Word: pianos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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ONSTAGE, KEITH JARRETT belies his cerebral, prickly reputation. Swept up in the trancelike flow of his jazz improvisations, he levitates from the piano stool like Jerry Lee Lewis, head thrust back and howling with pleasure. Beneath his fluid fingers, the keyboard ripples spontaneously, spinning out an endless series of riffs and variations, while his lyrical bassist, Gary Peacock, and elegant drummer, Jack DeJohnette, match him move for move. Heads nod approvingly as the melody is handed off from instrument to instrument, three men doing what they love best: making music with hand and heart...
...addition to performing live concerts in seven cities, Jarrett, 50, is simultaneously releasing a six-CD set, Keith Jarrett at the Blue Note, featuring his trio's nuanced performances of jazz standards. His "classical" repertoire, moreover, encompasses music from Bach to Bartok; last summer he performed a Mozart piano concerto with the Boston Symphony, and he has just released a disc of suites for keyboard by Handel. Always a difficult composer to pigeonhole--he is scornful of minimalism, which his music sometimes resembles, and calls New Age music, which some profess to hear adumbrated in his solo improvisations, "Jell...
Jarrett's uncompromising career took off in the mid-1970s with his seminal solo-improvisation concerts in Europe--with 2 1/2 million copies sold, his 1975 album, The Koln Concert, is the best-selling solo-piano album ever. "Music should be thought of as the desire for an ecstatic relationship to life," explains the former disciple of the mystic philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff. "Music has to have a deep joy inside...
...native of Allentown, Pennsylvania, Jarrett (who is of Hungarian and Scottish-Irish extraction, not African-American, as some have supposed from his appearance) began giving piano recitals in his hometown at the age of seven. He turned down a chance to study in Paris with the late Nadia Boulanger, teacher of three generations of American composers. "It wasn't a casual 'No,'" he recalls. "I was developing a way with music that would be better off minus the labels on everything, minus the descriptions, minus the analysis...
...moment of the evening, "Jack the Bear." Ellington's double bass feature for Jimmy Blanton was competently played by bassist Ben Wolfe. However, the cameo appearance of pianist Marcus Roberts proved to be the highlight of the tune. Roberts stretched the harmonies of his blues choruses with Monkish lines, piano runs reminiscent of Ellington's "Ko-Ko" and an unparalled rhythmic concept. Following Roberts, Marsalis introduced LCJO's vocalist Milt Grayson. A veteran of the Ellington orchestra, Grayson charmed the audience with his thick bass voice as he worked through renditions of "Do Nothin' Till You Hear From...