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Matthew Ruddick

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Author of Funny Valentine, an acclaimed new biography of the jazz trumpet player and singer, Chet Baker.
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Friday, 15 May 2015 17:31

Keith Jarrett - Creation

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Creation suggests that Jarrett's creative juices are starting to run dry; a pale shadow of his solo glories of years gone by

Have we heard the last of the Keith Jarrett Trio? It seems like a valid question. The last release from the prolific trio, Somewhere, was recorded back in 2009. According to www.keithjarrett.org, an unofficial website, the Trio only performed two gigs in the whole of 2014, and have not performed together so far this year. Indeed, most of Jarrett’s concerts over this period have been solo performances. May 2015 sees the release of two new CDs by Jarrett; Creation, a collection of recent solo performances, and a classical CD, featuring interpretations of music composed by Bartók and Samuel Barber.  The other members of the trio also appear to be focused on their own projects for the time being. Drummer Jack DeJohnette released Made In Chicago back in January, whilst bass player Gary Peacock is about to release Now This, a recording with his own trio.

Of course, it was inevitable that the pace of activity would slow. Jarrett turned 70 last week, whilst Peacock turned 80 earlier this week. But as we have noted previously, the Trio has been treading water from a creative perspective for a number of years, so perhaps it was natural that Jarrett would want to explore pastures new. Ever the restless spirit, the last few years have seen him recording with his old friend, Charlie Haden (Jasmine and Last Dance), dust off old studio recordings (the guitar-driven No End, recorded at his home studio in 1986), revisit his former glories (Hamburg ’72, and Concerts: Bregenz / München, from 1982), and now revisit the classical genre.

So what to make of his latest solo recordings? On paper at least, it sounds like an exciting concept. Jarrett himself has always re-listened to old recordings of his playing, and has hand-picked some of his favourite solo recordings from his solo tour of 2014, including excerpts from his concerts in Toyko, Rome and Paris. Given that he was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome back in the late 1990s, it would be probably be wrong to expect a return to the lengthy solo improvisations of his earlier years; and so it proves, with most of these pieces clocking in at seven-eight minutes in length.

Jarrett’s last solo recording was Rio, which was recorded and released back in 2011. There was a natural exuberance to those recordings, and considerable variation too – the influence of blues and gospel could be heard clearly, but there were also examples of his more free-form playing, and gorgeous, improvised ballads too. Creation is altogether different. There can be no doubt that Jarrett was looking to try something new. The music is stately, more grandiose, as though he was trying to move away from the influence of the blues, and use his more recent classical work as a starting point. But too often, the ideas simply fail to develop. Part I, recorded in Toronto, opens boldly, and we wait for the piece to develop, to open up. There are occasional hints that the music is about to evolve, but these prove to be musical dead-ends, and we are left unfulfilled. When Parts II and III also fail to evolve in any meaningful way, one starts to yearn for the cries and moans of ecstasy that pierced his earlier solo recordings. Here, the tuneless singing is a real distraction, a fake orgasm if you will. There are occasional flickers of brilliance in Parts IV and V, but they are few and far between, and you’ll be better off returning to the many scenes of his former creations – in Bremen, Köln, Bregenz, Kyoto, Osaka and Rio – to name but a few.  

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