Keith Jarrett | "Facing You" 50th Anniversary | ECM

Keith Jarrett’s Debut ECM Album

Facing You To Celebrate

50 Year Milestone Anniversary

On November 10, 1971 pianist Keith Jarrett entered the Arne Bendiksen studio in Oslo Norway to record his ECM debut, Facing You. This album of solo piano pieces, which now has its 50th anniversary, was produced by Manfred Eicher and engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug.

Facing You was the auspicious start to a celebrated landmark run of recordings that created a new solo piano paradigm, with albums including: Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne; The Köln Concert; Sun Bear Concerts; The Melody at Night, With You and Jarrett’s latest release, Budapest Concert.

“I was on tour with Miles Davis and had met Manfred around this time,” Jarrett recalled. “He had written me about a proposed collaboration with Chick Corea but I was set on recording solo. I thought it would be a novel idea to not prepare and was totally comfortable with my decision despite a tight afternoon schedule while strictly playing electric piano on the tour.”

Jarrett reminisced about the initial idea of recording solo. “Prior to the recording, Manfred and I went to a classical concert at the university in Heidelberg in which I performed solo. I improvised between a couple of standards and was encouraged by the positive reaction.”

“When he plays alone, Jarrett pushes his creativity to its limits. It’s almost scary to hear someone who apparently relies so totally on the spirited, flowing, almost effusive directions of his muse, yet the muse seems to never let him down. His inspirations seem to be as prolific and varied as his compositions. […] It may well be the finest album of jazz piano solos since Art Tatum left us, and it is without a doubt the most creative and satisfying solo album of the past few years.”

— Rolling Stone (1972)

"Although his most famous solo recording, The Köln Concert, and all subsequent solo recordings, are much better known to the public, for me his first solo recording, Facing You, reigns supreme. Its innovative approach to composition and musical development was shocking at the time. Jarrett radiated as much warmth, heart and beauty in his playing as he did virtuosity and intellect. Jarrett’s playing represents new and innovative levels of harmonic, rhythmic and melodic development bundled with the vastest creativity imaginable. It was a new standard of playing in its time and still is today."

— JazzTimes (2011)

PREORDER

Keith Jarrett | Sun Bear Concerts | ECM: Pre-order Now (March 19, 2021 ECM)

AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER

40 Years after its Original Release,

 Keith Jarrett’s Sun Bear Concerts is Recreated

from Original Analog Sources

for Limited Edition of 2000 Copies

Sun Bear Concerts, documenting five complete solo performances by Keith Jarrett in Japan, is a milestone achievement in the history of jazz recordings. As DownBeat wrote on the occasion of the original release, Jarrett’s improvisations are “the inventions of a giant, overpoweringly intimate in the way they can draw a listener in and hold him captive. Jarrett has once more stepped into the cave of his creative consciousness and brought to light music of startling power, majesty and warmth.” Rich in incident and detail, the music is beautifully produced, illustrated, and presented in this ten-LP set. First issued in 1978, it revealed Jarrett as a player of limitless creativity, unique in his ability to find new forms in the moment, night after night.

“These marathons showed Jarrett to be one of the greatest improvisers in jazz,” Ian Carr wrote in his biography of the pianist, “with an apparently inexhaustible flow of rhythmic and melodic ideas, one of the most brilliant pianistic techniques of all, and the ability to project complex and profound feeling” continued Carr. The present edition is a facsimile of the original LP set, described by the late Haus der Kunst curator Okwui Enwezor as “part of ECM’s declaration of independence from standard packaging of jazz records. Setting itself apart in this way, ECM treats recordings as works of art by musicians of the highest artistic and conceptual order.”

A work of art by any standards, Sun Bear Concerts brings together solo performances in November 1976 in Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo and Sapporo, in recordings made by Japanese engineer Okihiro Sugano and producer Manfred Eicher, who travelled through Japan with Keith Jarrett. The set’s book-form packaging was designed by Barbara Wojirsch, and includes photographs by Klaus Knaup, Tadayuki Naitoh and Akira Aimi.

Keith Jarrett | Sun Bear Concerts

ECM | US Release Date: March 19, 2021

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Keith Jarrett - Budapest Concert 2-CD (ECM Records)

The second complete show to be issued from Keith Jarrett’s 2016 European tour – following on from the widely-acclaimed concert released as Munich 2016 - this double album documents the pianist’s solo performance at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall in Budapest. Jarrett, whose family roots reach back to Hungary, viewed the Budapest concert as akin to a homecoming, and the context inspired much creative improvisation. Where Jarrett’s early solo concerts shaped a large arc of music over the course of an evening, the later concerts have generated suite-like structures, comprised of independent “movements”, each of them a marvel of spontaneous resourcefulness. Creative energy is applied also to familiar songs given as encores, “It’s A Lonesome Old Town” and “Answer Me”, transformed in the Budapest concert.

Keith Jarrett: Piano

CD 1

1. PART I (Keith Jarrett) 14:42

2. PART II (Keith Jarrett) 06:54

3. PART III (Keith Jarrett) 08:10

4. PART IV (Keith Jarrett) 07:35

CD 2

1. PART V (Keith Jarrett) 05:13

2. PART VI (Keith Jarrett) 03:52

3. PART VII (Keith Jarrett) 05:45

4. PART VIII (Keith Jarrett) 05:35

5. PART IX (Keith Jarrett) 02:42

6. PART X (Keith Jarrett) 08:40

7. PART XI (Keith Jarrett) 05:54

8. PART XII – BLUES (Keith Jarrett) 04:04

9. IT’S A LONESOME OLD TOWN (Harry Tobias, Charles Kisco) 08:01

10. ANSWER ME (Gerhard Winkler, Fred Rauch) 04:55

Keith Jarrett - La Fenice 2 CD (ECM October 26, 2018)

This recording of Keith Jarrett’s extraordinary solo performance at Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice in July 2006 finds Jarrett entering one of Italy’s most famous classical venues and channeling the flow of inspiration to shape something new. In this case, a suite of eight spontaneously created pieces referencing everything from the blues to atonality to heart-rending ballads.

Release of ‘La Fenice’ is timely: The 62nd International Festival of Contemporary Music of the ‘Biennale di Venezia’ has honoured Keith Jarrett with its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. It’s the first time that a “jazz” musician has received this award, which has previously been given to contemporary composers including, in recent decades, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Sofia Gubaidulina and Steve Reich.

Keith Jarrett Piano

CD 1

1 PART I (Keith Jarrett) 17:44

2 PART II (Keith Jarrett) 03:26

3 PART III (Keith Jarrett) 09:53

4 PART IV (Keith Jarrett) 07:22

5 PART V (Keith Jarrett) 06:41

CD 2

1 PART VI (Keith Jarrett) 13:32

2 THE SUN WHOSE RAYS (Arthur Gilbert , A.S. Sullivan) 04:26

3 PART VII (Keith Jarrett) 05:30

4 PART VIII (Keith Jarrett) 09:15

5 MY WILD IRISH ROSE (Traditional) 08:36

6 STELLA BY STARLIGHT (Victor Young, Ned Washington) 07:52

7 BLOSSOM (Keith Jarrett) 09:11

Keith Jarrett / Gary Peacock / Jack DeJohnette - After The Fall (ECM March 2, 2018)

The group colloquially known as “the Standards trio” has made many outstanding recordings, and After The Fall must rank with the very best of them. “I was amazed to hear how well the music worked,” writes Keith Jarrett in his liner note. “For me, it’s not only a historical document, but a truly great concert.” This performance – in Newark, New Jersey in November 1998 – marked Jarrett’s return to the concert stage after a two year hiatus. Joined by improvising partners Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, he glides and soars through classics of the Great American Songbook including “The Masquerade Is Over”, “Autumn Leaves”, “When I Fall In Love” and “I’ll See You Again”. There are also breath-taking accounts of hallowed bebop tunes including Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple From The Apple”, Bud Powell’s “Bouncin’ With Bud” and Sonny Rollins’s “Doxy”.

CD 1:

The Masquerade Is Over

Scrapple From the Apple

Old Folks

Autumn Leaves

Bouncin' with Bud

CD 2:

Doxy

I'll See You Again

Late Lament

One for Majid

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town

Moment's Notice

When I Fall in Love

Keith Jarrett: piano

Gary Peacock: double bass

Jack DeJohnette: drums

Keith Jarrett - A Multitude of Angels (ECM 2016) 4 CD