Jarrett Garbarek Christensen Brueninghaus

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'sinterpretations 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.

~~ By Amazon.

Keith Jarrett - Selected Recordings [2CD] (2002) {ECM}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 724 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 369 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 52 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2002 ECM Records | rarum I 014 168-2 | 24-bit remaster
Jazz / Post Bop / Piano

The object of ECM's handsomely Digipak-aged Rarum series is to have its roster of artists – past and present – select their favorite performances on the label. Which leads to the next question: Is the artist always the best judge of his or her own material? With that in mind, Keith Jarrett's choices for his two-CD set, the first volume of this series, are sure to be some of the most interesting, wide-ranging, surprising, and controversial of the whole lot. Listeners have had fair warning – ECM's previous Jarrett sampler, ECM Works, was also gleefully unpredictable – but Rarum, Vol. 1: Selected Recordings gives you a much better idea of the staggering variety of Jarrett's interests over a 21-year span than the earlier disc.

Jan Garbarek's music can be summed up in one simple word: meditation. Sure, the term is loaded with overtones, both good and bad. But do not confuse meditation with mindlessness: they are polar opposites. Garbarek's thirty years with ECM (as a leader and collaborator) have yielded hundreds of melodies which lead to an infinitely light state of inner peace. It's hard to imagine a more positive statement for a saxophone player who long ago decided to forsake flash-and-bang for "simpler" music with understated spiritual energy. And this two-disc set does Garbarek justice. Each disc runs in chronological order from about 1975 through 1995.

Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American jazz and classical music pianist and composer. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has also been a group leader and a solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music. In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize, the first recipient of both the contemporary and classical musician prizes, and in 2004 he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. His album, The Köln Concert, released in 1975, became the best-selling piano recording in history. In 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in the magazine's 73rd Annual Readers' Poll.

Keith Jarrett does not actually play on this CD; rather, he composed three angst-ridden pieces of varying lengths for string orchestra, over which Jan Garbarek improvises on tenor and soprano saxes. The concept is not unlike that of Stan Getz's Focus, but this music is far more static, downcast, and free of the pulse of jazz. As was characteristic of his writing then, Jarrett's string parts are mostly turgid and thick-set, indulging in weird, sliding microtones on "Windsong," weighted down by some kind of emotional burden.