Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American pianist and composer. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey and later moved on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s, he has also been a group leader and solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, including Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music.
His album The Köln Concert, released in 1975, is the best-selling piano recording in history.Mortensen, J. J., Elsdon, P., & Hodson, R. (2015). [Review of Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert; Interaction, Improvisation, and Interplay in Jazz]. College Music Symposium, 55. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26574408 In 2008, he was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in the magazine's 73rd Annual Readers' Poll.
In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize and was the first recipient to be recognized with the prizes for both contemporary and classical music. In 2004, he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize.
In February 2018, Jarrett suffered a stroke and has been unable to perform since. A second stroke in May 2018 left him partially paralyzed and unable to play with his left hand.
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.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 1 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.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett: The Man and His Music (New York: Da Capo, 1992), p. 8 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.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 7 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.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 17
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.
Career The Jazz Messengers
In 1964, Jarrett moved to New York City, where he played at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Art Blakey hired Jarrett to play with The Jazz Messengers. Jarrett's appearance on the Messengers' live album Buttercorn Lady (1966) marked his commercial recording debut.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, pp. 24–26 However, there was friction between Blakey and Jarrett, and Jarrett left after four months of touring.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, pp. 25–26
Charles Lloyd Quartet During a show, he was noticed by Jack DeJohnette, who recommended Jarrett to his band leader Charles Lloyd.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 26 The Charles Lloyd Quartet had formed not long before and was exploring open, improvised forms while building supple grooves, and it was moving into terrain that was also being explored, although from another stylistic background, by some of the psychedelic rock bands of the West Coast.Carr, Ian, Keith Jarrett, p. 32 Their 1966 album Forest Flower was one of the most successful jazz recordings of the mid-1960s. They were invited to play The Fillmore in San Francisco, and won over the local hippie audience.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 33 The quartet toured across the U.S. and Europe, including appearances in Leningrad and Moscow. Their concert at London's Royal Albert Hall was attended by The Beatles.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 36 The band was profiled in Time and Harper's Magazine, which made Jarrett a popular musician in rock and jazz. The tour also laid the foundation for a lasting musical bond with DeJohnette.
Jarrett began to record his own tracks as a leader of small groups, at first in a trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Life Between the Exit Signs (1967), his first album as a band leader, was released by Vortex and was followed by Restoration Ruin (1968), which Thom Jurek of AllMusic later wrote was "a curiosity in his catalog".Jurek, Thom. Allmusic "Keith Jarrett" biography. Retrieved 8 August 2015 Not only does Jarrett barely touch the piano, but he plays all the other instruments on what is essentially a folk-rock album; he also sings. Somewhere Before, another trio album with Haden and Motian, was released in 1968 on Atlantic Records.
Miles Davis
The Charles Lloyd Quartet with Jarrett, Ron McClure, and DeJohnette came to an end in 1968 after their recording of Soundtrack because of money disputes and artistic differences.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, pp. 38–39 Jarrett was asked to join the Miles Davis group after the trumpeter heard him in a New York City club.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, pp. 45–46 During his tenure with Davis, Jarrett played both electronic organ and Rhodes piano, alternating with Chick Corea. The two appear side by side on some 1970 recordings, including the Isle of Wight Festival performance of August 1970 in the film Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue and on Bitches Brew Live. After Corea left in 1970, Jarrett often played electric piano and organ simultaneously.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 50 Despite his growing dislike of amplified music and electric instruments within jazz, Jarrett continued with the group out of respect for Davis and because of his desire to work with DeJohnette. Jarrett has often cited Davis as a vital musical and personal influence on his own thinking about music and improvisation.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, pp. 52–54
Jarrett performs on several Davis albums, including Miles Davis at Fillmore, recorded June 17–20, 1970, at Fillmore East in New York City, and The Cellar Door Sessions 1970, recorded December 16–19, 1970, at The Cellar Door club in Washington, D.C.. His keyboard playing features prominently on Live-Evil and he plays electric organ on Get Up with It. Some other tracks from this period were released much later.Davis, Miles. The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions. Columbia/Legacy, 2003
DeJohnette left Davis's band in the middle of 1971, and Jarrett followed in December.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 52 Jarrett later reflected: "When Jack left I knew I was going to have to leave ... Nobody knew what Jack knew and could do what he could do simultaneously. That was the end of the flexibility of the band."
1970s quartets and Manfred Eicher
In 1971, Jarrett, Haden, and Motian participated in a four-day session for Atlantic Records during which they recorded 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.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 56 Redman became an official member of the group, which later became referred to as Jarrett's "American quartet". They would go on to record over a dozen albums over five years. The group was often supplemented by an extra percussionist, such as Danny Johnson, Guilherme Franco, or Airto Moreira, and occasionally by guitarist Sam Brown.
Later in 1971, the quartet, with Brown and Moreira, recorded Expectations for Columbia Records, with string and brass arrangements by Jarrett. However, Columbia suddenly dropped Jarrett in favor of Herbie Hancock,Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 57 and Jarrett's manager negotiated a contract with Impulse! Records,Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 61 for whom the group would record eight albums.
The quartet members played various instruments. Jarrett played soprano saxophone, recorder, banjo, percussion, and piano. Redman played musette, a Chinese double-reed instrument, and percussion, and Motian and Haden played a variety of percussion. Haden also produced a variety of unusual plucked and percussive sounds with his acoustic bass, running it through a wah-wah pedal for one track ("Mortgage on My Soul" on the album Birth). Byablue and Bop-Be, albums recorded for Impulse!, feature the compositions of Haden, Motian, and Redman, as opposed to Jarrett's own, which dominated the previous albums. Jarrett's compositions and the musical identities of the group members gave this ensemble a distinctive sound. The quartet's music is an amalgam of free jazz, straight-ahead post-bop, gospel music, and exotic, Middle-Eastern-sounding improvisations.
During this time, Jarrett received a letter from producer Manfred Eicher asking if he would like to record for the relatively new ECM label.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 58 Jarrett was impressed by the fact that Eicher was primarily concerned with musical quality, as opposed to financial gain.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 59 Jarrett's American quartet released two albums, The Survivors' Suite and Eyes of the Heart, on ECM, and the label also issued Ruta and Daitya, consisting of duo tracks featuring Jarrett and DeJohnette recorded in early 1971 and tracks with Miles Davis after Jarrett gave tapes of the session to Eicher.
In 1972, Eicher proposed that Jarrett work with Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, whom Jarrett had met while in Europe with Charles Lloyd during the late 1960s. Their initial collaborations laid the groundwork for what would become referred to as Jarrett's "European quartet", which also featured Palle Danielsson on bass and Jon Christensen on drums.Carr, Ian. Keith Jarrett, p. 74 The group recorded five albums for ECM, each played in a style similar to that of the American quartet but with many of the avant-garde and Americana elements replaced by the European folk and classical music influences that characterized the work of ECM artists at the time.
Solo piano
Jarrett recorded a few solo pieces live under the guidance of Miles Davis at the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., in December 1970. These were done on electric pianos (Rhodes and Contempo). Most parts of these recorded sets were released in 2007 on The Cellar Door Sessions, featuring four improvisations by Jarrett.
Jarrett's first album for ECM, Facing You, was released in 1971. He has continued to record solo studio piano albums intermittently throughout his career, including Staircase (1976), Invocations / The Moth and the Flame (1981), and The Melody at Night, with You (1999). Book of Ways (1986) is a studio recording of clavichord solos.
In 1973, Jarrett began playing totally improvised solo concerts, and it is the popularity of these concert recordings that made him one of the best-selling jazz artists in history. Albums released from these concerts were Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne (1973), which Time magazine named "Jazz Album of the Year", The Köln Concert (1975), which became the best-selling piano recording in history, and Sun Bear Concerts (1976), a 10-LP (and later 6-CD) box set. Another of Jarrett's solo concerts, Dark Intervals, was released in 1987.