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's numerous volumes of improvised solo piano recordings are all treasure troves of spontaneous music making. Documented since the 1970s, they reveal the opening of his music as it readily embraces classical and sacred music influences, filters out what is unnecessary in his technique, and encounters the depth and breadth of the jazz tradition and his own unique abilities as a composer. The four discs in A Multitude of Angels were recorded in as many Italian cities during the last week of October 1996 – some 20 months after the concert captured on La Scala.
Keith Jarrett's numerous volumes of improvised solo piano recordings are all treasure troves of spontaneous music making. Documented since the 1970s, they reveal the opening of his music as it readily embraces classical and sacred music influences, filters out what is unnecessary in his technique, and encounters the depth and breadth of the jazz tradition and his own unique abilities as a composer. The four discs in A Multitude of Angels were recorded in as many Italian cities during the last week of October 1996 - some 20 months after the concert captured on La Scala. These were his last concerts before being sidelined for two years from chronic fatigue syndrome. Jarrett is musician, producer, and engineer here…
Keith Jarrett's numerous volumes of improvised solo piano recordings are all treasure troves of spontaneous music making. Documented since the 1970s, they reveal the opening of his music as it readily embraces classical and sacred music influences, filters out what is unnecessary in his technique, and encounters the depth and breadth of the jazz tradition and his own unique abilities as a composer. The four discs in A Multitude of Angels were recorded in as many Italian cities during the last week of October 1996 - some 20 months after the concert captured on La Scala. These were his last concerts before being sidelined for two years from chronic fatigue syndrome. Jarrett is musician, producer, and engineer here…
ECM continues the series of Keith Jarrett's live archival recordings with La Fenice. The recital occurred in 2006 at the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice, some four years after the pianist had resumed performing solo following his recovery from a long illness. Given that these outings are all spontaneously improvised, it stands to reason that no two are alike, from the spacious and lyrical Koln Concert from 1975 through the 1995's transcendent La Scala, through 2017's kaleidoscopic four-disc release of A Multitude of Angels, captured in four cities on a tour of Italy some 20 months after La Scala. Interestingly, the La Fenice show took place some ten months after Jarrett's triumphant July 2005 Carnegie Hall Concert.
Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden broaden the scope of their duo project to showcase jazz classics like Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight” and Bud Powell’s spritely “Dance Of The Infidels”. Love songs, however, are to the fore in this selection, with tender versions of “My Old Flame”, “My Ship”, “It Might As Well Be Spring”, “Everything Happens To Me”, and “Every Time We Say Goodbye” as well as versions of “Where Can I Go Without You” and “Goodbye” which are every bit as touching as the Jasmine renditions.
A solo concert from Keith Jarrett - recorded at Munich’s Philharmonic Hall on July 16, 2016, on the last night of a tour - finds the great improvising pianist at a peak of invention. Creating a spontaneous suite of forms in the moment with the intuitive 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".
Coming so quickly after the release of Multitude of Angels and being from the same time as Koln Concert, I initially thought that Keith and ECM were looking at releasing more of his treasure trove of a back catalogue. However, this is a recording from Hi-Hat and an explanatory note says "All our releases feature historical live FM recordings from the '60s, '70s and '80s and although the sound may not (despite extensive professional remastering) always be of the highest quality, we are sure that you will enjoy the musical experience of these wonderful performances".