Keith Jarrett Releases New Live Concert CD

Keith Jarrett is one of my most favorite musicians. He has been since I first discovered his music many years ago, I think I might have been in the eighth or ninth grade. I think the man is an uber genius (as are the other members of his trio bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette). He sounds equally at home on the classical and jazz stages. Although I believe he is now solely concentrating on improvisation and jazz music. While I appreciate Mr Jarrett on a purely musical level, you may find it interesting that a few years ago, he suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He is now 61 years old, and considers himself to be completely recovered. This fact, makes him that much greater in my eyes…..I don’t usually do the whole idol worship thing, but this is a man who has earned my respect (ok maybe not earned, but he most certainly has it).

On overcoming CFS and resuming his playing career Jarrett says the following:

Back home, Jarrett worked to regain his stamina with a regimen of medication, nutritional supplements, physical therapy and aerobics. His illness provided him an opportunity to critically analyze tapes of past solo performances which he found to contain a lot of excess, and he began practicing in his studio to develop a new solo concept.

“If I was going to do it again, I realized that I would have to undo everything I had previously done psychologically and emotionally,”

Citing Stephen Wolfram’s book “A New Kind of Science” Jarrett discovers a new way to improvise, which is good advice on how PWC’s should approach life.

He also was inspired by physicist and software designer Stephen Wolfram’s book “A New Kind of Science” to start removing some of the unwritten rules that had complicated his solo performances — particularly his insistence on playing long continuous improvisations.

“I realized that perhaps I should stop and start instead of playing continuously,” Jarrett said. “Now they can be long if that’s what the material is telling me to do … but if I end up discovering something that causes it’s own completeness, I’ve given myself the ability to stop at the very moment it’s complete instead of drawing it out.”

Jarrett’s new album is called “The Carnegie Hall Concert”, and he refers to this concert as “This one night I could just be myself.”

You can read the entire artist snapshot of Keith Jarrett here.

If you want to see a really great concert video from when he toured in the 1980s, I posted one here.