Wow Robert, Ted Goia sent me / I love your conversation with Keith Jarrett / as a documentary filmmaker, I have a work in progress doc "Soul Searching" - "what's my relationship to music ?"
I really resonated with you r conversation with Jarrett and feel that you were able to get inside of him as much as anybody could and brought out something's that surprised me and probably him too / "a good talker is a better listener" and enjoyed your listening and follow up questions / at the bottom is a little back story on the Koln Concert you might enjoy too
as the other commenters below have their opinion / he's not for everyone / a friend of mine produced his Koln Concert, that almost didn't happen because he was frustrated at the German piano tuning and actually was about to cancel the concert and was in the limo and as she told me, she says to him (and I paraphrase) "it's ok it you leave and I will reimburse the audience and lose some money, but the people who come will be disappointed, and don't care about the piano they come because they love you and come for you" and the rest is history
Prickly. Huge influence. I panicked when I saw the headline.
I walked into a local record store chain in a Detroit suburb probably age 14. Looking through the jazz albums, haven't a clue. A cute employee asks if I need any help, I say I'd like to buy a jazz album. Could I be more specific? She says what instrument do I like? I say well I play piano concertos. She steers me to the Koln concert. I never looked back. Went to Columbia in part so I could hear as much live jazz as possible. Probably would have gone there anyway, Manhattan just blew me away. Probably would have stumbled onto buying jazz albums one way or another. Years later looking back you can say the staff was well-coached. Or not. Maybe I wasn't ready for Monk, or Cecil Taylor. The story of how the Koln concert came to be is fascinating in its own right, and should have taught Keith a huge lesson about going with the flow. But on some level, it didn't. Okay this is out of order and belongs a bit further down below.
Years later he's a big influence on my playing. A latent fear that my mind will go blank and the improvisation will hit a dead end, or I'll run out of ideas. But those left hand ostinatos . . . He ran out of ideas, that's why even in the Koln concert he'll repeat the same phrases measure after measure until something inspires him to change direction and explore that.
So getting back to the piano and that first album. What if I'd said synthesizer? Or organ? Maybe the employee steers me to Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, or Jimmy Smith. Different ice cream flavors, and I couldn't imagine always licking the same one. Duke Ellington with "there are 2 kinds of music, and good kind and the other kind."
" he can be annoying. I think he enjoys being that way when he feels there is a need to be, when it calls attention to whatever offense needs correction. In this way he reminded me of people I’d known in high school and college — the ones who loved to argue for sport."
Exactly - HS & College. I was exactly the same way - a towering intellect of righteousness. Put here to correct all the terrible wrongs. Look at any column or newsletter nowadays where they permit comments. It will be filled with folks correcting everything & everyone. Right down to the mortal sin of missing a period or comma or some other egregious sin.
Thank goodness I realized how absolutely tedious ,misguided & destructive I could be. I got very tired of being right & outgrew it. ( hopefully for the most part ). Listening is more fun.
Jarrett has always reminded me of that. Does anyone remember Harlan Ellison ? A fine writer & what an imagination. Kinda like a 2cnd string Phillip K. Dick. But see him in an interview or critical think-piece. Holy crap - watch out. I never had an idea what he was SO angry about all the time ! Him & Jarrett should have started the International Society of Never Say Die Curmudgeons. The ISNSDC.
Nuff Said !
PS - I like Acoustic Jazz/Music AND the synths of the Fusion era. I never did drop my electric Guitar in favor of a Nylon string (although I dig them too) during that time when you could hardly find a fusion player still ripping with their electrics. I broke the law continuously during that Electric No No era.
Aug 15, 2023·edited Aug 15, 2023Liked by Robert Doerschuk
If I was still playing, Jarret and Gary Peacock would be my ideal gig. There's a music TV channel in Thailand that occasionally plays a Keith Garret Trio concert and every time I listen to it, I hear something new. Thank you for this article. I don't care what his philosophy is, I love his playing.
Aug 15, 2023·edited Aug 15, 2023Liked by Robert Doerschuk
Never got much into unstructured free improvisation. Most of it sounds like noise. But Jarrett. .. he composes melodies in the moment; it's like nobody else I've ever heard.
I was interested to read in the introduction, the comparison of Jarrett’s Steinways. It reminded me of a conversation I witnessed between pianists Roger Woodward and Cecil Taylor in Leeds U.K. in 1987 when I was involved in a concert promotion at the University where the piano provided was a Steinway belonging to Lord Harewood (I believe) Both musicians were happy with the instrument and whilst I was busying about backstage heard them begin discussing the the various merits of New York and Hamburg Steinways, the nuances of which, I’m sure would completely elude my ears. The part of the conversation I found both memorable and amusing was Woodward’s remark to Taylor that he sometimes found Hamburg (or it could have been New York) Steinways, ‘a little creamy’.
I've never seen this transcript of the interview before but really enjoyed Keith Jarrett's questioning of his own motivation and philosophy as regards his playing and the piano's place in music.
I certainly like the idea of stripping back of music to it's essentials. Why would a musician obscure an interesting melody with ornamentation if he or she can realise the nuances available in a single note and is alive to the changing context provided by a supporting harmony.
While there can be no argument as to Jarrett's talent as a pianist, his attitude and his approach to performing is so off-putting that in spite of having what I'd consider a fairly significant collection of jazz music, I've made it a point not to include any of his work. Jarrett's egotistical, self-absorbed style is illustrative of how little he cares about anyone other than himself.
I have and love Jarrett's recording of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes & Fugues. Underappreciated in classical commentary, which I attribute to the same snobbery (Jarrett the classical "interloper", that is) that affects Jarrett's own hot takes. Interesting to see him on the receiving end of that.
I, for one, love Keith Jarrett's interviews. They contain such a wealth of ideas. Whether one agrees with them or not, they are challenging and thought-provoking. They are great improvisations in their own right, comparable to those at the keyboard. I wish this one had been twice as long.
Wow Robert, Ted Goia sent me / I love your conversation with Keith Jarrett / as a documentary filmmaker, I have a work in progress doc "Soul Searching" - "what's my relationship to music ?"
I really resonated with you r conversation with Jarrett and feel that you were able to get inside of him as much as anybody could and brought out something's that surprised me and probably him too / "a good talker is a better listener" and enjoyed your listening and follow up questions / at the bottom is a little back story on the Koln Concert you might enjoy too
as the other commenters below have their opinion / he's not for everyone / a friend of mine produced his Koln Concert, that almost didn't happen because he was frustrated at the German piano tuning and actually was about to cancel the concert and was in the limo and as she told me, she says to him (and I paraphrase) "it's ok it you leave and I will reimburse the audience and lose some money, but the people who come will be disappointed, and don't care about the piano they come because they love you and come for you" and the rest is history
Prickly. Huge influence. I panicked when I saw the headline.
I walked into a local record store chain in a Detroit suburb probably age 14. Looking through the jazz albums, haven't a clue. A cute employee asks if I need any help, I say I'd like to buy a jazz album. Could I be more specific? She says what instrument do I like? I say well I play piano concertos. She steers me to the Koln concert. I never looked back. Went to Columbia in part so I could hear as much live jazz as possible. Probably would have gone there anyway, Manhattan just blew me away. Probably would have stumbled onto buying jazz albums one way or another. Years later looking back you can say the staff was well-coached. Or not. Maybe I wasn't ready for Monk, or Cecil Taylor. The story of how the Koln concert came to be is fascinating in its own right, and should have taught Keith a huge lesson about going with the flow. But on some level, it didn't. Okay this is out of order and belongs a bit further down below.
Years later he's a big influence on my playing. A latent fear that my mind will go blank and the improvisation will hit a dead end, or I'll run out of ideas. But those left hand ostinatos . . . He ran out of ideas, that's why even in the Koln concert he'll repeat the same phrases measure after measure until something inspires him to change direction and explore that.
So getting back to the piano and that first album. What if I'd said synthesizer? Or organ? Maybe the employee steers me to Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, or Jimmy Smith. Different ice cream flavors, and I couldn't imagine always licking the same one. Duke Ellington with "there are 2 kinds of music, and good kind and the other kind."
" he can be annoying. I think he enjoys being that way when he feels there is a need to be, when it calls attention to whatever offense needs correction. In this way he reminded me of people I’d known in high school and college — the ones who loved to argue for sport."
Exactly - HS & College. I was exactly the same way - a towering intellect of righteousness. Put here to correct all the terrible wrongs. Look at any column or newsletter nowadays where they permit comments. It will be filled with folks correcting everything & everyone. Right down to the mortal sin of missing a period or comma or some other egregious sin.
Thank goodness I realized how absolutely tedious ,misguided & destructive I could be. I got very tired of being right & outgrew it. ( hopefully for the most part ). Listening is more fun.
Jarrett has always reminded me of that. Does anyone remember Harlan Ellison ? A fine writer & what an imagination. Kinda like a 2cnd string Phillip K. Dick. But see him in an interview or critical think-piece. Holy crap - watch out. I never had an idea what he was SO angry about all the time ! Him & Jarrett should have started the International Society of Never Say Die Curmudgeons. The ISNSDC.
Nuff Said !
PS - I like Acoustic Jazz/Music AND the synths of the Fusion era. I never did drop my electric Guitar in favor of a Nylon string (although I dig them too) during that time when you could hardly find a fusion player still ripping with their electrics. I broke the law continuously during that Electric No No era.
If I was still playing, Jarret and Gary Peacock would be my ideal gig. There's a music TV channel in Thailand that occasionally plays a Keith Garret Trio concert and every time I listen to it, I hear something new. Thank you for this article. I don't care what his philosophy is, I love his playing.
Never got much into unstructured free improvisation. Most of it sounds like noise. But Jarrett. .. he composes melodies in the moment; it's like nobody else I've ever heard.
I was interested to read in the introduction, the comparison of Jarrett’s Steinways. It reminded me of a conversation I witnessed between pianists Roger Woodward and Cecil Taylor in Leeds U.K. in 1987 when I was involved in a concert promotion at the University where the piano provided was a Steinway belonging to Lord Harewood (I believe) Both musicians were happy with the instrument and whilst I was busying about backstage heard them begin discussing the the various merits of New York and Hamburg Steinways, the nuances of which, I’m sure would completely elude my ears. The part of the conversation I found both memorable and amusing was Woodward’s remark to Taylor that he sometimes found Hamburg (or it could have been New York) Steinways, ‘a little creamy’.
I've never seen this transcript of the interview before but really enjoyed Keith Jarrett's questioning of his own motivation and philosophy as regards his playing and the piano's place in music.
I certainly like the idea of stripping back of music to it's essentials. Why would a musician obscure an interesting melody with ornamentation if he or she can realise the nuances available in a single note and is alive to the changing context provided by a supporting harmony.
Amazing interview, Thanks a lot!!
Jarrett was as tedious as a pontificater as he was as a player!
While there can be no argument as to Jarrett's talent as a pianist, his attitude and his approach to performing is so off-putting that in spite of having what I'd consider a fairly significant collection of jazz music, I've made it a point not to include any of his work. Jarrett's egotistical, self-absorbed style is illustrative of how little he cares about anyone other than himself.
I have and love Jarrett's recording of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes & Fugues. Underappreciated in classical commentary, which I attribute to the same snobbery (Jarrett the classical "interloper", that is) that affects Jarrett's own hot takes. Interesting to see him on the receiving end of that.
I, for one, love Keith Jarrett's interviews. They contain such a wealth of ideas. Whether one agrees with them or not, they are challenging and thought-provoking. They are great improvisations in their own right, comparable to those at the keyboard. I wish this one had been twice as long.