Overview

Keith Jarrett ranks among the most accomplished and influential pianists in jazz history. His The Köln Concert stands among the most important jazz recordings of the past four decades, not only because of the music on the record, but also because of the remarkable reception it has received from musicians and lay-listeners alike. Since the album's 1975 release, it has sold over three million copies: a remarkable achievement for any jazz record, but an unprecedented feat for a two-disc set of solo piano performances featuring no well-known songs. In Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert, author Peter Elsdon seeks to uncover what it is about this recording, about Keith Jarrett's performance, that elicits such success. Recognizing The Köln Concert as a multi-faceted text, Elsdon engages with it musically, culturally, aesthetically, and historically in order to understand the concert and album as a means through which Jarrett articulated his own cultural and musical outlook, and establish himself as a serious artist. Through these explorations of the concert as text, of the recording and of the live performance, Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert fills a major hole in jazz scholarship, and is essential reading for jazz scholars and musicians alike, as well as Keith Jarrett's many fans.

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9780199779260

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a thought-provoking, tightly focused and scholarly piece of work, of considerable interest not only to Jarrett aficionados, but also to anyone fascinated by the processes involved in playing, listening to and marketing music. Chris Parker, LondonJazz

<br> In this outstanding study, Peter Elsdon provides fresh insights into the creation, marketing, and reception of Keith Jarrett's most famous album. Even more valuable, the book sheds new light on the processes and functions of musical improvisation, composition, recording, and listening as a whole. Smart, readable, and engaging from start to finish, Eldon's work is a must for anyone interested in the making and meaning of jazz since the 1970s. --David Ake, jazz pianist, musicologist, and Director of the School of the Arts at the University of Nevada, Reno<p><br> Elsdon's authoritative and thought-provoking study of Jarrett's famous K ln Concert is not merely the first substantial investigation of a seminally important recording: throughout his perceptive musical analyses and insightful cultural and historical contextualization, the author persuasively addresses fundamental questions about the nature of improvisation, the phenomenon of musical performance, and the significance of the recorded artifact. --Mervyn Cooke, Professor of Music, University of Nottingham<p><br>

a thought-provoking, tightly focused and scholarly piece of work, of considerable interest not only to Jarrett aficionados, but also to anyone fascinated by the processes involved in playing, listening to and marketing music. Chris Parker, LondonJazz Elsdon is very good at exploring the recurring motifs and styles of Jarretts improvisations, his rhapsodic virtuosity, lengthy groove passages ... He is strong on the theory of music and its performance Simon Adams, Jazz Journal the book demonstrates an excellent level of scholarship and an excellent resource for knowledgeable readers. C. Wadsworth Walker, Choice

a thought-provoking, tightly focused and scholarly piece of work, of considerable interest not only to Jarrett aficionados, but also to anyone fascinated by the processes involved in playing, listening to and marketing music. Chris Parker, LondonJazz Elsdon is very good at exploring the recurring motifs and styles of Jarretts improvisations, his rhapsodic virtuosity, lengthy groove passages ... He is strong on the theory of music and its performance Simon Adams, Jazz Journal

Author Information

Peter Elsdon is a lecturer in Music at the University of Hull, where he teaches Jazz and Popular Music. He also works as a jazz musician in his spare time.

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