RECORD REVIEWS
I just measured the Keith Jarrett shelf in my CD library and it’s 25” long: 51 CDs and CD sets. But when I played the new Munich 2016, I felt like I was rediscovering him after an unexplained absence.
Jarrett has been off my radar lately. Apparently I am not alone. The single best indicator of a jazz musician’s critical standing is the DownBeat International Critics Poll. In 2017, Jarrett did not make the top 10 in the piano category. In 2018, he did not make the top 20.
Jarrett’s lower profile is partly because he has not performed in public in more than two years. It’s not because ECM has stopped putting out Jarrett records: The flow of Jarrett releases has been steady. But, with one exception (Creation, in 2015), it’s all been older stuff from the ECM vaults.
But now there’s Munich 2016, from July 16, 2016, the last night of Jarrett’s most recent European tour. It’s the newest Jarrett music currently available. Listening to it reminded me of something I knew but had momentarily forgotten: Keith Jarrett is our greatest living jazz pianist.
This is a “solo concert,” of the totally improvised live genre that Jarrett invented in 1973 with Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne and continued in 1975 with The Köln Concert. These performances, sometimes more than an hour in length, were astonishing onslaughts of spontaneous creativity. They demanded much from the listener—patience, openness, imaginative engagement, and a good attention span—which makes their commercial success no less astonishing. Sales of The Köln Concert have exceeded 3.5 million copies.
Since 1983, Jarrett’s primary format has been his “Standards Trio” with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, but he never stopped performing and recording solo concerts, or not for very long. In 2005, with Radiance, he fundamentally altered the model. He discontinued those gigantic hourlong outpourings and began to string together much shorter improvised segments. Munich 2016 contains 12 separate pieces.
Those of us who loved the original solo concert albums had a tough time with the change. The sheer excess of the long solo concerts was thrilling. To be swept up in Jarrett’s streams of musical consciousness was to transcend the role of passive listener and feel like a creative participant.
If does not reach the heights of earlier solo concert albums like , it is nonetheless an imposing achievement. Jarrett still sets his
