Keith Jarrett – Concerts: Bregenz, Munchen (1982/2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Keith Jarrett – Concerts: Bregenz, Munchen (1982/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:30:19 minutes | 2,77 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

After Bremen/Lausanne, after The Köln Concert, after the epic Sun Bear Concerts, the next development in Jarrett’s solo concerts was the all-embracing music captured here. Two 1981 improvised concerts from Austria and Germany are featured, recorded respectively at the Festspielhaus Bregenz and the Herkulessaal Munich, venues noted for outstanding acoustics. While the Bregenz concert has hitherto been available as a single CD, this set marks the first appearance of the complete Munich performance on compact disc. The 3-album set includes extensive text booklet with liner notes by Keith Jarrett, an essay by Swiss critic Peter Rüedi, and poetry by Michael Krüger.

“The Bregenz/Munich concerts were Jarrett’s most brilliant live solo recordings to date; his level of inspiration is quite extraordinary, and the music covers a wider musical and emotional range than ever.”
– Jarrett biographer Ian Carr

By the early ’80s, Keith Jarrett was definitely under siege, accused of arrogance, singing along too loudly, rambling eclecticism, and other “heinous” jazz crimes, especially in the wake of the massive success of the Köln Concert seven years before, and the issue of the massive, unprecedented Sun Bear Concerts box set in 1978. Indeed, around this time, Jarrett would verbally attack music critics at his solo concerts, and the reflected paranoia is obvious in Peter Ruedi’s defensive booklet essay included here, “The Magician and the Jugglers.” This multi-disc set was recorded during two concerts over four days in the spring of 1981 in Bregenz, Austria, and Munich, Germany. This recording is not to be confused with the earlier, more consistently inspired Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lusanne from 1973, which made Jarrett a star, yet the pianist was far from tapped out in these performances. He is often in his best lyrically funky form, where he makes the most out of a single ostinato idea — particularly at the beginning of the Bregenz concert and in the middle of the Munich concert — and his touch and exploitation of the dynamics and timbres of a grand piano are always a pleasure to hear. Even the passages of stasis or seemingly aimless rippling do not cancel out the treasurable moments and have real worth — though for some, the string plucking near the end of the Munich show may be somewhat gratuitous. In any case, this is far more interesting and elevated music-making than that of the New Age navel-gazing imitators who were cropping up in Jarrett’s wake in the early ’80s en masse, and adds immeasurably to the historically unique portrait of the artist.

Tracklist:
01. Keith Jarrett – Bregenz, Part I (21:59)
02. Keith Jarrett – Bregenz, Part II (12:06)
03. Keith Jarrett – Bregenz, Untitled (09:30)
04. Keith Jarrett – Bregenz, Heartland (06:02)
05. Keith Jarrett – Munich, Part I (23:22)
06. Keith Jarrett – Munich, Part II (24:21)
07. Keith Jarrett – Munich, Part III (26:30)
08. Keith Jarrett – Munich, Part IV (11:44)
09. Keith Jarrett – Munich, Mon Coeur Est Rouge (08:29)
10. Keith Jarrett – Munich, Heartland (06:10)

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