Keith Jarrett

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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 enjoyed a great deal of success as 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 (1975) became the best-selling piano recording in history. In 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in the magazine's 73rd Annual Readers' Poll.

Early life and education

Jarrett was born on May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania to a mother of Slovenian descent. Jarrett's grandmother was born in Segovci, near Apače in Slovenia. Jarrett's father was of mostly German descent. He grew up in suburban Allentown with significant early exposure to music.

Jarrett possesses absolute 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 bandleader Paul Whiteman. He performed in his first formal piano recital at the age of seven, playing works by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Saint-Saëns, and ending with two of his own compositions. Encouraged by his mother, he took classical piano lessons with a series of teachers, including Eleanor Sokoloff of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Jarrett attended Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where he learned jazz and became proficient in it. He developed a strong interest in contemporary jazz, and was inspired by a Dave Brubeck performance he attended in New Hope. He was invited to study classical composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, but he was already leaning toward jazz and turned it down.

After his graduation from Emmaus High School in 1963, Jarrett moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music and play cocktail piano in local Boston clubs.

Personal life

Jarrett lives in an 18th-century farmhouse in Oxford Township, New Jersey in rural Warren County, where he uses an adjacent barn as a recording and practice studio.

Jarrett was a follower of the teachings of George Gurdjieff (1866–1949) for many years, and in 1980 recorded an album of Gurdjieff's compositions, called Sacred Hymns, for ECM. He is now a Christian Scientist.

In 1964, Jarrett married Margot Erney, his girlfriend from Emmaus High School with whom Jarrett reconnected in Boston. The couple had two sons, Gabriel and Noah, and divorced in 1979. 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 a bassist and composer and Gabriel is a drummer based in Vermont.

Jarrett's race has been a source of commentary by media and activists throughout his career, as he has reported being recurrently mistaken as a Black person. In a 2000 interview with Terry Gross, Jarrett relates an incident at the Heidelberg Jazz Festival in the Rhine-Neckar region of Germany when he was protested by Black musicians for something akin to cultural appropriation. He also tells of a separate moment in his career when black jazz musician Ornette 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."

In a September 11, 2000 interview with Terry Gross, Jarrett revealed that chronic fatigue syndrome required him to radically overhaul his piano to have less breakaway keypress resistance in order for him to keep playing.

Interviewed by NPR's Rachel Martin for his 70th birthday in 2015, Jarrett explained the notable 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," he said.

Jarrett suffered two major 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 told The New York Times in October 2020.

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Career

Jartt left New York City in 1964, where he appeared at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Jarrett was hired by Art Blakey to play with the Jazz Messengers. Jartt's appearance on the Messengers' live album Buttercorn Lady marked his first commercial recording debut. Despite this, Blakey and Jartt were at odds, and Jartt and Jartt were uneasy, and Jartt was forced to leave after four months of touring. He was discovered by Jack DeJohnette, who recommended Jart to his band leader Charles Lloyd during a show. The Charles Lloyd Quartet had formed not long before and were performing open, improvised forms while constructing supple grooves, and they were heading for territory that was yet to be explored by some of the West Coast's psychedelic rock bands. Forest Flower, 1966, was one of the mid-1960s' most popular jazz recordings. They were invited to perform The Fillmore in San Francisco and took home the local hippie audience. The quartet toured around the United States and Europe, with appearances in Leningrad and Moscow. The Beatles attended The Beatles' concert at Royal Albert Hall in London. Jarrett was named in Time and Harper's Magazine, making him a well-known rock and jazz musician. DeJohnette's tour also laid the groundwork for a lifelong musical friendship.

Jartt started to record his own names as the leader of small groups in a trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Signs Of Exit Signs (1967), his first album as a band leader, was released by Vortex, followed by Restoration Ruin (1968), which Thom Jurek of AllMusic described as "a curiosity in his catalog." Jarrett barely touches the piano, but he also plays all the other instruments on what amounts to a folk-rock album. He also sings, which is strange. Somewhere Before, Haden and Motian's third album was released in 1968 on Atlantic Records, another trio album with Haden and Motian was released.

In 1968, the Charles Lloyd Quartet, with Jarronne McClure, and DeJohnette came to an end after their recording of Soundtrack came to a close due to budget conflicts and cultural differences. After the trumpeter heard him in a New York City club, Jartt was invited to join the Miles Davis group. Jartt performed both electronic organ and Rhodes piano during his Davis tenure, alternating with Chick Corea. On 1970 recordings, including the Isle of Wight Festival's performance in the film Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew Live, the two appear side by side. Jartt played electric piano and organ simultaneously after Corea left in 1970. Jartt stayed with the group due to his admiration for Davis and his desire to work with DeJohnette, despite his growing dislike of amplified music and electric instruments within jazz. Jart has often cited Davis as a determining factor in his own experience with music and improvisation.

Jarrett appears on several Davis albums, including Miles Davis at Fillmore East in New York City, and The Cellar Door Sessions 1970, 1970, Washington, D.C., where he appeared on Live-Evil and Get Up with It. A number of other songs from this period were also released a few years later.

In 1971, DeJohnette joined Davis' band in the middle of 1971, and Jartt followed in December. "I knew I was going to have to leave right away" after Jack left, Jartt later reflected: "I knew he'd have to leave... No one knew what Jack knew and could do what he could do simultaneously." That was the end of the band's flexibility.

Jartt, Haden, and Motian appeared on Atlantic Records for four days, including the trio album The Mourning of a Star and two albums, El Juicio (The Judgement) and Birth, on which the trio was augmented by saxophonist Dewey Redman. Redman became a founding member of the organization, which later became known as the "American quartet" in the media. Over a dozen albums in less than five years would be released. Danny Johnson, Guilherme Franco, or Airto Moreira were often supplemented by an extra percussionist, as well as guitarist Sam Brown.

The quartet, together with Brown and Moreira, released Columbia Records aspirations for Columbia Music in 1971, with string and brass arrangements by Jarrette. However, Columbia sacked Jarrett in favour of Herbie Hancock, and Jarrett's boss negotiated a deal with Impulse. Records, for whom the group will have eight albums.

The quartet members performed various instruments. Jarrett performed soprano saxophone, recorder, banjo, percussion, and piano. Redman performed musette, a Chinese double-reed instrument, and percussion, as well as percussion, and Motian and Haden performed a variety of percussion. Haden's acoustic bass also had a unique plucked and percussive sound, with one track being run through a wah-wah pedal ("Mortgage on My Soul" on the album Birth). Haden, Motian, and Redman's compositions are included in Impulse!'s Byablue and Bop-Bett's albums, rather than Jartt's. Jartt's compositions and the group's musical identities gave this ensemble a distinct sound. The quartet's music is a mash-up of free jazz, straight-ahead post-bop, gospel music, and exotic, Middle-Eastern improvisations.

Jartt asked producer Manfred Eicher if he wanted to record for the relatively new ECM brand during this period. Jartt was struck by the fact that Eicher was primarily concerned about musical quality rather than financial gain. On ECM, Jarrett's American quartet released two albums, The Survivors' Suite and Eyes of the Heart, as well as Ruta and Daitya, which also included songs by Miles Davis.

Eicher suggested that Jartt collaborate with Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, whom Jart had encountered when in Europe with Charles Lloyd in the late 1960s. Palle Danielsson on bass and Jon Christensen on drums formed the foundation for what would be called the "European quartet" after its initial collaborations. Each of the American quartet's five albums for ECM, but each had a style reminiscent of the Avant-garde and Americana styles, but with some of the avant-garde and Americana styles that characterized ECM artists at the time, the European folk and classical music influences were replaced by the European folk and classical music influences that characterized their work.

Jarrett performed a few solo pieces at the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., in December 1970. These were performed on electric pianos (Rhodes and Contempo). On The Cellar Door Sessions, Jarrett's most popular sets were recorded in 2007.

Facing You was Jarrett's first album for ECM, Facing You was released in 1971. He has continued to record solo piano albums on occasion throughout his career, including Staircase (1976), Invocations/The Flame (1981), and The Melody at Night (1999). Book of Ways (1986) is a studio recording of clavichord solos.

Jartt began playing purely experimental solo concerts in 1973, and it is thanks to his concert recordings, which have made him one of the best-selling jazz musicians in history. Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne (1973), which Time magazine named "Jazz Album of the Year," All About Jazz (1975), and Sun Bear Concerts (1976), a 10-LP (and later 6-CD) box set. Dark Intervals, Jarrett's solo performances, were released in 1987.

Jartt revived his solo concert style with the Paris Concert (1990), Vienna Concert (1991), and La Scala (1995). These new concerts tend to be more inspired by classical music than those of earlier ones, reflecting his fascination with composers such as Bach and Shostakovich. Jartt referred to the performance as his greatest achievement and the fulfillment of everything he was aiming for in the liner notes to Vienna's concert. "I have been courted the fire for a long time, and several sparks have erupted in the past, but the music on this album speaks, in particular, the language of the fire itself," he wrote.

Jart has stated that his best performances came when he had only the faintest idea of what he'd be doing at the next minute. He also stated that the majority of people are unaware of "what he does." Miles Davis said to him that Jart could "play from nothing."

Jartt's 100th solo appearance in Japan was caught on video at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, in April 1987, and it was renamed Solo Tribute in the same year. This is a collection of nearly all common songs. Last Solo, a solo performance at Kan-i Hoken hall in Tokyo in January 1984, was released in 1987.

Jartt was diagnosed with persistent exhaustion syndrome in the late 1990s and was unable to leave his house for lengthy stretches of time. He recorded The Melody at Night, a solo piano performance based on jazz standards, during this period. Rose Anne's second wife, who had been given the album as a Christmas gift.

Jartt had returned to touring by 2000, both solo and with the Standards Trio. On the 2005 CD Radiance (a complete concert in Osaka and excerpts from one in Tokyo) and the 2006 DVD Tokyo Solo (the entire Tokyo performance) included two 2002 solo piano concerts, Jarrett's first solo piano concerts following his illness. In comparison to previous performances (which were mainly two improvisations lasting 30 to 40 minutes), the 2002 concerts were organized as a series of shorter improvisations (some as short as a minute and a half).

Jarrett's first solo performance in North America in more than ten years was held at Carnegie Hall in September 2005 and then released as a double-CD set The Carnegie Hall Concert. He appeared solo in the Salle Pelle Péel in Paris and at London's Royal Festival Hall in late 2008, marking the first time Jartt appeared in London in 17 years. On the album Paris / London: Testament, recordings of these concerts were released in October 2009. The Art of Improvisation, a 2005 documentary that premiered on BBC Two on November 12, 2021, concluded with his trio's appearance of "Basin Street Blues" by his trio.

Jarrett's request, by ECM head Manfred Eicher's suggestion, asked bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette, with whom he had appeared on Peacock's 1977 album Tales of Another, to produce an album of jazz standards called Standards, Volume 1. Standards, Volume 2 and Changes, two more albums, were released at the same time, and a few weeks later. The success of these albums and the group's ensuing tour, which occurred in the early 1980s, made this new standards trio one of jazz's most popular performing groups, and certainly one of the most enduring, with continuing to record and tour for more than 25 years. The Trio went on to record numerous live and studio albums largely of jazz repertory stuff.

The Jartt-Peacock-DeJohnette trio produced recordings that included a significant portion of original material, including 1987's Changeless. Many of the standards albums feature an original track or two, some attributed to Jartt, but the majority of them are improvisations on jazz standards. The live recordings Inside Out and Always Let Me Go (both released in 2001 and 2002 respectively) sparked a renewed interest in wholly improvised free jazz. These three men's musical communications had never been anything less than telepathic, and group improvisations often take on a complexity that seems almost composed by this time in their history. The trio undertook regular world tours of recital halls (the only place Jartt, a well-known acoustic stickler), and was one of the few truly influential jazz ensembles to perform both straight-ahead (as opposed to smooth) and free jazz.

At the Deer Head Inn (1992), a live album of standards recorded with Paul Motian replacing DeJohnette at the Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, 40 miles from Jarrett's hometown, where he began as a jazz pianist, is a recording of standards. It was the first time Jartt and Motian had performed together since the American quartet's demise was 16 years ago.

After more than 30 years, the Standard Trio was disbanded in 2014. Keith Jartt's trio's final concert appeared at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, New Jersey, on November 30, 2014. "Straight, No Chaser" was the last encore of Thelonious Monk's composition "Straight, No Chaser." In September 2020, Peacock died.

Jartt's success as a jazz guitarist and pianist has allowed him to pursue a parallel career as a classical composer and pianist, with a major emphasis on ECM Records. Short pieces for solo piano, strings, and various chamber ensembles are included in the Light, an album released in 1973, such as a string quartet and a brass quintet, as well as a piece for cellos and trombones. This collection showcases a young composer's neess for a variety of classical styles.

Luminessence (1974) and Arbour Zena (1975) both performed and performed pieces for strings with improvising jazz musicians, including Jan Garbarek and Charlie Haden. The strings here have a moody, reflective feel that is characteristic of 1970s "ECM sound" and is also very well suited to Garbarek's zealous saxophone improvisations. These compositions have been dismissed by many classical music enthusiasts as lightweight, but Jartt seems to be more focused on a synthesis of composed and improvised music than on formal classical works. However, his classical studies would continue to more traditional disciplines from this point forward.

Ritual (1977) is a composed solo piano piece by Dennis Russell Davies that is somewhat reminiscent of Jarrett's solo piano recordings.

Jarrett's Celestial Hawk (1980) is a piece for orchestra, percussion, and piano that he performed and recorded with the Syracuse Symphony under Christopher Keene. This work is Jartt's biggest and longest work as a classical composer.

Bridge of Light (1993) is the last recording of classical compositions to appear under Jarrett's name. Three pieces were written for a soloist with orchestra and one for violin and piano on the album. The pieces are between 1984 and 1990.

Neumann Records released Lou Harrison's Piano Concerto and Suite for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra, with Jarrett on piano and Small Orchestra, with Naoto Otomo conducting the piano concerto with the New Japan Philharmonic. The Suite for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra was conducted by Robert Hughes. Jartt's appearance in Peggy Glanville-Hicks' Etruscan Concerto in 1992 was released, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Brooklyn Philharmonic. This was released on Music Masters Classics, with pieces by Lou Harrison and Terry Riley. Jarrett appeared on one track in Lousadzak, a 17-minute piano concerto by American composer Alan Hovhaness, on 1995 Music Masters Jazz. Davies was the conductor once more. The bulk of Jartt's classical recordings are from his older repertoire, but he might have been introduced to this contemporary masterpiece by his one-time manager George Avakian, who was a good friend of the composer. Jart has also recorded classical works for ECM by composers such as Bach, Handel, Shostakovich, and Arvo Pärt.

In 2004, Jartt was given the Léon Sonning Music Prize. Miles Davis, who is usually associated with classical musicians and composers, is the only other jazz performer to win the competition.

Jart has also performed harpsichord, clavichord, organ, soprano saxophone, and drums. He performed saxophone and other forms of percussion in the American quartet, but his recordings since the group's disbandement of the band have rarely featured these instruments. He has played acoustic piano on the majority of his albums in the last 20 years. He has expressed disappointment for his decision not to play the saxophone, in particular.

Jarrett appeared on Saturday Night Live on April 15, 1978, and he was the musical guest. Bella Martha, a German film directed by ECM Records founder and president Manfred Eicher, also features Jarr's "Country" from the album Tribute's My Song and "U Dance."

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