The Koln Concert 2-LP / gatefold sleeve / booklet / printed signature - the groundbreaking recording of Keith Jarrett's improvised solo concert at the Cologne opera house - has attained legendary status since it's 1975 release. An iconic album and an essential document of the era, few live recordings in any idiom have been celebrated as widely. In the liner essay included in the 50th Anniversary Edition of the album, the concert's context is outlined in detail. Recorded on January 24, 1975 and originally released on November 30 the same year, The Koln Concert was produced by Manfred Eicher. For the 50th anniversary, the special edition 2-LP is released in a high-quality tip-on-gatefold sleeve with a glued-in, 8-page booklet featuring a new liner essay in German and English, as well as original and new photos. Includes an art print with a photo and printed signature by Keith Jarrett.

Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Paul Motian - "At The Deer Head Inn: The Complete Recordings". "The music has the dash and the unabashed lyricism of Keith Jarrett's best work," wrote Stereophile in a rave review of the first selection from the intimate Deer Head Inn live recording, capturing Jarrett's spontaneous, and in retrospect historic, return to the Pennsylvanian venue of his early years, alongside Gary Peacock (bass) and Paul Motian (drums). The second release, titled The Old Country and released 30 years after the first volume in 2024, was met with equal acclaim - The Guardian's John Fordham called it, "song-based jazz-imagining at it's best." Keith Jarrett: "I think you can hear on this tape what jazz is all about." Here, both albums are combined and released on vinyl for the very first time. The Complete Recordings are spread across 4 LPs in two tip-on gatefold jackets and framed by a deluxe slipcase. There won't be a second print-run of this boxset, limiting it strictly to this edition.

When several of the greatest minds in modern music join forces, the result is a genre-defying masterpiece. MEMORY OF TOMORROW brings together the virtuosic talents of marimbist Mika Stoltzman, bassist Eddie Gomez, pianists Geoffrey Keezer and Anders Wihk, vibraphonist Mike Mainieri, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, and drummer Steve Gadd, who doubles as the producer of this all-star album. From the soulful melody of Eric Clapton's Layla to the infectious groove of Gadd's The Duke, the ensemble reimagines iconic works by several of modern history's most celebrated artists, from Sting to Chick Corea and more. A stunning blend of jazz, classical, and contemporary influences, this album is a celebration of virtuosity at it's finest.

New Vienna is the fourth concert recording to be released from Keith Jarrett's final European solo tour. It follows Munich 2016, Budapest Concert and Bordeaux Concert. Keith Jarrett's 2016 return to the Austrian capital brought the flames of inspiration to another historic location with lively acoustic properties, the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, where, at the start of the previous century, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern had premiered works that challenged and changed the course of modern music. New Vienna, shaping it's new music in the moment, is near-encyclopedic in scope. The album is issued as Keith Jarrett turns 80.

At The Deer Head Inn, released in 1992, was the first selection of material from pianist Keith Jarrett's spontaneous, and in retrospect historic, return to the Pennsylvanian venue of his early years. "The music has the dash and the unabashed lyricism of Keith Jarrett's best work," wrote Stereophile in 1994. All attributes applicable to this edition, featuring 8 previously unreleased performances, which dives deeply into the magic of this special live event. A one-night-only coming together of a Jarrett trio with Gary Peacock (bass) and Paul Motian (drums).

Japanese UHQCD pressing. This is a sequel to the 1992 live recording "At the Deer Head Inn." [Recording Infomation] Keith Jarrett (p), Gary Peacock (double-b), Paul Motian (ds) Recorded live at The Deer Head Inn, Allentown, September 16, 1992. Features UHQCD format. *UHQCD (Ultimate High Quality CD) is an upgraded version of HQCD, a high fidelity CD format developed by Memory-Tech. Universal. 2024.

Double vinyl LP pressing. Keith Jarrett's account of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's Wurttemberg Sonatas is a revelation. "I'd heard the sonatas played by harpsichordists, and felt there was room for a piano version," says Jarrett today. This outstanding recording, made in 1994 and previously unreleased, finds the pianist attuned to the expressive implications of the sonatas in every moment. The younger Bach's idiosyncrasies: the gentle playfulness of the music, the fondness for subtle and sudden tempo shifts, the extraordinary, rippling invention... all of this is wonderfully delivered. The fluidity of the whole performance has a quality that perhaps could be conveyed only by an artist of great improvisational skills. In Jarrett's hands, CPE's exploration of new compositional forms retains the freshness of discovery. Recorded at Keith Jarrett's Cavelight Studio in May 1994, the album includes liner notes by Paul Griffiths.

Keith Jarrett's account of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's W�rttemberg Sonatas is a revelation. "I'd heard the sonatas played by harpsichordists, and felt there was room for a piano version," says Jarrett today. This outstanding recording, made in 1994 and previously unreleased, finds the pianist attuned to the expressive implications of the sonatas in every moment. Recorded at Keith Jarrett's Cavelight Studio in May 1994, the album includes liner notes by Paul Griffiths. 2 CD.

Keith Jarrett's album, Book of Ways, was recorded on July 14, 1986 in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Rather amazing is the great variety of sound and rhythm - Jarrett played alternately one or two instruments simultaneously. Beyond unmistakable echoes of lute music and Japanese koto, the whole range of modes of expression the clavichord is capable of is being fathomed out. All this has been supported by studio techniques, which recorded the sound of the instrument with rarely heard intensity.

Double vinyl LP pressing. Bordeaux Concert is a special document from Keith Jarrett's 2016 European tour. Each solo piano concert had it's own distinct character, and in Bordeaux, the lyrical impulse is brought to the fore. In this improvised suite, many quiet discoveries are made. There is a freshness to the music, a feeling of intimate communication. Reviewing the performance, the French press spoke of hints of the Koln concert in the flow of things, and the beguiling beauty of extended sections of the Bordeaux concert.

Keith Jarrett is one of the few jazz superstars whose concerts sell out almost immediately, wherever he plays. Keith is much more than just a jazz musician. Through an exploration of his life and work, and close encounters with the man himself, this documentary offers an exceptional opportunity to examine the contrasting worlds of jazz and classical music. At the same time it is a fascinating and analytical portrait of a remarkable musician whose interests and influences range from jazz, ethnic and folk music, to Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky and Samuel Barber. The film explores, through a collage of interviews and performance, the complete range of Keith Jarrett's life and work. Great archive material is interweaved with original and richly detailed filmed interviews, not only with Keith himself, but with all the musicians he has played with over the years, as well as with members of his family, tour managers and other close musical and recording associates. "Keith Jarrett - The Art of Improvisation" - produced and directed by Mike Dibb, in collaboration with Jarrett's biographer Ian Carr - is the first ever major documentary about Keith Jarrett, made with the full co-operation of Jarrett himself.

Two CDs. The second complete show to be issued from Keith Jarrett's 2016 European tour, following the acclaimed Munich 2016 concert. This double album documents the pianist's solo performance at Budapest's Bela Bart¢k National Concert Hall. Jarrett, whose roots go back to Hungary, saw it as a homecoming; the context inspired much creative improvisation. His later concerts are comprised of independent movements, each a marvel of spontaneous resourcefulness and creative energy.

2019 live release. A solo concert from Keith Jarrett - recorded on the last night of a 2016 European tour at Munich's Philharmonie - finds the great improvising pianist at a peak of invention. Creating a spontaneous suite of forms in the moment with the assurance of a master builder - interspersing touches of lyricism between pieces of polyrhythmic and harmonic complexity - he delivers one of his very finest performances. The audience hangs on every note, every nuance, and is rewarded with tender, magical encores.

CD reissue. This single disc drawn from the At The Blue Note box embodies all the characteristics that made Jarrett's trio for many listeners the preeminent group in all of jazz. The qualities of respect for the material and the freedom to take liberties with it co-exist here as Jarrett, Peacock and DeJohnette play, with amazing gracefulness, the standards "Autumn Leaves", "Days of Wine and Roses", "You Don't Know what Love Is" and "When I Fall In Love", plus Keith's tunes "Bop-Be" and "Muezzin".

Two CD set. This recording of Keith Jarrett's extraordinary 2006 solo performance at Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice finds Jarrett entering one of Italy s most famous classical venues and channeling the flow of inspiration to shape something new. In this case, a suite of eight spontaneously created pieces referencing everything from the blues to atonality to heart-rending ballads. From the first flurry of notes, it is a consistently captivating journey. Release of La Fenice is timely: The 62nd International Festival of Contemporary Music of the Biennale di Venezia has honored Keith Jarrett with it's Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. It's the first time that a jazz musician has received this award, which has previously been given to contemporary composers including, in recent decades, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Gyorgy Kurtag, Helmut Lachenmann, Sofia Gubaidulina and Steve Reich.

2014 2X vinyl LP pressing. Jarrett & 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, & Every Time We Say Goodbye as well as alternate takes of Where Can I Go Without You and Goodbye, every bit as touching as the Jasmine renditions. 'When we play together it's like two people singing', said Jarrett of his reunion with Haden. The intentions of the song are honored, the shades of meaning in a melody or a lyric explored instrumentally. As Charlie Haden put it, 'Keith really listens, and I listen'. That's the secret. It's about listening'. The music of Last Dance was recorded at Keith Jarrett's home studio.

HOVHANESS Lousadzak. 1 Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain.” HARRISON Symphony No. 2, “Elegiac” • Dennis Russell Davies, cond; Keith Jarrett (pn); 1 American Composers O • NIMBUS 2512 (67:00)


This is a reissue of a recording originally released on the Music Masters label in 1989. It brings together the music of two composers who, as Tim Page’s program notes point out, first came to public attention as kindred spirits, linked together with John Cage, interestingly enough. Readers may be aware that Lou Harrison was one of the composer-critics whom Virgil Thomson ushered in as associates to the New York Herald Tribune during the mid 1940s. This was the period when Alan Hovhaness, until then an impoverished eccentric struggling to gain attention in the Boston area, attempted to cast his lot in the broader arena of New York City, after having essentially been ridiculed out of Tanglewood by Aaron Copland and his coterie. Both Thomson and Harrison were among the first with access to an influential forum of opinion to champion Hovhaness’s music, and their enthusiastic advocacy contributed significantly to establishing his early reputation. Of course, as the years passed, each of these figures—stubborn individualists themselves—proceeded in his own personal direction, and each ended his career at quite a different point from the others on the American compositional matrix.


Lousadzak , composed in 1944, is certainly one of the most unusual piano concertos ever written (neither a single chord nor sequence of octaves appears in the piano part). The music assigned to the solo instrument imitates a number of Armenian folk instruments, especially those in the dulcimer family, while the string ensemble plays the role of a folk orchestra, providing an accompaniment of primitive polyphony. Both Harrison and Cage were present at the work’s New York premiere, and evidently it really took the audience by surprise. Harrison later recalled that it “was the closest I’ve ever been to one of those renowned artistic riots.” From the standpoint of some six decades later, when Hovhaness is no longer alive, having left behind a legacy of hundreds upon hundreds more compositions, Lousadzak stands as one of his indisputable masterpieces. Somehow the work evokes—as its name, meaning “the coming of light,” implies—a haunting and mysterious sense of the beginning of time. It also has a real sense of drama—not drama in the romantic, climactic sense, but a gradual accumulation of passion and intensity as the work unfolds. No one who has written off Hovhaness after having heard only the over-inflated, endlessly soporific compositions of his later years should fail to acquaint himself with this important representation of one of the composer’s most fertile periods. One is hard-pressed to name another work of his that is as consistently compelling and inspired.


That a pianist with the varied interests and talents—not to mention the distinguished reputation—of Keith Jarrett turned his attention to Lousadzak has served to attract the notice of listeners unlikely otherwise to have encountered such a work. And Jarrett’s performance has much to recommend it. But there are also aspects of his reading that I find wrong-headed. The ethnomusical context from which this work derives is one of individual improvisation alternating with passages in which the ensemble comes to the fore. The improvisational passages tend to be rhythmically free and rhapsodic (an approach of which Jarrett—in other contexts—is a consummate master). Though thoroughly notated, Lousadzak emulates this style, and should be performed in a manner that is in keeping with it. But for some reason Jarrett approaches this profoundly non-virtuosic music as if trying to press it into service as some sort of technical showpiece, with overly driven, frenetically rushed tempos. Conductor Davies seems of the same mind as Jarrett, constantly pressing the piece forward, squaring off its phrase rhythms, and sacrificing much of its depth and subtlety. A performance that better captures the work’s spirit was released in 2005 on the Black Box label (see Fanfare 29:3), featuring pianist Martin Berkofsky. Although the Russian Globalis Symphony Orchestra lacks the precision and refinement of the American Composers Orchestra, pianist Berkofsky evinces a deeper understanding of the mode of expression represented by Hovhaness’s work.


“Mysterious Mountain” has loomed as Hovhaness’s best-known and most popular composition ever since it first appeared on recording during the late 1950s. (The fact that this work is identified as Symphony No. 2 should not be taken to mean that it was the second symphony Hovhaness composed. In fact, it was not given this appellation until a number of years after it was composed. To summarize briefly, toward the middle of his career, Hovhaness revised, retitled, destroyed, or partially or completely recast many of his compositions, leaving “holes” in his opus number listings and, in some cases, his numbering of symphonies. He would often “plug up” these “holes” with works composed either earlier or later than the numberings would suggest.) The great success of “Mysterious Mountain,” composed in its final form in 1955 (although portions date back to the 1930s), can be attributed to two factors: (1) Just two or three years after its completion, Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra recorded it for RCA Victor; (2) It is a beautifully tranquil and euphonious work in a neo-ecclesiastical vein almost entirely devoid of harmonic dissonance. Readers may be interested to learn that in a letter written in May 1961, the composer wrote, “As to my ‘Mysterious Mountain’ my feelings are mixed—I am happy it is popular but I have written much better music and it is a very impersonal work, in which I omit my deeper searching.”


The Reiner/Chicago recording set a performance standard for “Mysterious Mountain” that is hard to surpass, although even that performance is marred by a blemish or two. But its overall pacing and phrasing seem little short of ideal. By now there have been at least half a dozen recorded performances of this work. Most tend to take the first movement, Andante con moto, at tempos much faster than Reiner’s 7:25. Of them, Davies’s 5:09 may be the fastest. Andante con moto is a very vague tempo indication, leaving much room for interpretation, even more than most such designations. The expressive content of the music must be the determinant, and at Davies’s tempo, this quintessentially tranquil movement sounds brusque and rushed—clearly against the grain of the music. The more actively polyphonic second movement, which happens to be my favorite, is done magnificently. The mysterious opening of the third movement is again disconcertingly hasty, while the remainder of the movement proceeds lovingly, the pure, consonant harmony exquisitely in tune.


It is perhaps not too much of a stretch to observe that the “Elegiac” Symphony plays a similar role within Lou Harrison’s œuvre that “Mysterious Mountain” plays in Hovhaness’s: that is, they both attempt to integrate the spirit, as well as some of the exotic usages, of Eastern music within a Western symphonic context. This makes Harrison’s piece, in particular, especially unusual. A large work (longer than both Hovhaness pieces together), the “Elegiac” Symphony comprises five movements, and reportedly occupied Harrison intermittently from 1942 until 1975. Perhaps its dedication to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky accounts for the symphonic approach. Harrison’s familiar fingerprints—modal melodies of somewhat Balinese cast presented in unison or with a heterophonic or simple polyphonic treatment—are clearly evident (especially in movements 1, 3, and 5), but are here expanded to symphonic proportions—not solely a matter of duration, but also of a certain grandeur of both gesture and sonority. This very aspect of the work may alienate some of the composer’s more extreme admirers, while others are likely to find it all the more appealing for the same reason. The symphony is scored for a large orchestra, which is approached with considerable subtlety and delicacy—especially the use of the tack piano, a specialty of the composer, somewhat related to Cage’s “prepared piano.” The three odd-numbered movements—entitled “Tears of the Angel Israfel,” “Tears of the Angel Israfel II,” and “The Sweetness of Epicurus” respectively—are indeed “elegiac,” but not in the highly personal, Samuel Barber-like sense, but rather, in a more abstract, cosmic, contemplative sense, conveying a feeling of serene acceptance. The last movement is especially warm and poignant, concluding the work with deep, heartfelt beauty. The second movement, Allegro, poco presto, is scherzo-like and more Western in style, with some chromaticism, although gamelan-like effects clearly identify the composer. The fourth movement, “Praises for Michael the Archangel,” presents a stark contrast. Its harsh, aggressive harmonic dissonance and 12-tone material remind us that at one point Harrison studied with Arnold Schoenberg. Altogether, Harrison’s Symphony No. 2 serves as an excellent introduction to, and consolidation of, the many facets of this unique composer, presented in a fashion accessible to the more traditionally oriented listener.


FANFARE: Walter Simmons

Specially priced 2-CD set established a new high-w ater mark in the life of the extraordinary trio of Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack Dejohnette. One of the most exciting releases in the history of the trio. Recorded on two night in Tokyo last year, this double album is an endlessly fascinatin g document that takes the full measure of the grou p's creativity.