Solo Concerts Bremen / Lausanne

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Solo Concerts Bremen / Lausanne
Keith Jarrett's live album

Publication
(s)

1974

Label (s) ECM records

Format (s)

2 CD, 3 LP

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

6th

occupation

production

Manfred Eicher

Studio (s)

Lausanne , Bremen

chronology
Fort Yawuh
1973 		Solo Concerts Bremen / Lausanne Treasure Island
1974

Solo Concerts Bremen / Lausanne is a jazz album by Keith Jarrett . It contains recordings of two of the pianist's solo concerts in front of an audience, which were recorded on March 20, 1973 in Lausanne and on July 12, 1973 in Bremen by the public broadcasters Radio Suisse Romande and Radio Bremen . In 1974 the recordings from both concerts were released on record by ECM Records .

The album

In 1971 the young pianist had the opportunity to record a first album for the young Munich label ECM, Facing You , a studio album in which the longest of the eight pieces had a running time of just ten minutes and all numbers still had titles and a song-like one Possessed character. In 1972 Jarrett played his first solo concerts, the program of which was unfamiliar to the audience, but at the same time offered something new, as he "only" played two 30- to 45-minute improvisations. The critic Werner Burkhardt called it a "miracle of hymnic eloquence" .

Keith Jarrett (1971)

In the meantime, ECM bought more recordings with Jack DeJohnette (Ruta and Daitya) that had already been recorded (and released shortly afterwards). In February 1973 the album In the Light was recorded for ECM , partly with the Südfunk-Orchester under Mladen Gutesha . In the following months, the ECM producer Manfred Eicher organized a tour with solo concerts in which Jarrett performed in eighteen European cities. His virtuoso playing delighted the audience and led him to the first high point of his career. This was how the recordings were made, which Eicher dared to publish as a package: the concert recordings from Bremen and Lausanne appeared as a set with three records and showed Jarrett's extraordinary talent for improvisation. The album was Jarrett's second solo release on the Munich label after the debut Facing You and also his first triple album.

The concert in Bremen was actually under an unfortunate star, as Jarrett suffered from a back injury during the entire solo tour and had not slept in pain for 24 hours before the performance in the Hanseatic city. Even a ten-minute soundcheck was difficult for him and he was already thinking of canceling the concert at the last minute. It didn't come to that. At the concert itself there was no trace of Jarrett's agony (at least for the audience). The Bremen concert begins very calmly and at times seems brooding in order to develop an evocative character. After a dark, romantic phase "in the style of the great pianistic concert music of the last [19th] century", it leads to a boogie-oogie rhythm, which appears again and again as a leitmotif in the further course of the improvisation and is further developed.

The recordings from Lausanne contain gospel passages, a ballad, interesting implementations of a counterpoint , a disturbing cluster route and an abstract improvisation. This is followed by a game about a folk song-like motif. “A simple phrase often evolves into complex sequences through repetitions and subtle variations, and sometimes a new phrase emerges from this. One of the improvisations lasts over 64 minutes and covers three LP pages; while Jarrett plays two long solos over 30 and 35 minutes in the second concert. ”In the Lausanne concert, Jarrett also used instrumental techniques that John Cage and David Tudor had developed in new music and that were still new in jazz at the time and caused a sensation: So he plucked the strings in the grand piano while simultaneously playing the keys. "Plucked and struck sounds merge so seamlessly that ..." unity is achieved. "

The titles

ECM 1035-37 Recording on March 20, 1973 in the Salle de Spectacles D'Epalinges in Lausanne and on July 12, 1973 in the “Small Sendesaal” of “Radio Bremen” (CD released in 1986 as a double CD album)

  1. Bremen, July 12, 1973, Part I.
  2. Bremen, July 12, 1973, Part II
  3. Bremen, July 12, 1973, Part III
  4. Lausanne, March 20, 1973, Part I.
  5. Lausanne, March 20, 1973, Part II
  6. Lausanne, March 20, 1973, Part III

(All compositions are by Keith Jarrett)

evaluation

The Bremen / Lausanne album received many international awards immediately after its release. The album received the highest rating (five stars) in the Down Beat . It was said: “If this is not the music for everyone, then everyone has lost each other.” In 1974 it was named “Album of the Year” by many international jazz magazines, such as Stereo Review and Down Beat in the USA and the Jazz Forum (the magazine of the European Jazz Federation) as well as TIME magazine, the New York Times and the German Phono Academy . The Japanese Swing Journal awarded the album its Gold Grand Prix . In 1975 it received both the German Record Prize 1974/75 and the Great German Record Prize.

“Despite the length, you don't lose interest; the music makes this album an essential part of any collection, ”said Scott Yanow in the All Music Guide .

effect

“These are the recordings that made Keith Jarrett famous. They show him improvising freely and he never seems to run out of ideas, ”wrote Scott Yanov looking back. The album was one of the records released in the early 1970s that created the Munich label's image of the "ECM sound". The great commercial success of the concert recordings was immediately followed by further recordings by Jarrett (parallel to his contractual obligations to the American label Impulse! Records ) with various ECM musicians such as the albums Luminessence and Belonging in April 1974 with Jan Garbarek . Due to the success of the concert tour, Jarrett continued to give solo concerts, some of which were again recorded and released on record. Fascinated by the musician, Manfred Eicher from the ECM label released ten records of the complete concert recordings of Jarrett's solo appearances in Japan in 1976 ( Sun Bear Concerts ) .

In January 1975 he achieved another milestone in his musical career in Cologne: With four million copies sold, The Köln Concert is one of the best-selling jazz records of all time. Even if the sales of Solo Concerts Bremen / Lausanne do not come close to the sales figures of the Cologne Concert , this box developed into a best and long-seller in jazz: 350,000 copies had already been sold by 1987. In 1973 Keith Jarrett wrote in the accompanying text, curiously, that this album was not designed to sell in the millions. Instead, he emphasized the religious dimension of his improvisation there.

With the concert recordings, ECM not only set in commercial success, which led to Jarrett being marketed with - often criticized - cult status. They also introduced “a neo-romantic tendency”, which Eicher promoted not only with Jarrett's recordings, but also with albums by musicians such as Richie Beirach , Gary Burton , Pat Metheny and Eberhard Weber . This was seen as a countercurrent to the electrified jazz rock of those years. Jarrett himself wrote in the accompanying text on Bremen / Lausanne : “I am leading - and have always done - a crusade against electrical music; this album is proof of that. Electricity flows through us all and does not have to be banished in wires. "

literature

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ cit. based on Uwe Andresen: Keith Jarrett , p. 135
  2. ↑ Ian Carr: Keith Jarrett , p. 65. Eicher acted on this tour, as on the next, also as driver and supervisor of Jarrett.
  3. ↑ George Avakian assumed that nobody would buy the three LPs. See Carr: Keith Jarrett , p. 69
  4. ↑ After the concert he could only remember that he had gotten through the performance, but did not know what he had played. See Carr: Keith Jarrett , p. 68
  5. ↑ Joachim-Ernst Berendt : A window from Jazz , p. 83
  6. ^ Scott Yanov: All Music Guide
  7. ↑ See Berendt: Ein Fenster aus Jazz , p. 86
  8. ↑ See Carr: Keith Jarrett , pp. 69f.
  9. ↑ a b Carr: Keith Jarrett , p. 70
  10. ↑ So Berendt: Ein Fenster aus Jazz , p. 85f .: "The fact that Keith Jarrett emphasizes the religious side among the few things he emphasizes shows how much it matters to him."
  11. ↑ Konrad Heidkamp referred to Uwe Andresen (Keith Jarrett) in his ZEIT article that Manfred Eicher made it important not to have a written contract with Jarrett.
  12. ^ Andresen: Keith Jarrett
  13. ↑ Only one and a half years after the last concerts in Miles Davis ' jazz rock band , to which he belonged for more than a year!
  14. ↑ I am, and have been, carrying on an anti-electric-music crusade of which this is an exhibit for the prosecution. Electricity goes through all of us and is not to be relegated to the wires , Jarrett, Liner Notes for the ECM album, quoted. and translated by Andresen: Keith Jarrett , p. 61
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 10, 2008 .