Köln magic

 

Indeed, even if the great Keith Jarrett never again pleases our ears with new work, his 1975 Köln improvisation performance alone is enough to feature him prominently in the history books as one of the greatest and most important jazz musicians — and musicians period — the 20th century produced, along with Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock. We’re not alone in thinking that: The Köln Concert is famously the best selling solo jazz album of all time, as well as the best selling piano album of all time. Yet, very few would have predicted such a fate, starting with Jarrett himself…

Problems arose way before the show ever started. The promoter organising it was a young woman — 17 years-old — who tried her best to make up for her lack of experience with sheer dedication to the work at hand. Which had its limits: there happened to be a mix-up with the piano that had supposedly been ordered for Jarrett’s concert. The pair ended up with a subpar backstage-only small piano, which did not allow for the musician to properly display his talents. On top of that, Jarrett was exhausted to begin with, as he was in the midst of a German tour and had had little sleep in the nights prior to the show. All of this could have been a textbook recipe for disaster, had it not been for the incredible talent of the man…

Because that Köln piano could not produce sharp enough sounds on either end of the spectrum, Jarrett instead focused on the central part of his keyboard. In doing so, his improvisations differed profoundly from what he would typically go for, relying a lot more on repetition and rhythmic work than was usually the case. At times, you can even hear the frustration of the artist as he pounds away on his failing instrument — the mics caught that for posterity. However, what no one could quite predict was the incredible novelty of that sound born out of such ominous beginnings. Although Jarrett admittedly couldn’t fully display his artistic prowess, what he came up with instead was a somewhat dark, tonally rich sound that evoked a lot more emotions than most other jazz sets out there. And people noticed — they still do to this day.

This story serves as the perfect happy accident scenario, if there ever was one. A few hours before the show, Jarrett was unsure he would even go on with it — and no one could blame him for that. The fact that he relented despite terrible odds gave the world a truly original piece of music that not even the artist himself had envisioned. And that bad piano made for some very good music indeed…