Chapter IV
His Philosophy in music
1) Personality of Keith
2) His disease
1) Personality of Keith Jarrett
“As soon as I got home, I inserted the first of the three concerts into the player, curious to hear directly from the hands of the pianist his way of expressing on the keyboard that tangle of pathos, anger, love and despair that he had declared on the liner notes. I closed my eyes as he began to create a complete universe. A universe that did not exist before.”[1]
The musician's task is to convey their feelings, translating it into sounds; speaking a language that could touch the emotion of the listener. This is what Keith Jarrett expresses during his improvisations. In theory, improvisation is everything that has been elaborated as a personal expression in a certain situation, and what has been improvised can only be reproduced by the one who produced it and by no one else.
Improvisation is a practice that requires a certain attention and a certain respect from the listener, you have to listen with the whole body, motionless.
Keith Jarrett has always been a person who has always demanded a certain behavior from the audience. The episode that took place at Umbria Jazz in 2007 is famous when in the middle of the concert Keith left the scene due to two too many flashes taken by the fans exclaiming:
“Perugia, damned city! Damn cameras and damn technology. You don't need photos if you want to listen to our music. Turn off those devices now.”[2]
Honestly I can understand the behavior of the pianist; I have often been to the Santa Giuliana Arena during the Umbria Jazz festival and it is a location capable of hosting an audience of about three thousand people, among which it often happens to find very noisy ones, an audience that is sometimes more adapted for a rock concert that speaks and has the ability to move continuously from one part of the Arena to another. In this case I could imagine the possibility of having made Jarrett lose concentration and perhaps also distracted those who wanted to catch every nuance, every note, even every movement of the damper of the musician.
[1] Alessandro Balossino, Keith Jarrett: improvvisazioni dall’anima, San Giuliano Milanese, 1996, Chinaski Edizioni, pg.10 “Non appena arrivato a casa inserii il primo dei tre concerti nel lettore, curioso di ascoltare direttamente dalle mani del pianista il suo modo di esprimere sulla tastiera quel groviglio di pathos, rabbia, amore e disperazione che aveva dichiarato sulle note di copertina. Chiusi gli occhi mentre lui i iniziava a creare un universo compiuto. Un universo che prima non esisteva.” , translated by the author.
[2] Alessandro Balossino, Keith Jarrett: improvvisazioni dall’anima, San Giuliano Milanese, 1996, Chinaski Edizioni, pg.13 “Perugia, dannata città! Maledette telecamere e maledetta tecnologia. Non avete bisogno di foto se volete ascoltare la nostra musica. Spegnete subito quegli apparecchi” , translated by the author.
Listening in religious silence is practically what happens at each of his performances, whether in Japan, Germany or America. But not in Italy. With us, sometimes it's more of a mess. However, is fair to defend the Neapolitan public, in fact before the 2015 concert at the San Carlo theater, Jarrett wanted to remember the date held in Naples as follows:
“As everyone knows I'm quite demanding during my performances. The Japanese public is the calmest, the American one has learned not to cough, but the Neapolitan one has surpassed them all. Absolute silence in the hall, not a fly was heard even when I played pianissimo, only to explode at the end in a typically Neapolitan enthusiasm”.[1]
What composes Jarrett at the moment follows a common thread, a story that must be told ... one chapter follows another; such as the album Radiance which re-proposes the entire concert in Osaka was, for example, each one arose from the inspiration drawn from the previous one: the second piece would not have existed without the first and so on in sequence.
“The Japanese audience was not prepared for this format, so sometimes there is no applause. Weirdly, this gave me a chance to really know what to play song by song. It was like a gift not to have applause”.[2]
Regarding these excesses, the pianist has declared that it is not his intention to mistreat the public, who indeed he considers an integral part of his performances, and that his expressions of bad mood and irritability are due to the fact that too many distractions cause him to lose the melody he has ahead.
The episode in which the pianist remained motionless at the piano for several minutes, without playing, while the noise from the audience grew high is famous. When someone from the sits yelled, "D Sharp," Keith replied, "Thank you!" … and trowed himself into a magical improvisation.
On the other hand, it is now well known that Jarrett is not an easy guy: he makes the directors of the concert halls stressed and any small mistakes is enough to screw up a show.
His manager, Steve Cloud, before each performance, get informed about the theater, the number of seats, the acoustics. He has photographs of the stage and floor plans of the hall sent... and then he ask all the requests: the Steinway & Sons grand piano is mandatory, the stage must not have any slope because Jarrett suffers from back problems and does not play unless it is absolutely level.
The presence of photographers both at the concert and at the rehearsals is forbidden because Jarrett doesn’t want to be distracted by the shots; nor by journalists.
Then… something magical happens; Keith takes the stage not knowing what he will play. He concentrates, while in the venue nobody is talking, sometimes making the wait awkward.
Then, something happen, the first note arrives. Sometimes the attack is tiring and Jarrett can't find the right inspiration, and often he finds it difficult to get out of the situation he's gotten himself into. But then another note arrives, the right one.
Keith composes instantly, without a score, without a plan, he plays what his mind suggests.
The effort is exhausting: he gets up from the stool, stamps his feet on the wood of the stage, fidgets, tries to accompany the notes with his body, hums the melody a moment before executing it with his hands, he gasps.
A musical genius who finds his inspiration in solitude, philosophy and literature that he himself considers more important than music itself. The piano therefore became Jarrett's instrument of spiritual elevation. The means to break the natural limits of the human spirit, a vehicle of communication between small everyday life and the absoluteness of the universe.
[1] Keith Jarrett, due dischi per i 70 anni-Musica-Spettacoli-Repubblica.it, 28 April 2015, “Come tutti sanno sono piuttosto esigente durante le mie performance. Il pubblico giapponese è il più tranquillo, quello americano ha imparato a non tossire, ma quello napoletano li ha superati tutti. Silenzio assoluto in sala, non si sentiva volare una mosca anche quando suonavo pianissimo, salvo poi esplodere alla fine in un entusiasmo tipicamente partenopeo” , translated by the author.
[2] Alessandro Balossino, Keith Jarrett: improvvisazioni dall’anima, San Giuliano Milanese, 1996, Chinaski Edizioni, pg.80 “Il pubblico Giapponese non era preparato a questo formato, per cui a volte non si notano applausi. Stranamente, questo mi ha dato la possibilità di sapere davvero cosa suonare brano dopo brano. E’ stato come un regalo non avere applausi”. , translated by the author.
2) His disease
“Chronic fatigue syndrome. It is a disease that kept him confined at home for four years. Keith Jarrett is the greatest jazz pianist of the last quarter century, and the greatest jazz pianist of the last quarter century could not fall ill with a common disease.”.[1]
Chronic fatigue syndrome is a syndrome characterized by chronic tiredness and fatigue. It is a debilitating and disabling pathology in all aspects: it changes the lifestyle and the way of relating to others and can lead to secondary states of depression. The disease causes memory and concentration disturbances that reduce previous levels of occupational and personal activity.
An illness that, starting from November 1996, caused him two years of hell, forcing him to bed for long periods, while his memory faded away to return more and more rarely. Months of depression, body aches, headaches, unrefreshing sleep and physical weakness.
“In 1996 I stopped playing, it was terrible; I was looking at the piano but I didn't have the energy to open it.”[2]
Chronic fatigue syndrome forced Jarrett to change not only his life but also his music. He reinvented his own way of playing. He rediscovered the melody, the fire of the song, the simple taste of the love ballad. This was his therapy.
Anyone who has patiently followed Jarrett's entire career knows that he has given us an immense musical production, one would wish for him an artistic decline but, at 78, some indications unfortunately begin to make us think the opposite.
First of all, his health problems in 2018, forced him to cancel all his concerts in his future. Since then Keith has holed up in a long silence, from which he re-emerged on October 21, 2020 in an interview with Nate Chinen.
“I was paralyzed,” he told The New York Times, speaking by phone from his home in northwest New Jersey. “My left side is still partially paralyzed. I’m able to try to walk with a cane, but it took a long time for that, took a year or more. And I’m not getting around this house at all, really.”
Thus declaring that he had two strokes at the end of February 2018, followed by another in May. It seems that this will no longer allow him to play in public, the stroke has stopped his left hand.
“During his time there, from July 2018 until this past May, he made sporadic use of its piano room, playing some right-handed counterpoint. “I was trying to pretend that I was Bach with one hand,” he said. “But that was just toying with something.” When he tried to play some familiar bebop tunes in his home studio recently, he discovered he had forgotten them.
After a pause, he reconsidered. “But when I hear two-handed piano music, it’s very frustrating, in a physical way. If I even hear Schubert, or something played softly, that’s enough for me. Because I know that I couldn’t do that. And I’m not expected to recover that. The most I’m expected to recover in my left hand is possibly the ability to hold a cup in it. So it’s not a ‘shoot the piano player’ thing. It’s: I already got shot. Ah-ha-ha-ha.”
Keith Jarrett's last live concert was at Carnegie Hall in 2017, and since then old recordings of his performances in past years have been released, example Munich 2016, Budapest Concert, Bordeaux Concert.
“I don’t know what my future is supposed to be,” he added. “I don’t feel right now like I’m a pianist. That’s all I can say about that.”[3]
[1] Il Foglio, 6 July 2000, “sindrome da affaticamento cronico. E’ una malattia che per quattro anni l’ha tenuto recluso in casa. Keith Jarrett è il più grande pianista jazz dell’ultimo quarto di secolo, e il più grande pianista jazz dell’ultimo quarto di secolo non poteva ammalarsi di una malattia comune”.
[2] Alessandro Balossino, Keith Jarrett: improvvisazioni dall’anima, San Giuliano Milanese, 1996, Chinaski Edizioni, pg.80 “nel 1996 smisi di suonare, fu tremendo; guardavo il pianoforte ma non avevo l’energia per aprirlo.” , translated by the author.
[3] Interview Keith Jarrett confronts a future without the piano, by Nate Chinnen, New York Times, 10 October 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/arts/music/keith-jarrett-piano.html