Overview

Keith Jarrett is one of the great pianists of our times. Before achieving worldwide fame for his solo improvisations, he had already collaborated with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. His ‘Köln Concert’ album (1975) has now sold around four million copies and become the most successful solo recording in jazz history. His interpretations of the music of Bach, Händel, Bartók or Shostakovich, have also received much attention in later years. Jarrett is considered difficult and inaccessible, and has often abandoned the stage during his concerts due to restless audiences or disturbing photographers. Few writers have come as close to Keith Jarrett as Wolfgang Sandner, who has not only closely followed Jarrett’s remarkable career from the 1960s, but has also had the opportunity to visit him in his home in the United States. For this biography, which is full of detailed musical analysis and cross-references to other artistic genres, Sandner has collected new information about Jarrett’s family background, much of which is thanks to the translator, Keith Jarrett’s youngest brother Chris. The book explores Jarrett’s work with other musicians, in particular the members of his American and European Quartets and his Standards Trio, it charts the development of his solo concerts, and it also investigates his work in the classical sphere, as well as the highly original music he has created in his own home studio. It also covers his associations with his various record labels and producers, notably his unparalleled relationship with ECM and its founder Manfred Eicher. This English edition is a significantly extended and updated version of the German original.

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9781800500112

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Reviews

Superbly rendered, expanded and updated translation . . . retreads some of the pianist's formative milestones while stringing through them artful observations, interpretations and connections. --Grillo, Tyran, The New York City Jazz Record, May 2021 Sandner is an erudite music critic and a long-time fan of a musician who, for all his talent, divides opinion. . . . Sandner is a trustworthy guide who takes the story right up to this year's belated release of The Budapest Concert from 2016 and the rumours of ill health. He is in no doubt that Jarrett is a genius and even if you think ECM has released too many albums and detect bouts of hubris and note-spinning he makes a strong case. Among Jarrett's several careers, Sandner believes the solo shows reveal his true greatness: 'The concerts are like visiting a workshop. . . Those who listen, watch and participate are fascinated by the number of masterpieces leaving the production line again and again.' --Bungey, John, London Jazz News, November 7, 2020

Sandner is an erudite music critic and a long-time fan of a musician who, for all his talent, divides opinion. . . . Sandner is a trustworthy guide who takes the story right up to this year's belated release of The Budapest Concert from 2016 and the rumours of ill health. He is in no doubt that Jarrett is a genius and even if you think ECM has released too many albums and detect bouts of hubris and note-spinning he makes a strong case. Among Jarrett's several careers, Sandner believes the solo shows reveal his true greatness: 'The concerts are like visiting a workshop. . . Those who listen, watch and participate are fascinated by the number of masterpieces leaving the production line again and again.' --Bungey, John, London Jazz News, November 7, 2020

ReviewsIn this major biography of pianist Keith Jarrett, Wolfgang Sandner not only classifies Jarrett's recordings within the history of jazz, music and culture, but he tempts us to listen in a new and deeper way, and he enables us to understand the music beyond the boundaries of emotional listening. Wolfram Knauer, Director, Jazz Institute, Darmstadt Reviews of the German edition: Wolfgang Sandner has brilliantly disproved the notion that writing about music is as impossible as dancing architecture. Jazzpodium Sandner is exactly the right person for this meticulous and pioneering task. His perceptions are as wise and well-informed as they are enthusiastic and unerring. Die Zeit One is inclined to describe Sandner as this pianist's verbal alter ego. Like Jarrett, the cosmopolitan Sandner digs deeply into the material, displays virtuosity in comparisons taken from the spheres of art and cultural history, and can get as much caught up into hymnic Gospel fury with his meticulous characterizations as the great man does at the piano. Die Welt

Author Information

Wolfgang Sandner, born in 1942, studied musicology, modern history and Italian. For almost three decades, he has been active as music editor for the German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He is professor at the University of Marburg, Germany and has penned portraits of such varied artists as Miles Davis, Heiner Goebbels and Arvo Part. Chris Jarrett was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1956 and, an internationally successful pianist, organist and composer himself, is Keith Jarrett's youngest brother. He teaches at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany and tours with piano and organ recitals. He is married to the Croatian-American pianist Martina Cukrov Jarrett and has been residing in Germany since 1985.

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