The Cologne Concert

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The Cologne Concert
Keith Jarrett's live album

Publication
(s)

November 30, 1975

admission

January 24, 1975

Label (s) ECM records

Format (s)

LP , CD , MC , SACD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

4th

running time

66:05

occupation Keith Jarrett - piano

production

Manfred Eicher

Studio (s)

Cologne Opera

chronology
Backhand
(1974) 		The Cologne Concert Mysteries
(1975)

The Köln Concert is the album recording of the improvisation solo concert by pianist Keith Jarrett , which took place in the Cologne Opera on January 24, 1975 . It is the best-selling and best-known Jarrett release, as well as the best-selling jazz solo record and best-selling piano solo record.

publication

The recording of the concert was released in 1975 by the label ECM Records as a double album on long-playing record (ECM 1064/1065 ST) and on compact cassette , has been available as a single CD since 1983 and comprises four parts totaling 67 minutes in length. The first CD edition only includes the first three parts, all editions from 1984 onwards are complete. Manfred Eicher was the producer of the recording and Martin Wieland was the sound engineer . In 2017 the album was also released on SACD in Japan .

Circumstances of admission

Like other solo concerts by Keith Jarrett, such as Solo Concerts Bremen / Lausanne , The Köln Concert was a freely improvised concert. At the solo concerts it is Jarrett's claim to create music "out of nowhere" without any musical consideration and without a plan. He explains: “It is always like stepping on stage naked. The most important thing in a solo concert is the first note I play, or the first four notes. If they have enough tension, the rest of the concert will follow naturally. Solo concerts are pretty much the most revealing psychological self-analysis I can imagine. "

The recording of the Cologne Concert took place under extremely adverse circumstances. The musician had almost not slept the night before, since he and his producer Manfred Eicher had arrived from a concert in Switzerland in the rickety R4 since early in the morning . The actually selected Bösendorfer 290 Imperial concert grand had been mixed up. Jarrett had to play on a moderate Bösendorfer baby grand, which was actually only used for rehearsals and was out of tune; In addition, the pedals got stuck and some buttons got stuck. His pre-concert meal came a quarter of an hour before he returned to the opera house. Jarrett was only willing to perform at the express request of local organizer Vera Brandes . The team wanted to cancel the live recording when the sound engineers agreed that the Cologne concert, which was sold out with around 1400 listeners, would finally be recorded for internal purposes: Keith Jarrett adapted the musical events to the instrument and largely limited himself to the middle and low ranges Pitches, preferring repetitive patterns. The concert was recorded by the sound engineer Martin Wieland ( sound studio Bauer ). For the recording he used two Neumann U-67 condenser microphones and a portable Telefunken M-5 tape recorder .

Keith Jarrett (1971)

Structure of the concert

For Jarrett, the character of the concert was unusually simple, catchy and closed. Jarrett began the first part with the melody of the interval gong of the Cologne Opera; laughter can be heard in the audience. From this he developed ostinato- like motif figures, which he played with his left hand while he commented, varied and also developed counter-figures with his right hand. In Part I , this was juxtaposed with calm, barely noticeable harmonic surfaces changing between two chords, on which Jarrett developed repetitive melodies. “The motifs that Jarrett brings together here in terms of motifs, calm and instinctual moments, tension, ecstatic euphony and relaxation is almost overwhelming. He doesn't seem to need to pursue an idea any longer, ”analyzes his biographer Uwe Andersen.

Part IIa , on the other hand, is dominated by a completely different mood, reminiscent of the joie de vivre and the spirituality of gospel singing . At the beginning of this part, Jarrett played a rhythmically accentuated hammered 1-4 ostinato in his left hand, over which he played with the right hand in a very dance-like manner. This culminated in a "retarding continuation that resumed the mood and rhythmic structure of the beginning and passed into a pathetic, oscillating finale that ended quietly, cautiously, meditatively".

Part IIb has clear features of an elegy , but culminates "in a three-part choir with an almost cathedral-like force of sound".

Part IIc can be understood as an “independent, floating ' album sheet '”; this piece also ends in pianissimo .

In his analysis of the concert, Peter Elsdon pointed out that it was by no means exhausted at the moment, but based on a Jarrett song circulating in Boston called "Memories of Tomorrow", which was also published in the first volume of the Real Book . The melody was also used in Jarrett's solo concert in Paris in 1970 and has been interpreted occasionally by Jarrett since 1966.

The Cologne Opera

Track list (CD)

  1. Part I 26:02 (LP: 26:15)
  2. Part II a 14:54 (LP: 15:00)
  3. Part II b 18:13 (LP: 19:19)
  4. Part II c 6:59 (LP: 6:59); this audio track was missing from the first CD release

effect

source rating
Allmusic
Laut.de
Penguin Guide to Jazz

The Köln Concert was a great success with critics and audiences alike . The sales figures in 2008 were around 3.5 million CDs and records. The plate with its distinctive white cover was seen in many households and "graced the plate cabinets that time as the posters of Che Guevara student digs a decade earlier." The panel was awarded the German Phono Academy and has been prepared by Time Magazine as one of the "Records of the Year" elected.

However, in view of Jarrett's preference for “certain, often too simple harmonic progressions and transitions”, Joachim-Ernst Berendt criticizes that this should not “go beyond what is given here”. He leads the Polish pianist Andrzej Trzaskowski , who refers to a “limitation”, both in terms of composition and rhythm. The album is still the most famous recording by the American artist. In 1992 he said in an interview with Spiegel about the impact of the concert that all copies of the record should be crushed so that the listener does not get “hooked on the past”.

The music magazine Jazzwise selected the album at number 10 in the list The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook the World . Keith Shadwick wrote:

“An adept at solo recitals […], he began a series of in-concert recitals for Manfred Eicher's label that attracted acclaim and increasing public interest, but no-one was prepared for what happened to The Köln Concert when it appeared. A long series of intensely rhythmical improvisations that became hypnotic and endlessly repeatable on turntables throughout the world, the album became a runaway bestseller by word of mouth, rapidly escaping the confines of the jazz listeners' community and spreading into the living rooms of people who never ever listened to, let alone owned, another jazz album. This remains the case with Jarrett and with the record, which is not only a jazz turning-point in its own right but one of the biggest-selling discs in the genre. "

“As an expert on solo lectures [...] he started a series of concert lectures for Manfred Eicher's label, which attracted recognition and growing public interest, but no one was prepared for what was happening to the Köln Concert when it came out. As a long series of intense rhythmic improvisations hypnotically and endlessly repeated on turntables around the world, the album became a formidable bestseller through word of mouth, quickly escaping the confines of the jazz audience and spreading to living rooms of people who had never before Heard a jazz album, let alone owned one. The fact about Jarrett and this recording is that it not only represents a turning point in jazz on its own, but is also one of the best-selling albums in the genre. "

Rolling Stone magazine chose the album in 2013 in its selection of the 100 best jazz albums at number 85. The Köln Concert also ranks 31st of the 50 best live albums.

Sheet music transcriptions

  • In 1991 two Japanese musicologists obtained a sheet music edition of the Cologne Concert , which was published by Schott Music as an original transcription authorized by Keith Jarrett .

Jarrett writes in a foreword that he only gave permission for the publication of a transcription at the urging of musicologists and pianists, because "... this improvisation now already exists in a concrete form and the transcription is only a description of the music". Previously he was of the opinion that the product of a single improvisational concert could not be recommended for replay.

  • In 1994 the guitarist Manuel Barrueco published a transcription of Part IIc for guitar.
  • In 2005 the Polish pianist Tomasz Trzcinski published his interpretation of the Cologne Concert on the album Blue Mountains .

literature

Film music

Parts of the Cologne Concert were used as film music in Roberta Findley's Kinky Tricks (1977), Nicolas Roeg's Black out - Anatomy of a Passion (1980) and in Nanni Moretti's Liebes Tagebuch (1993).

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ cit. n. Peter Rüedi: Keith Jarrett, the eyes of the heart . In: Siegfried Schmidt-Joos, Idole. 5 Only the sky is the limit. Berlin, Ullstein publishing house 1985
  2. ^ Ian Carr : Keith Jarrett: The Man and His Music. GraftonBooks, London 1991, pp. 70f. According to Vera Brandes, Jarrett had his plane ticket from Zurich to Cologne paid out. See interview with Vera Brandes: How Keith Jarrett's global success almost turned out to be (WDR 3, January 24, 2015) ( Memento from January 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Ian Carr: Keith Jarrett: The Man and His Music. GraftonBooks, London 1991, pp. 71f. Robert von Zahn: Jazz in Cologne since 1945. Concert culture and cellar art . Emons-Verlag, Cologne 1997, p. 177f.
  4. ↑ Carr: Keith Jarrett , p. 72. According to Carr, Jarrett and Eicher heard a cassette of the recording while driving to another concert and finally agreed to publish the concert - despite the poor sound quality and a certain lack of piano technical substance. Sound engineer Martin Wieland worked with Eicher on the tapes for several days to improve the sound technology.
  5. ↑ U. Andersen: Keith Jarrett , Gauting-Buchendorf (1985), p. 134
  6. ^ A b Hannah Dübgen Blue Notes on Black and White Keys. Stations and aspects of piano jazz of the 1970s with special consideration of the solo improvisations by Keith Jarret, Chick Corea and Alexander von Schlippenbach ( Memento from June 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (2003)
  7. ↑ a b Ralf Dombrowski : Basis-Diskothek Jazz (= Reclams Universal-Bibliothek. No. 18372). Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-018372-3 , p. 120.
  8. ^ P. Elsdon Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert , pp. 123ff.
  9. ↑ Klaus Muller Keith Jarrett Disco on http://www.keithjarrett.org/
  10. ↑ Review by Thom Jurek on allmusic.com (accessed May 31, 2018)
  11. ↑ Review by Ulf Kubanke on laut.de (accessed May 31, 2018)
  12. ↑ Penguin Guide to Jazz: Core Collection List on tomhull.com (accessed May 31, 2018)
  13. ^ Corinna Da Fonseca-Wollheim: A Jazz Night to Remember: The unique magic of Keith Jarrett's ›The Köln Concert‹. In: wsj.com. October 11, 2008, accessed June 1, 2019 .
  14. ↑ The Secret of Tokyo Tapes. Keith Jarrett speaks for the first time about his illness, the future of music and the mistakes of the piano (interview with Wolfgang Sandner ) in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , July 28, 2001
  15. ^ Joachim E. Berendt: A window from jazz: essays, portraits, reflections. Frankfurt am Main, pp. 86f.
  16. ↑ Say music, mean cash . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1992 ( online interview). Similarly in 2010 in an interview for the Süddeutsche Zeitung : “You should crush the record. That thing was a curse. ” (Quoted from Alex Rühle: Unter Flügeln , SZ, May 8, 2010, p. 3)
  17. ↑ The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World on jazzwisemagazine.com (accessed May 31, 2018)
  18. ^ The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World
  19. ↑ Rolling Stone: The 100 Best Jazz Albums . Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  20. ↑ 50 Greatest Live Albums of All Time on rollingstone.com (accessed May 31, 2018)