Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett – Sleeper (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:46:55 minutes | 2,18 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Recorded LIVE April 16, 1979 at Nakano Sun Plaza, Tokyo. In 1979 came the tour of Japan from which Personal Mountains and now Sleeper were drawn and, the following month, the New York concerts at the Village Vanguard that generated the Nude Ants album. And then the story was finished. As Ian Carr was to observe in his Jarrett biography, The influence of this quartet is out of all proportion to its brief life. Musicians on all instruments have been influenced and inspired by Keith Jarrett s work in general, but also by this quartet in particular. The European Quartet ceased to exist when it was at the height of its creativity. Sleeper confirms that this was indeed the case. — ECM Records

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Keith Jarrett – Shades (1976/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 33:59 minutes | 1,36 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Impulse!

Pianist Keith Jarrett’s mid-’70s quintet was the strongest regular group that he ever led and all of its recordings (even some that ramble a bit) are worth picking up. Thanks to its strong start, Shades is one of this unit’s most rewarding recordings. “Shades of Jazz” has a memorable melody and logical (if unpredictable) improvisations by Jarrett and tenor-saxophonist Dewey Redman. The momentum slows down a bit with the gospellish “Southern Smiles” and “Rose Petals” but picks up again with the final number, the rather intense “Diatribe,” an excellent vehicle for this classic group. Throughout, bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Paul Motian and percussionist Guilherme Franco keep the band’s juices flowing. –Scott Yanow

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Keith Jarrett – Paris, London – Testament (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:42:13 minutes | 2,77 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

…2009 Album of the Year – Jazzwise (U.K.)

At the end of 2008, Keith Jarrett added two concerts to his schedule at short notice – one at Paris’s Salle Pleyel (November 26), one at London’s Royal Festival Hall (December 1) . The music on “Testament” is from these concerts. Their range is compendious, Jarrett’s improvisational imagination continually uncovering new forms, in a music stirred by powerful emotions. In his liner notes, the pianist is forthright about the personal circumstances promoting a need to lose himself in the work once more….

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Keith Jarrett – Mysteries (1976/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 42:16 minutes | 1,60 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Impulse!

Mysteries was originally released in 1976 and features performances by Keith Jarrett’s ‘American Quartet’. It was produced by Esmond Edwards and recorded at Generation Sound Studios in New York City.

Another in Impulse’s extensive series of Keith Jarrett Quintet recordings, this CD isn’t one of the more coherent products of the run. It opens on a faltering note with the hopelessly diffuse and rambling “Rotation,” and “Everything That Lives Laments” doesn’t really get going until a lyrical Vince Guaraldi-like statement from Jarrett sets the track in motion. “Flame” is certainly novel, with Jarrett on Pakistani flute and Dewey Redman on Chinese musette, which combined with the percussion makes for a diverting India/Third World jam. The Coltrane-ish 15-minute title track has passages of meditative beauty and others of listless torpor. For completists only. –Richard S. Ginell

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Keith Jarrett – My Song (1978/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 48:49 minutes | 1,61 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Throughout the ’70s Keith Jarrett maintained two contrasting ensembles, one American based, the other Scandinavian. This is an album by the latter quartet, which had previously recorded the warm and winning BELONGING in 1974.

1978’s „My Song“ is aptly titled, as the six Jarrett compositions do indeed have the individual characteristics and bearing of songs. Infused with elements of folk and gospel, the music has a friendly resonance that aligns it with the likes of Horace Silver. While not as overtly soulful as Silver, the quartet’s interpretations celebrate the power of melody and harmony. Garbarek’s crystalline tone in particular flies through the rhythmic architecture like a bird over a winter landscape.

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Keith Jarrett – Munich 2016 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:26:27 minutes | 1,59 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

A solo concert from Keith Jarrett – recorded at Munich’s Philharmonie on July 16, 2016, on the last night of a European tour – finds the great improvising pianist at a peak of invention. Creating a spontaneous suite of forms in the moment with the assurance of a master builder – interspersing touches of the blues and folksong lyricism between pieces of polyrhythmic and harmonic complexity – he delivers one of his very finest performances. An attentive and appreciative audience hangs on every note, every nuance, and is rewarded with some tender encores including a magical version of “It’s A Lonesome Old Town”.

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Keith Jarrett – La Fenice (Live At Teatro La Fenice, Venice / 2006) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:37:43 minutes | 957 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Keith Jarrett’s solo discography is a bottomless pit that he’s been digging out since the end of the ‘60s, with about 25 albums and counting. It’s an ever-changing collection, much like the career of this pianist from Allentown. In 2002, after some serious health problems, Jarrett got back up on stage alone in Japan. Four years later, on 19th July 2006, he’s still alone, this time on the stage of the prestigious Teatro La Fenice, THE great Venetian Mecca for opera. Unlike his past concerts, which consisted of long improvisations of thirty or even forty minutes, he now focuses his performances around shorter pieces that are often linked to each other. Such is the case for this album recorded at La Fenice. Jarrett immediately throws himself body and soul into an ocean of notes, one of his 17-minute improvisations, amazing in its technique and to which only he holds the secret. The atonality collides with highly melodic sequences, jazz and classical music irrigating each of his ideas. Hold on tight or you’ll fall out your saddle! The level of musicality and the originality of his phrasing leaves you constantly fascinated by his unparalleled playing. It’s a language that speaks to everyone, both expert and beginner. And even when he goes off the beaten track to cover My Wild Irish Rose, Blossom and Stella By Starlight, his music is quite irresistible.  – Marc Zisman

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Keith Jarrett – J.S. Bach : The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I (Live in Troy, NY, 1987) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:44:22 minutes | 830 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series

As part of Keith Jarrett’s rather extensive project on the works of the Cantor of Leipzig, an interpretation on harpsichord of Livre I from J. S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier was recorded in February 1987 and released in 1988. The recording dates from the same time as this new piano version by ECM New Series recorded 7 March 1987 in Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. Of the same fluid drive in terms of the discourse, it holds an irresistible energy and is a particularly welcome interpretation of these invigorating and interpretable fugues (in C flat Major). Everything seems to dance and be in movement (D Major). The same feelings found throughout the polyphonies of pianists such as Tatiana Nikolayeya and Samuel Feinbeg or even a harpsichordist like Gustav Leonhardt are not present here. For Keith Jarrett, Bach represents the triumph of structure, and he plays Bach above all to confront one of his own artistic missions: polyphonic elaboration. The works of the Thomaskantor work as a medium for his own musical creativity as a jazzman and improvisor. The poetry and emotion are nevertheless ever-present. This is a version that will give real pleasure to all lovers of Keith Jarrett’s, allowing the comparison of two interpretations realized within two weeks of each other. – Pierre-Yves Lascar

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Keith Jarrett – Hymns / Spheres (1976/2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:33:40 minutes | 1,65 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

‘“Hymns/Spheres”, Keith Jarrett’s celebrated 1976 encounter with the Trinity organ of Ottobeuren’s Benedictine abbey, is at last released in 24bit Studio-Master quality as a double-album set remastered from the original analog tapes. “No overdubs or technical ornamentations were utilized, only the pure sound of the organ in the abbey is heard”. The pure sound, as channelled by the mind, hands, and feet of one of the great improvisers of the age. When “Hymns/Spheres” was first released in 1976, some critics made comparisons with the organ music of Ligeti, Messiaen and Reger, but time has shown this to be an essential expression of Jarrett’s creativity, original to the core.

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Keith Jarrett – Fort Yawuh (1973/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 42:12 minutes | 1,70 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Impulse!

Fort Yawuh is one of Jarrett’s early acoustic albums.

On Fort Yawuh, Keith Jarrett is joined by Dewey Redman (tenor sax), Charlie Haden (bass), Paul Motian (drums), and Danny Johnson (percussion) to produce this set recorded live at the legendary Village Vanguard in New York City on February 24, 1973. About two minutes into “Fort Yawuh,” Jarrett prepares the listener for a piano solo by announcing himself with quick and sharp keyboard jabs that evolve into spared and beautiful crescendos that before too long involve the soulful wails of Redman on the sax. The following song, “De Drums,” is the one track that really swings on this album. Another long one, at 12 minutes in length, “De Drums” is much more focused on a steady and consistent rhythm that is established immediately by a smooth five-note bassline accented by the piano and shakers. Although describable as smooth and cool, this song has a palpable energy perhaps due to the construction of the bassline whose pauses give an enjoyable sense of suspense. A little more than five minutes into this song there is a thematic shift that speeds up the tempo and makes this title swing even more while involving Redman’s sax and Motian’s drum kit. Half past the eight-minute mark the tempo settles back down to its original drawl, and the song finishes with a lazy bop that makes this the standout track on the album. Fans of Jarrett’s avant-garde liberalism will find “De Drums” to be the track most unlike the other four selections on this album. “Still Life, Still Life” is more like a ballad in that it’s very slow, but it still maintains the structural freedom featured in the “Fort Yawuh,” “(If the) Mysfits (Wear It),” and “Roads Traveled, Roads Veiled.” –Qa’id Jacobs

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Keith Jarrett – Facing You (1972/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 47:42 minutes | 1,53 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

The stunning ECM debut that unleashed one of the greatest piano players of our time. Using jazz as an excuse, Jarrett initiated and indoctrinated us with improvised solo piano, something to which listeners would become used to over the next three decades. Facing You is boogie-woogie, country hoedown, blues, folk, rock ‘n’ roll-flavoured jazz, and is still an astonishing album. The music press at the time of issue were bereft of ideas about how to categorize him; it would have been much simpler just to wallow in the music. Much of Jarrett’s and Manfred Eicher’s future musical philosophy started out with this important record.

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Keith Jarrett – Eyes Of The Heart (1979/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 51:02 minutes | 1,83 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Eyes of The Heart is a jazz album by American pianist Keith Jarrett released in 1979 by the ECM record label. The personnel on the album is the “American Quartet”, made up of Jarrett, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. It was recorded at the Theater am Kornmarkt, Bregenz in Austria in May 1976. The studio album The Survivors’ Suite had been recorded one month earlier.

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Keith Jarrett – Creation (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:12:33 minutes | 617 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

‘Creation’ signals a departure from the ‘traditions’ of Keith Jarrett’s many ECM recordings of solo improvised piano. Earlier concert recordings have reflected the flow of musical ideas and inspirations as developed in the course of an evening but this album – drawn from concert recordings made in Japan, Canada and Europe in 2014 – is different.

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Keith Jarrett – Concerts: Bregenz, Munchen (1982/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:30:19 minutes | 2,77 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

After Bremen/Lausanne, after The Köln Concert, after the epic Sun Bear Concerts, the next development in Jarrett’s solo concerts was the all-embracing music captured here. Two 1981 improvised concerts from Austria and Germany are featured, recorded respectively at the Festspielhaus Bregenz and the Herkulessaal Munich, venues noted for outstanding acoustics. While the Bregenz concert has hitherto been available as a single CD, this set marks the first appearance of the complete Munich performance on compact disc. The 3-album set includes extensive text booklet with liner notes by Keith Jarrett, an essay by Swiss critic Peter Rüedi, and poetry by Michael Krüger.

“The Bregenz/Munich concerts were Jarrett’s most brilliant live solo recordings to date; his level of inspiration is quite extraordinary, and the music covers a wider musical and emotional range than ever.”
– Jarrett biographer Ian Carr

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