Keith Jarrett: The Köln Concert

Another record, like the Massey Hall concert, that I first heard in Hamburg in the summer of 1984, courtesy of my dad's friend Vincenz. I got back to England and bought myself a copy. The following term, I excitedly relayed my new discovery to you. You, of course, knew all about it already.

It ought to be a worn-out cliché by now. The Köln Concert is, after all, one of the handful of jazz albums that people who say they hate jazz say they love (Kind of Blue is the only other I can think of just now). But it's so organic, it's almost as though it regenerates and refreshes itself with each listen. I love the bits where you can almost hear him improvising with/against himself, listening to what his hands have just played and then inventing a response to, or more articulated development of, it.

So, I can't keep up my jaded cynic facade on this one, finding myself unable to find a bad word to say about the album. Even the hum(moan)ing and footstomping sounds good now, where once it used to make me wince. Whether by accident or design, the recording engineering captures something in the performance that you don't hear often (and, quite possibly, those present in Cologne that night didn't either).

Makes me want to revisit Bremen and Lausanne. And indeed Paris and London, though, when I downloaded three of the tracks from eMusic, I found that four or five listens didn't inspire more.

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Comments

[Brand New Guy]

I'll take up the challenge of identifying other jazz albums liked by people who don't like jazz. Mine are Sketches Of Spain and two soundtracks: Herbie Hancock's Blow Up album and Chet Baker's Let's Got Lost. Everything else I hate ;-)

[David]

Thanks, Guy, I think my comment was actually subconsciously plagiarised (?!) from the beginning of this allmusic review of The Köln Concert, which says
"Every pot-smoking and dazed and confused college kid -- and a few of the more sophisticated ones in high school -- owned this as one of the truly classic jazz records, along with Bitches Brew, Kind of Blue, Take Five, A Love Supreme, and something by Grover Washington, Jr."
I ended up with all of those except the last -- and (at college) the pot.

[Patrick]

I have a love-hate thing with Jarrett: sometimes it is just too intense. The humming irritates me, too.

I don't actually have the Koln concert. I did get Paris/London on the basis of the superlative reviews last year, and I think it is brilliant - but very hard to listen to! I have to be in just the right mood.