KEITH JARRETT: a must-listen compilation

Trying to pick a favorite recording or performance by Keith Jarrett is like picking a favorite painting by Picasso or a favorite glass of wine. There are so many best examples, and choosing is so personal. However, I’m here to suggest to you that Jarrett’s most inspired playing occurred in the 1980s.

Jarrett is mostly an interpretive player, not a composer, although his compositions My Song off MY SONG, and So Tender (STANDARDS VOL 1; SONY VIDEO: STANDARDS VOL 1) are gems of harmony, chordal progression, and rhythm.

His best work? An absolute best recording? Impossible to choose, but his two solos with Charles Lloyd in Forest Flower are as good as any piano solo in the history of jazz. They let loose with a tasteful right hand, soaring, and full chordal rhythms. He has a degree of control over the keyboard, possibly from his early classical training, that no other jazz player has ever possessed (his ‘classical’ recordings attest to that fact).

In the early 1980s he put together a trio with Jack DeJohnette on drums and Gary Peacock on bass. That trio became one of the longest reigning groups of its type. They still record at the time of this writing in 2011. The trio’s first albums, STANDARDS VOLUME I and VOLUME II were released in 1983. Over the next few years, the trio got better and better until STANDARDS LIVE (recorded.1985) and STILL LIVE (r.1986) showcased a degree of interpretation and ensemble playing unmatched by any prior piano trio.

Specifically, six tracks are representative ‘bests’ from this period. To Young To Go Steady and The Way You Look Tonight from STANDARDS LIVE have never ever been performed with such emotion and restrained force. Don’t mind the grunting; it’s genius at work. From the STILL LIVE album, The Song Is You is seventeen minutes and thirty-three seconds of non-stop energy with a quintessential example of what Jarrett can do with an extension vamp at the end of a tune. The same thing happens in You And The Night And The Music off the same album. Astonishing. The fifth and sixth ‘best’ tracks demonstrate Jarrett’s love of hymns and sacred music. He ends the ballad Smoke Gets In Your Eyes off TRIBUTE (1989) with a glorious hymn-like cadenza, and begins Body And Soul off THE CURE (1990) with similar jazz-infused reverence. In a similar vein from ten years before, listen to the solo piano album STAIRCASE (1976), especially Hourglass, Part 2—a stunningly beautiful piece, exquisitely recorded.

I mention one more performance that made me fall off my chair. There is a video recording of a concert in Japan entitled SOLO TRIBUTE (recorded 1987). The track There Is No Greater Love combines all of Jarrett’s training and talent to create a work of rhythm, counterpoint, intensity and surprise that is unmatched.

Other Jarrett ‘bests’? There are so many. All The Things You Are from the TRIBUTE album is a monster. The intro alone is worth the price of the whole double CD. For uncomplicated beauty, listen to When I Fall In Love from STILL LIVE. For simple exquisite rhythm, Poinciana from WHISPER NOT (1999).

Also sample http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLCGWh-VZhI