Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945) is an American pianist and composer. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey and later moved on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s, he has also been a group leader and solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, including Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music.
His album The Köln Concert, released in 1975, is the best-selling piano recording in history. In 2008, he was inducted into DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in the magazine's 73rd Annual Readers' Poll.
In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize and was the first recipient to be recognized with prizes for both contemporary and classical music. In 2004, he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize.
In February 2018, Jarrett suffered a stroke and has been unable to perform since. A second stroke in May 2018 left him partially paralyzed and unable to play with his left hand.
Quotes about Keith Jarrett
edit- Depending on your view, Keith Jarrett’s status is either problematic or exalted. Is he a pianist whose gifts are compromised by grandiose flights of whimsy or, as a critic put it, one who ‘uniquely connects to a type of universal/musical consciousness’? For Jarrett, jazz is not a tradition or a vocabulary, but a spiritual process that involves opening yourself to true creativity; ‘an attempt,’ he said once, ‘over and over again, to reveal the heart of things.’ When I first encountered Keith Jarrett at a Stan Kenton music camp in 1961, he was a bright 16 year-old who could play brilliantly in any style, jazz or classical, not to mention his own. No surprise that he became a star with the Charles Lloyd Quartet, from 1967-70, whose flower-power ethos suited him perfectly. Subsequently, he led his own groups, but it was with his solo concerts from 1972 that he reached cult celebrity. Jarrett’s free-form improvisations would start with no prior theme or direction and cover all manner of idioms, from gospel vamps to Romantic rhapsodies, propelled for up to an hour by an intense lyricism. Just as intense was his manner – flailing, moaning and gasping. The heady atmosphere came through on record: his 1975 Köln Concert sold over a million. Solo improvisation continued to be central to Jarrett’s work. Besides piano, he’s recorded on clavichord, pipe organ and soprano sax, plus – on the home-made multi-tracked project Spirits – ethnic flutes and percussion.
