The Köln Concert

If someone had written the script for 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘒ö𝘭𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵, nobody would have believed it. You have an exhausted Keith Jarrett battling severe back pain, a still-young ECM Records founder, Manfred Eicher, who had yet to discover that this would become his label’s defining success, and an understandably panicked teenage concert promoter, Vera Brandes, desperately trying to find a playable Bösendorfer grand piano on a January afternoon in Cologne after the wrong instrument had turned up.

On paper, every ingredient for a complete disaster was there. In reality, it became one of the greatest improvised piano performances ever recorded. Jarrett somehow turned exhaustion, pain, and an imperfect piano into music of extraordinary beauty.

Sometimes the best albums are meticulously planned. Sometimes everything goes spectacularly wrong — and the result is pure magic. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘒ö𝘭𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵 belongs firmly in the second category.

Knowing the backstory makes this better.

Great, enjoyed the whole thing, and will certainly listen again.

I music that work as relaxing background/work music are always underrated.

Also imagine just being able to vibe on a piano for an hour and twenty and have a room full of people clap for you every time you take a break.

Best discovery so far. Loved it.

Svaka čast na sposobnostima ali, kao što sam i pretpostavila, sam klavir nije dovoljan za uzbudljiv album.

2.5
Was impressive to learn the story behind this and there's no denying how skilled a player he is. However, this is still ultimately 67 minutes of one man playing one instrument with occasional breaks for 3 minutes of clapping.

My absolute most favourite album of all time ever!

I’m sure he’s great but I find these all piano concerts boring after a while.

This is the boringest of the boring.

Borings start at 3 stars. There are 4 tracks here, so we will deduct 0.5 for each song that I thought was boring. Track 4 was the only one i slightly enjoyed so that leaves us 3 - 1.5 = 1.5

Rounded up to 2 stars.

One of those albums I'm pleased the list has generated since I was unaware of it before and it stands out from the majority.

About 30 mins in I thought I'd had my fill though but it won me back. Super impressive. 3.5/5. Raising to 4.

It's almost hard to believe that this is improvised.

I've never heard of Keith Jarrett before, which made it all the more intriguing to learn about him. A child prodigy, he was playing piano before he turned three, and by age seven, he was playing both classical works and original compositions. While he grew up learning classical piano, he grew to love contemporary jazz after seeing Dave Brubeck perform. This interest led him to turn down an invitation to study classical composition in Paris to attend Berklee College of Music instead. After playing at cocktail bars in Boston clubs, he moved on to The Jazz Messengers, the Charles Lloyd Quartet, Miles Davis' group by the end of the 1960s, and even started his own groups before pursuing a solo piano career. Keith reached the point where he performed totally improvised solo concerts, including one in Cologne, Germany, in January 1975.

Now, this particular concert was marked by some adversity. It was organized by an 18-year-old Vera Brandes, who was Germany's youngest concert promoter at the time, trying to bring more jazz into her home country. The Köln Opera House only allowed for an 11:30 pm time slot for the concert on a Friday night, following an earlier opera performance. Keith had come to the opera house late in the afternoon, exhausted from several sleepless nights, only to find that the grand piano he had requested for the concert didn't arrive. Instead, a baby grand piano was delivered, and there was no time to get a replacement. Jarrett was ready to give up playing for the night, but Brandes was able to convince him to go on with the show. He did recognize that the concert was sold out and the recording equipment was largely set up, so on he went. What transpired that night was something truly spellbinding, at least from what I heard over fifty years later.

The Köln Concert is divided into two parts, with Jarrett vamping over a few chords for prolonged periods of time. Technically, Part II was divided up into three sections due to the technical limitations of vinyl at the time, but it's largely forgivable, as one would expect to listen to the performance in full anyway. I think what set Keith apart from other piano players was his ability to play complex ostinatos, or repeated musical patterns, on his left hand, while simultaneously improvising with his right hand, without ever dropping a beat. This guy went hard to make that baby grand piano sound stronger than it normally would have, for minutes on end. I just get lost in how he came up with so many distinct movements on the spot, covering a wide range of emotion and bombast, never letting up. I didn't even mind it when Keith could be heard hooping and hollering on the recording, cause it seemed indicative of how into the performance he was. The audience was certainly into it every time he finished a part.

The Köln Concert is such a shining illustration of facing any number of obstacles with true perseverance. Keith Jarrett would continue to perform until he lost the ability to play with his left hand in 2018. Of course, by that point, his legacy had been set as one of the most revered pianists to have ever graced this world, with this concert performance as a prime example of what he accomplished against all odds.

Dude from Allentown, PA shreds on the wrong piano for an hour in Koln.

God do I love the piano, I need to start practicing it again

It’s obviously a 10.

It’s just beautiful. I’m not really sure what else to say. To put together a performance like that on a piano that’s different from what he originally wanted to play on, and to craft something so lovely out of a flaw, persevering forward to make something that might be universally described as art… man. It’s just a remarkable piano performance that will evoke anything in anyone, and the wide variety of pictures it can paint feels as endless as the sky itself.

Just go listen to it. It’s incredible. A masterpiece, even. It’s a 10.

I like the story and idea more than the actual album. I'll be sure to put this on next time I have a mundane task to do. It's great piano playing for sure.

It's a mood.

lijep klavir bam bam itd. neki dijelovi baš dobri

Phenomenal. Dude was cooking with gas

This is FANTASTIC. How I had gone the last 50 years without hearing this is a mystery. About 4 minutes in I started looking for a copy of this on vinyl.

THIS is what should be on a list like this.