1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 344. Keith Jarrett – The Köln Concert (1975)

I think this is one album where the story of the recording is required to fully appreciate it. There have been quite a few albums where the recording was fraught with problems, quite often one or more members of the band being drunk and/or drugged to the point of catatonia, or raging fights between band members and/or production staff, but this one is somewhat different.

Jarrett is a jazz/classical pianist, and he’d been persuaded to play in Köln by an eighteen-year-old concert promoter, Vera Brandes. Rather than the requested grand piano, the backstage staff produced a poorly-tuned practice piano with a broken pedal. Jarrett travelled by car rather than plane and so turned up late and highly travel-worn. A pre-concert meal was delayed so he didn’t have time to eat much.  

So here we have a tired, hungry, fed-up musician almost ready to call the whole thing off, presented with substandard equipment. Given that, he still went on stage and created over an hour of improvised piano jazz (with a classical feel, to me along the lines of Debussy, maybe Liszt and Satie), working around the limitations of the piano. You can even hear him using the broken pedal as a kind of percussion accompaniment. 

Jarrett worked with Miles Davis, alternating with Chick Corea on live performances of Bitches Brew, and you can tell; the sound is much bigger than a solo pianist even though it’s just him and his broken piano. He vibes around themes so smoothly it sounds like he’s playing a complicated piece of written composition. This became the biggest selling jazz album and solo piano album of all time, and it’s great for really losing yourself in.   

There have been a few albums (mainly folk) where the music is a single singer/guitarist, I don’t think there’s been one that’s a solo instrumental album (343 albums so far, I don’t remember them all), making this even more impressive. There’s not really a favourite part, it’s all one of a piece despite being in four sections. Even if Side Four is about a third of the length of all the other sides, and at least a minute of that is applause. I think he earned it though.