Today it's the best-selling piano and solo jazz album of all time. But 50 years ago, Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert nearly didn't happen.
Between the substandard piano, an exhausting car journey, missing meals, and chronic back pain, Jarrett's iconic performance in the Cologne Opera House had the makings of a disaster.
Instead, Jarrett turned it into something that has captured audiences for half a century.
As the Köln Concert turns 50, the jazz world explores Jarrett's remarkable legacy and pays homage to an album that has inspired countless pianists.
A child prodigy with a grounding in classical music
Jarrett was born in 1945 in Pennsylvania, USA. His parents fostered his early musical abilities, with the young Jarrett having perfect pitch and a knack for improvising at the piano.
Jarrett started lessons at age three and gave his first recital when he was just seven.
The young artist was a fan of classical music. Throughout his career Jarrett has noted the influence of classical composers like J.S. Bach.
Jazz became a part of Jarrett's musical world when he was in high school, starting with artists like Dave Brubeck.
"Brubeck taught Jarrett about form and structure in jazz, and he could see how it behaved in a similar manner to the classical styles he'd already been mastering," shares Jazz Legends presenter, Eric Ajaye.
Keith also became a fan of jazz artists pushing the boundaries, like pianist Paul Bley.
A turned down opportunity opens a new world of music
When he was 16, Jarrett had the chance to further his classical music studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, who taught some of the most famous musicians of the 20th century, from Daniel Barenboim to Quincy Jones.
The young pianist pulled out at the last minute and took a different direction.
Jarrett "knew that if he really wanted to have an impact as an artist, he'd have to make his own discoveries and forge his own path," says Ajaye.
Instead, Jarrett went to New York in 1964 and got his first big break playing Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.
"Blakey wasn't Boulanger. Instead of teaching harmony and form he simply built bands around the energy of his youthful musicians," Ajaye says.
From there, Jarrett's work spans the who's who of jazz. He worked with musicians at the top of their game like Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis, as well as producers including George Avakian who worked with artists from Louis Armstrong to Edith Piaf, and Manfred Eicher, founder of the renowned ECM record label.
Ajaye credits Davis as the first person to encourage Jarrett to perform solo. Davis's trumpet improvisations would also have a significant on Jarrett's future solo style.
"Both rely on extreme discipline and command of instruments and audiences, but both also required the daring to know when to abandon technique and simply play on impulse," Ajaye says.
That daring would go on to help create the biggest-selling solo jazz album of all time.
The series of mishaps that made a masterpiece
The events that lead up to the Köln Concert hardly seem the right mix to create a record that would go on to sell over 4 million copies. But somehow it became a career-defining performance.
"This is a gig where everything went wrong, but the music still carried the day," says Ajaye.
18-year-old concert promoter Vera Brandes invited Jarrett to perform the first-ever jazz concert in the Cologne Opera House.
The pianist arrived in the city in the late afternoon after an arduous car trip from Zurich. Jarrett had been suffering from chronic back pain and turned up at the venue in a back brace to help him manage it.
Instead of the full-size concert grand piano Jarrett had requested, the venue provided a baby grand from a rehearsal room that was in poor shape. It was out of tune, the sound quality wasn't great, and the pedals weren't working.
Jarrett already had a reputation for being demanding, but somehow Brandes and Eicher convinced him to go ahead with the sold-out concert, and to keep the recording engineers around to document the performance.
Jarrett and Eicher left for dinner while the piano technicians to tried to make the instrument playable.
After a missed meal thanks to a restaurant error, at the very late starting time of 11:30pm, Jarrett started the performance that would go on to make history.
Turning a 'shoddy' instrument to his advantage
In the Köln concert, "Jarrett produced one of the most profound improvised concerts of his career," says Ajaye.
The pianist took the confines of the "shoddy" instrument and worked around them or even using them to his advantage, "drumming up improvised rhythms on the noisy pedals and using the tinny upper registers to create new texture."
"Jarrett was able to find some sort of magic within the confines of that old piano producing a brilliant performance full of lyrical melodic moments all on the fly," Ajaye says.
Australian jazz pianist Matt McMahon agrees. "I think in a strange way, what happened with the Köln concert, and this piano that was subpar, is it really clarified his playing," he shares with The Music Show's Andrew Ford.
Like much of Jarrett's work, The Köln Concert encompasses sounds that echoed then-familiar American musical traditions, like blues and gospel.
McMahon believes this might be a part of the album's success.
He suggests that "even though from second to second, no one knows exactly where this is going next," the sounds of familiar genres help the audience feel more comfortable with the uncertainty.
Leaving an enduring influence on the world of jazz
Jarrett was already popular by the time of the Köln concert, but the success of the recording really put him on the map.
His career continued to grow with solo and group performances and an enduring, fruitful relationship with ECM. His output spanned classical composers like Bach and Shostakovich, as well as his original work.
Following disruptions to his career from back pain and chronic fatigue, in 2018 Jarrett had a series of strokes that caused some paralysis.
After rehabilitation, Jarrett regained enough mobility to play piano with his right hand, but "we may never see the master perform a live concert again," says Ajaye.
However, Jarrett's incredible influence on jazz is still being felt today.
"Keith Jarrett will forever be remembered for the way he elevated not just the piano but also jazz as a whole, taking the art of improvisation to places where it hadn't gone before," says Ajaye.
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