Solo Concerts Bremen/Lausanne

Occupation

• Piano: Keith Jarrett

Solo Concerts Bremen / Lausanne is a jazz album by Keith Jarrett. It contains recordings of two solo concerts by pianist before an audience that had been taken in Bremen on 20 March 1973 in Lausanne on 12 July 1973 by the public service broadcasters Radio Suisse Romande and Radio Bremen. In 1974, the recordings from two concerts of ECM Records were available on disc.

The album

In 1971 the young pianist had received the opportunity to record a first album for the young Munich label ECM, Facing You, a studio album with the longest of the eight pieces for a period of only ten minutes had and all the numbers yet title and a song similar character possessed. 1972 Jarrett played his first solo concerts whose program was unfamiliar to the audience, but also offered something new, he played "only" two 30 - to 45 -minute improvisations. The critic Werner Burkhardt called " miracle anthemic eloquence ".

In the meantime, bought another ECM recordings with Jack DeJohnette ( Ruta and Daitya ), which had already been recorded previously ( and were released shortly afterwards ). In February 1973, partly recorded with the Südfunk Orchestra Mladen Gutesha, ECM for the album In the Light. In the following months the ECM producer Manfred Eicher organized a tour with solo concerts in which Jarrett appeared in eighteen European cities. His virtuoso performances delighted the audience and brought him to the first peak of his career. The recordings were made, the Eicher daring published as a package: The concert recordings from Bremen and Lausanne published as a set of three records and showed the extraordinary talent for improvisation Jarrett. The album was after the first- Facing You Jarrett second solo release on the Munich label and also its first triple album.

The concert in Bremen was actually under an unlucky star, as Jarrett was afflicted during the entire solo tour to a back injury and had not slept for 24 hours in pain before appearing in the Hanseatic city. Even a ten minute sound check he was able to complete only with difficulty and has played with the thought of having to cancel the concert at the last minute. It never came not. The concert itself was the ordeal of Jarrett's nothing left to feel (at least for the audience ). The Bremen concert begins very quiet and works in parts pondering in order to develop an evocative character. After a dark, romantic phase "in the style of the great piano concert music of the last [ 19th ] century ", it leads to a boogie woogie rhythm that keeps coming up as a leitmotif in the course of improvisation and is further developed.

The recordings of Lausanne included Gospel passages, a ballad, interesting penetrations of a counterpoint, a disturbing cluster distance and an abstract improvisation. This is followed by a game about a folksong- like motif connects. "A simple phrase often develops through repetition and subtle variations on complex sequences, sometimes incurring any new phrase. One of the improvisations lasts over 64 minutes and lasts for three LP sides; while Jarrett in the second concert two long solos played on 30 and 35 minutes " in Lausanne Concert Jarrett sat also instrumental techniques that had John Cage and David Tudor developed in contemporary music and jazz were still new and caused a sensation. So he plucked the strings in the wings while he was playing at the same time on the keys. This "broken and plucked sounds so seamlessly into one another that ... " unity " is achieved. " Go

The title

ECM 1035-37 recording on 20 March 1973 at the Salle de Spectacles D' Epalinges, Lausanne, and on 12 July 1973 at the "little Sendesaal " from " Radio Bremen " ( CD release in 1986 as a double CD album )

( All compositions are by Keith Jarrett )

Assessment

The Bremen / Lausanne album received directly after its publication, many international awards. In Down Beat the album received the highest rating (five stars). It stated: "If this is not the music for everyone, then everyone has lost. " 1974 has been awarded by many international jazz magazines as " Album of the Year " as the Stereo Review and Downbeat in the U.S. and the jazz forum ( the magazine of the European Jazz Federation) as well as by TIME magazine, the New York Times and the German Phono Academy. The Japanese Swing Journal gave the album its Grand Prix in gold. In 1975, it received both the German Record Prize 1974/75 as well as the Great German Record Prize.

"Despite lengths you do not lose interest; the music makes this album an essential part of any collection, " Scott Yanow ruled in All Music Guide.

Effect

" These are the recordings that have Keith Jarrett famous. They show him in free improvisation and the ideas never seem to go out to him, " Scott Yanov wrote in retrospect. The album was one of the appeared in the early 1970s records, which created the image of the Munich-based label of the " ECM sound ". The great commercial success of the concert recordings followed once more shots Jarrett ( parallel to its contractual obligations to the American label Impulse! Records) with different ECM musicians like the albums Luminessence and Belonging in April 1974 with Jan Garbarek. Due to the success of the concert tour Jarrett was still solo concerts, some of which were again recorded and published on board. Fascinated by the musician, Manfred Eicher of ECM label three years later on ten plates, the complete concert recordings of Jarrett's solo performances in 1976 in Japan ( Sun Bear Concerts).

In January 1975, he attended in Cologne for a further milestone in his musical career: The Köln Concert, with its four million copies sold, one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time. Although the sales of Solo Concerts Bremen / Lausanne does not come close to the sales figures of the Köln Concert, then this box yet developed to a Best - Seller of jazz and Long: Until 1987 350.000 copies have been sold. In the accompanying Keith Jarrett wrote in 1973, curiously, that this album is not geared to selling millions. Instead, he emphasized there, the religious dimension of his improvisation.

With the concert recordings sat on ECM not only the commercial success, which led to Jarrett with a - was marketed cult status - often criticized. They also conducted " a neo-romantic tendency ", which was sponsored by Eicher not only with Jarrett's recordings, but also albums by musicians such as Richie Beirach, Gary Burton, Pat Metheny or Eberhard Weber. This was conceived as a counter- flow to the electrified jazz-rock of those years. Jarrett himself wrote this in the text accompanying Bremen / Lausanne: " I lead - and have always done - against the electric music a crusade; this album is proof of that. Electricity flows through all of us and must not be relegated to wires. "