of his decision to give up playing the saxophone, in particular.[47]
On April 15, 1978, Jarrett was the musical guest onSaturday Night Live. The 2001 German filmMostly Martha, whose music consultant wasECM Records founderManfred Eicher, features Jarrett's "Country" from the European quartet albumMy Song and "U Dance" from the Standards Trio albumTribute, as well as excerpts from Jarrett's solo concerts.
Following the release of the albumGaucho in 1980 by the U.S.rock bandSteely Dan, Jarrett sued the band for copyright infringement.Gaucho's title track, credited toDonald Fagen andWalter Becker, bore a resemblance to Jarrett's "Long As You Know You're Living Yours" from Jarrett's 1974 albumBelonging. In an interview withMusician magazine, Becker and Fagen were asked about the similarity between the two pieces of music, and Becker toldMusician that he loved the Jarrett composition, while Fagen said they had been influenced by it. After their comments were published, Jarrett sued, and Becker and Fagen were legally obliged to add his name to the credits and provide Jarrett with publishing royalties.[48]
Jarrett frequently emits loud vocalizations, sometimes characterized as moaning, during his playing.[49] Jarrett is also physically active while playing jazz and improvised solo performances, but the vocalizations are generally absent whenever he plays classical repertoire. Jarrett has noted his vocalizations are based on involvement, not content, and are more of an interaction than a reaction.[50][51] Interviewed in 2015, Jarrett explained the involuntary vocalizations made during his performances: "It's potential limitlessness that I'm feeling at that moment. If you think about it, it's often in a space between phrases, [when I'm thinking,] "How did I get to this point where I feel so full?" And if you felt full of some sort of emotion you would have to make a sound. So that's actually what it is – with the trio, without the trio, solo. Luckily for me, I don't do it with classical music".[52]
Jarrett is highly intolerant of audience noise, especially during solo improvised performances. He feels extraneous noise affects his inspiration and distracts from the purity of the sound. Cough drops are routinely supplied to Jarrett's audiences in cold weather, and he has been known to stop playing and lead the crowd in a group cough.[53] He has also complained onstage about audience members taking photographs,[54] and has performed in the dark to prevent this.[55]
Jarrett is opposed to electronic instruments and equipment, which he has described as "toys".[39] His liner notes for the 1973 albumSolo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne states: "I am, and have been, carrying on an anti-electric-music crusade of which this is an exhibit for the prosecution. Electricity goes through all of us and is not to be relegated to wires."[56] He has largely eschewed electric or electronic instruments since his time with Miles Davis. However, in October 1972, he played electric piano and piano onFreddie Hubbard'sSky Dive.[57]
A 2025 feature film,Köln 75, tells the story of Jarrett's 1975 concert at the Köln Opera House.[58]
Jarrett was referred to in Season 5, Episode 6 ofHBO'sThe Sopranos in 2004, titled "Sentimental Education"; in the episode,Tony Blundetto mentions "piping in a little Keith Jarrett" among his plans for the massage studio he is building.[59]
Jarrett was also mentioned in Season 2, Episode 6 ofFX'sAtlanta in 2018. In this episode, titled "Teddy Perkins", Darius remarks to a picture in Teddy Perkins' home and asked if the other person in the picture is Keith Jarrett, and Perkins says it was.
Jarrett lives in an 18th-century farmhouse inOxford Township, New Jersey, in ruralWarren County, where he used an adjacent barn as a recording and practice studio.[60]
Jarrett was a follower of the teachings ofGeorge Gurdjieff (1866–1949) for many years,[61] and in 1980 recorded an album of Gurdjieff's compositions, calledSacred Hymns, for ECM. His forebears wereChristian Scientists, and though he endorses the core of the faith, he does not follow all its precepts, and also identifies with theSufi tradition and mysticalIslam.[62]
In 1964, Jarrett married Margot Erney, his girlfriend fromEmmaus High School with whom Jarrett reconnected inBoston. The couple had two sons, Gabriel and Noah, and divorced in 1979.[63] 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 abassist and composer and Gabriel Jarrett is adrummer based inVermont. Keith Jarrett is currently married to Akiko Jarrett.[64]
Jarrett's race has been a source of commentary by media and activists throughout his career,[65][66] as he has reported being recurrently mistaken as ablack person. In a 2000 interview withTerry Gross, Jarrett relates an incident at the Heidelberg Jazz Festival in theRhine-Neckar region ofGermany when he was protested by black musicians for something akin tocultural appropriation. He also tells of a separate moment in his career when black jazz musicianOrnette Coleman approached him backstage, and "said something like 'Man, you've got to be Black. You just have to be black.'" Jarrett replied "I know. I know. I'm working on it."[38][67]
In a September 11, 2000 interview withTerry Gross, Jarrett revealed thatchronic fatigue syndrome required him to radically overhaul his piano to have less breakaway keypress resistance in order for him to keep playing.[38]
Jarrett suffered two strokes in February and May 2018. After the second, he was paralyzed and spent nearly two years in a rehabilitation facility. Although he has regained a limited ability to walk with a cane and can play piano with his right hand, he remains partly paralyzed on his left side and is not expected to perform again. "I don't know what my future is supposed to be. I don't feel right now like I'm a pianist", Jarrett toldThe New York Times in October 2020.[68]
Although the lexicons write about him as an American musician, it should be remembered that his grandmother Anna Temlin, with whom he grew up, was from Prekmurje
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