Conclusion
At the end of this process, after getting to know Keith Jarrett better, knowing his academic background, his career, his musical thought, the history of the concert in Koln, analyzing the score and understanding his musical language; I was able to get insights to how to rework Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert for larger ensemble.
What do you do when you want to arrange? Where is the line between having done an original work or being too invasive? To what extent can you say that you have put your personal touch while respecting the identity of the creator? Is it possible to work on a material that has been totally improvised, with a form that is not predicted, In this project I have demonstrated that the large amount of melodic, rhytmical and harmonical improvisational material gives many different starting points.
In order to respect his line in the music, I think it is crucial to know Keith Jarrett’s ideas on the approach of music. Knowing about his background helped me to understand many elements founded in his performance, understanding how he approached Jazz with so many influences from the classical field.
In his way of playing i can hear the harmonic taste of Claude Debussy, the rhythmic element in the creating a folk melody as Béla Bartòk had and in some of his concerts, Keith Jarret, integrate some contemporary and atonal elements in his musical style.
The comparison with composers such as Miho Hazama, Vince Mendoza, Philip Maniez, Carlos Azevedo, Martin Fondse and my main teachers Claudio Jr. De Rosa and Trevor Grahl, helped me to understand what would be respectful to the original composer/improviser and what would be interesting to hear from my personal work.
Listening obsessively to the recording made a huge difference. During this two years there was not a single day where I didn’t listen to the concert in Köln. I know many of the passages by heart and facing the composition process has been more easy having the sound of that concert in mind.
Experimenting on the piano and improvising after analyzing the score and, as said before, knowing the music really well made the process quicker and more fun. Also it helped me to get into his music language without too much effort.
This process gave me the chance to develop many aspects about my compositional skills and my musical style, especially regarding writing for a big ensemble.
During these two years I had the chance to produce many scores for my Big Band here in The Netherlands and for an orchestra in Rome, but at the end of this process I feel I would like to focus again on smaller ensembles.
More I was immersing in the Köln Concert more I felt growing inside me the desire in writing again for small ensembles and improve that aspect as well, probably because I really like the intimacy of the record.
I would like to start other projects where I can perform as well, and feeling as an active part of it. I think this will be my artistic direction for the next period.
While from the perspective of a possible new research, especially analyzing the transcription of the record, I've been fascinated by the elements brought from the Classical field in Jazz.
This brought me to ask myself more questions and the curiosity about how it would be if instead of bringing elements from the Classical world to the Jazz, I’ll do the opposite;
How would I arrange a classical tune, keeping it recognizable, but bringing inside the harmonies, the rhythm and the improvisation, from the Jazz language?
During my studies here at the Royal Conservatoire of Den Haag I had the chance to test it already, and seems a really interesting challenge. Something that I really would like to explore.