Keith Jarrett - Köln Concert. Jan 24th, 1975

It is difficult to write about this colossal album and my concern is that there will be 2 groups of people: those who already know it and don't need me to discover it and those who don't know it because... they will not like it. According to different sources, Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert is the best-selling solo album in jazz history, and the all-time best-selling piano album with sales of more than 3.5 million.

I'll do my best to make it interesting for those who don't know it.

This album is 11 months older than I am... I discovered it 18 years after its release, in 1993, I was almost ... 18, and I was living in Paris. I think I heard the CD for the 1st time at a friend's place.

This concert is a story of a young (29) jazz pianist who one day of cold winter 1975, went to the Cologne / Köln Opera house (Germany), sat at the piano (a piano that sounded terrible, according to him) and played it for a whole hour. But he did not know what he was going to play. This whole album is improvisation, and that is a absolutely crazy, fascinating about Keith Jarrett.

Keith Jarrett had received a classical music education and has recorded many classical masterpieces (Mozart, J.S. Bach, Shostakovitch, ...) but he turned into a jazz pianist. In jazz, there is always some part of improvisation. Jazz music players usually take musical theme and "develop" it. But, Keith Jarrett is extremely gifted to improvise for hours. After this concert he did many other solo improvisations, especially in Japan but also in every major concert hall (Carnegie, Pleyel, La Scala, ...). Now, I believe that Keith Jarrett music and this album in particular is so popular because it is not really a jazz album. It is a mix of jazz, pop and classical music. His jazz influences will be Bill Evans, his classical music influences, Debussy and he sounds a bit like some solo part of the Grateful Dead. So it relates to many musical tastes and is a beautiful blend of them.

The most incredible piece is Part 1. It is a 26-minute long piece of piano.What is really beautiful in it is how he creates a path, and him striving to create the path of this music piece. Often, it seems that he tries go further, gives up, tries again and finally makes it. Also, it is wonderful how he creates new melodies from the remains of previous melodies.

A thing I really like about the Musooklub is that I need to "study" the album I am going to talk about. And I had not listened the Köln concert for a few years. And now, it accompanies in my head for the most part of the day...

There is no way I will not give it a 5

DOWNLOAD