Share thoughts on Keith Jarrett

I think he is a great musician. Love his albums "The Melody At Night With You" and "Tabula Rasa", an album of Arvo Part compositions he did with the violinist Gidon Kremer. Hardcore jazz fans, however, seem to dismiss him because he is vaguely accessible.

There is a lot of K. Jarrett I enjoy listening to, but there is also quite a bit I can't because of his annoying orgasmic vocalizations, or whatever you want to call it. Köln Concerts is certainly one of the great albums of all time, but I don't consider Jarrett one of the giants of jazz with the likes of Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Bill Evans, et al. His influence certainly isn't off their stature.

To me, The Koln Concert to this day is ONE, if not THE most hypnotizingly beautiful pieces of recorded music I own. Inspired by the Koln Concert I started a long journey discovery his music and between the 25+ Jarrett CDs I own I find myself coming back to his European Quartet recordings ("My Song", "Belonging" and in particular "Personal Mountains") and his improvised / orginal recordings with the trio ("changeless", "changes"). The "standards" recordings with the trio never stood out to me as overly original or innovative, and none of the other solo concerts touched me as the Koln concert. I recently downloaded "Paris/London testament in 96/24" and there is some real good stuff there. However, nothing will ever hit me as first hearing the Koln Concert on my crappy record player as a melancholic 20 year old.

Just to keep the conversation going, I wonder if those of us who are fans could try to list some of the things about Jarrett's playing, writing, and bandleading that are distinctive.

Or make references to essays, links, books, that do this especially well.

In other words, how is his playing different from, say, Bill Evans and Brad Mehldau? The typical jazz textbook surveys, like those by Gioia (who loves pianists) and DeVeaux/Giddins (who are more horn-oriented than Gioia), and the little JAZZ 101 by Szwed, are appreciative of Jarrett in terms of impressionism, neo-romanticism, and mixing gospel and rock styles with improv-heavy open arrangements, but we could we also talk about the nature of his touch, use of space, harmony, phrasing?

As a particularly big fan of jazz ballads, I kind of see Jarrett as the linking figure between Evans (someone I'm utterly convinced was a giant of piano improvisation and trio conception, and an inevitable influence on Jarrett's acoustic style) and Mehldau (who strikes me as close to Jarrett in many ways, notably in his rockish ways, use of simple vamps, and tendency toward long single-note runs in right hand, compared with Evans more two-handed chord-shifting style).

And I kind find favorite Jarrett records from each of his phases, but I always like him better when playing with others.

Oh and I neglected to mention Paul Bley above. I was just listening to him today and thought, wow, now there's someone who really pared back the pianistic language and led to a post-Ornette highly melodic, less chordal style.