Tonight Keith Jarrett plays the Royal Festival Hall. I've been a bit snowed under and a bit under the weather this past week and managed to miss my own article about him in the Indy the other day. Here it is. Director's cut below. It isn't an interview, regrettably. Not for want of trying...he just wasn't up for it, and if he's not gonna talk he's not gonna talk, so there we go. But I'm grateful to Jazz Record Requests presenter Alyn Shipton and super multigenre pianist Simon Mulligan for giving their insights into his nature and influences.
To me Jarrett is more than a jazz pianist; he is a pianist to put beside any of the greats in any genre. So it's really a shame that he clashes tonight with Andras Schiff playing Mozart concerti next door at the QEH. Wouldn't it be nice if we could persuade them to do a duet later?
Keith
Jarrett is giving a solo concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Spread the word!
Except that the word has already spread and the tickets have flown.
What
makes one man and a piano fill a hall for solo improvisation, let alone an
individual with a reputation for stopping mid-flow to harangue his audience?
Well, Jarrett, 67, is a legend for a good reason. His improvisations well forth
from heaven knows where, driven by a depth of conviction that’s unmistakeably
his, producing sounds that won’t have been heard before and won’t be repeated.
It’s as if he is plugged in to a celestial battery charger, and we, listening,
connect to that astounding energy by proxy.
He
performs not just with his hands and arms, but with his whole body, his
shoulders curving towards the keyboard as if microscopically examining every
squiggle of melody. He emits hums, whines, groans. He sits, he stands, he
wiggles. Some find him mesmerising. Others say he is best experienced with eyes
closed.
He
reaches audiences that other jazzers don’t. Hardcore classical pianophiles,
those who flock to hear artists such as Martha Argerich or Krystian Zimerman,
are often drawn to Jarrett for his extraordinarily expressive musicianship and
the variety of colour he draws from the instrument. Jarrett had a top-level
classical training in his native Pennsylvania, and the virtuoso technique he developed
has certainly fed in to the unique way he uses the instrument. He thinks
contrapuntally, horizontally, involving many lines and layers of music, often
embedding a theme in the middle of a wide-spun texture, and allowing a new
section of thought to grow organically out of a small pattern in one that’s
gone before. And he’ll squeeze every drop of potential out of that motif before
moving on to another.
Unlike
most jazz pianists (Chick Corea excepted), he has recorded classical repertoire
too: solo Bach, Mozart piano concertos and Handel suites. He has even made
discs playing the organ and the clavichord. This year, while his schedule
includes solo improvised recitals and trio performances with Gary Peacock and
Jack DeJohnette, the loyal ECM label with which he has long worked is also
tipped to be releasing a new album in which he performs the Bach sonatas for
violin and keyboard with the violinist Michelle Makarski.
ECM has
put out his solo improvisations from Vienna, La Scala Milan, London/Paris (Testament), Carnegie Hall, Tokyo and
Rio, to name but a few, helping to widen his already huge cult following. Of
his massive discography, though, the Köln Concert of 1975 is still perhaps the
best-loved recording, having become the biggest-selling solo album in jazz
history. Strange, then, to think that, looking back, Jarrett has said he would
have done certain things about it differently. He doesn’t stand still.
Turbulent episodes of his life affect his creative bent; he has been remarkably
open about this, saying in interviews soon after his divorce in 2010 that
difficult times were “a source of energy” that he could draw on in his
music-making.
But even
times when he had no energy at all have made a difference. Stricken with ME
(chronic fatigue syndrome) for about two years from 1996, he found himself
scarcely able to play. When he returned to his instrument in gradual stages, he
effectively relearned his technique, assessing his sound and style and
developing a less “aggressive” touch. Once his recovery was underway he spoke
of how the illness had forced him to concentrate on the deeper “skeleton” of
his music and remarked that he felt he was “starting at zero and being born
again at the piano”.
The aims
remain simple, though. Jarrett has said that his intention in his solo recitals
is, first, to come up with interesting music and, secondly, to make sure that
that interesting music isn’t something he has come up with before.
Alyn
Shipton, presenter of BBC Radio 3’s Jazz
Record Requests, made a series of radio programmes about Jarrett soon after
the pianist had recuperated from ME. “He always says he has no idea what is
going to happen in the concert,” Shipton relates. “And with the neurotic
perfectionism that only he could apply, he records all his performances,
listens back to them, then says he tries to erase them from his mind so that
they won’t affect his future ones.”
His
influence on successive generations of jazz musicians has been immeasurable.
Simon Mulligan, a British pianist who plays both classical concerts and jazz,
says that Jarrett is prime among role models for him and his peers. “It’s
Jarrett and Herbie Hancock,” Mulligan remarks. “We all call them Keith and
Herbie. I know I’ve been influenced by the way he shapes the arc of his music,
and the detail, such as his ‘portamento’ playing when he decorates the run-up
to a melodic note like a singer. And in terms of touch, he is one of few people
who can really make the piano sing.”
But
Jarrett’s outbursts against his audience are no fun (although there’s a spoof
Twitter account, @AngryJarrett, that apes them). “He’s convinced that coughing
is a sign of boredom and that if you’re really concentrating on the music, you
don’t cough,” Shipton comments. “He doesn’t cough while he’s playing, so, he
thinks, why should they cough if they’re listening? What people dread is that
moment when something that’s going well suddenly falls in on itself and he
jumps up and says ‘I’ve seen a red light, there’s a camera! If you want to
remember a concert, you remember the music, you don’t remember it visually...’”
Audiences
today, accustomed to social media-savvy performers who encouraging filming,
uploading and sharing, sometimes forget that musicians are well within their
rights to demand to control their own material, and to concentrate on creating
it. Distraction can wreck everything they are trying to do. According to
Shipton, Jarrett’s CD Radiance,
recorded live in Japan, is missing a section “because he lost his rag so badly
with the audience, three quarters of the way through, that the last part was no
good and he couldn’t issue it”.
ECM
might record this London appearance too. So, if you go, remember: don’t cough,
don’t take photos and for goodness’ sake don’t attempt to smuggle in a
recording device. Another tip: don’t leave too quickly at the end. Sometimes
his encores of jazz standards can be almost the most entrancing moments of
all.
Keith Jarrett, The Solo Concert,
Royal Festival Hall, 25 February. Box office: 0844 875 0073
