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Style and the Improvised in Keith Jarrett s Solo Concerts

Peter Elsdon

Online Publication Date: 01 January 2008

To cite this Article Elsdon, Peter(2008)'Style and the Improvised in Keith Jarrett's Solo Concerts',Jazz Perspectives,2:1,51 — 67

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Style and the Improvised in Keith

Jarrett’s Solo ConcertsPeter Elsdon

You can’t keep things totally naked and totally free without there becoming some sort of method. I think if you talk to free players they’ll often try to justify their oeuvre over the years, if it’s all free, with some sort of methodology, and I’m not sure that that’s

possible if it’s free. . . . But if you do it too often, [and] I can attest to this from solo concerts, architectures build themselves up over time, and they’re harder and harder to work around, and my challenge in solo concerts was . . . not to come up with good music I had come up with before.

Keith Jarrett, 2005 interview with Alyn Shipton1

In many of the contexts in which improvisation is practised, it can be said—to

borrow a phrase from Nicholas Cook—to be ‘‘relational.’’2 Jazz musicians often talk

of improvising ‘‘on’’ or ‘‘over’’ the form of a piece or ‘‘the changes,’’ and thus

conceive of the act of improvisation in relation to pre-determined structures.3 This

point holds true most especially for jazz which is dependent on song or blues forms,

and there have been many analytical studies of improvisation as practised in relation

to such forms.4 But there is a substantial amount of music in the jazz tradition in

which improvisation is not so strictly determined in relation to song structures andchord sequences. Such music ranges from the work of musicians associated with the

free jazz movement (Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, and Cecil Taylor, for example),

to other slightly more contemporary examples (Anthony Braxton or John Zorn, for

instance). In such contexts, it is not that there is an absence of compositional

organisation, but rather that improvisation is conceived to be less determined by

traditional formal structures than in what might be called the conventional bebop

model. In this article, I explore one such non-conventional context, pianist Keith

Jarrett’s solo improvised concerts. While Jarrett himself has claimed that his

1Keith Jarrett, interview by Alyn Shipton, BBC Radio 3, broadcast April 30, 2005, as part of a Jazz File

series of programmes on Keith Jarrett.2Nicholas Cook, ‘‘Music Minus One,’’ New Formations 27 (1995–1996): 23–41.3 Jeff Pressing has theorised this idea of an underlying structure for improvisations as a ‘‘referent.’’ See

Jeff Pressing, ‘‘Cognitive Processes in Improvisation,’’ in Cognitive Processes in the Perception of Art , eds.

W. Ray Crozier and Anthony J. Chapman (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1984), 345–363. In describing how a

referent can take a range of different forms, from specific formal schemes to an abstract metaphorical

program, Pressing attempts to make this theory sufficiently malleable to adapt to a range of different

contexts.4See, for instance, Gregory E. Smith, Homer, Gregory and Bill Evans? The Theory of Formulaic Composition

in the Context of Jazz Piano Improvisation (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1983), and Lawrence Gushee,

‘‘Lester Young’s ‘Shoeshine Boy,’’’ in Report of the Twelfth Congress, Berkeley 1977 International

Musicological Society, eds. Bonnie Wade and Daniel Heartz (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1981), 151–169.

Jazz Perspectives Vol. 2, No. 1, May 2008, pp. 51–67

ISSN 1749-4060 print/1749-4079 online # 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/17494060801949000



improvisations avoid any structural planning, I examine a sense in which they

employ certain stylistic models, or simply ‘‘styles.’’ This is not to suggest that there is

anything pre-planned in these performances, but rather that the ‘‘architectures’’

which Jarrett talks of in the epigraph quotation above may come to function in a

similar way to compositional organisation. More specifically, Jarrett’s varied

employments of ‘‘styles’’ provide parameters within which improvisation can be

practised. These architectures consist not only of a number of different styles, but also

a large-scale progression through a sequence of particular styles, a device that also has

important expressive implications.

The epigraph comments by Jarrett also point to another aspect of improvisation in

this context, which is a tension that exists between the natural tendency for repetition

and the idea of improvisation as the province of the ‘‘unique.’’5 Improvisation is

concerned with creation in the moment, and so improvisations are regarded as

singular products of their moment of creation. Jarrett articulates a desire to avoid the

architectures of which he talks, but he also acknowledges the power they can come tohold for the improviser. This suggests that improvisers may employ strategies which

attempt to counteract these tendencies towards repetition. This interpretation is

suggested by John Corbett, who views the idea of risk as an inherent condition in free

improvisation, suggesting that improvisers play in order to ‘‘risk the unknown.’’6

While I will explore some of the architectural devices of Jarrett’s solo improvisations,

I will also examine an instance which might be understood as an attempt to work

against those structures, perhaps testifying to this aesthetic of risk.

Keith Jarrett began performing solo piano concerts in 1972. Many commentators

have seen this venture as representing the adoption of an epic perspective into jazz.

7

Thisreading can be seen, for instance, in the writings of Ted Gioia, who characterised Jarrett’s

solo piano concerts as ‘‘titanic improvisations.’’8 Similarly, Frank Tirro thought these

performances were emblematic of a ‘‘grandiose dimension’’ in jazz.9 Jarrett was certainly

not the only musician pursuing such a course. As Gernot Blume has discussed, Anthony

Braxton had released a number of solo saxophone recordings by 1972, and pianist Cecil

Taylor had even begun performing solo concerts in the late 1960s.10 In addition, over the

5See, for instance, Paul Berliner’s discussion of the importance of the spontaneity versus repetition in

improvisation in his book Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1994), 268–273.6 John Corbett, ‘‘Ephemera Underscored: Writing Around Free Improvisation,’’ in Jazz Among the

Discourses, ed. Krin Gabbard (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 225.7 Jarrett has consistently stated that the first of these performances took place in Heidelburg, Germany, in

1972. For more on the background to the solo concerts, see Gernot Blume, ‘‘Blurred Affinities: Tracing

the Influence of North Indian Classical Music in Keith Jarrett’s Solo Piano Improvisations,’’ Popular

Music 22 (2003): 117–142, and Peter Elsdon, Keith Jarrett’s Solo Concerts and the Aesthetics of Free

Improvisation, 1960–1973 (Ph.D. diss., University of Southampton, 2001).8Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 378.9Frank Tirro, Jazz: A History, 2d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 420.10Gernot Blume, Musical Practices and Identity Construction in the Work of Keith Jarrett (Ph.D. diss.,

University of Michigan, 1998), 420. See also Ronald M. Radano, New Musical Figurations: Anthony

Braxton’s Cultural Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 131–137, for a discussion of the

background to Braxton’s performances.

52 Keith Jarrett’s Solo Concerts: Style and the Improvised



space of a year between 1971 and 1972, the German ECM label recorded albums of solo

piano music by Jarrett, Paul Bley, and Chick Corea.11 The result of Jarrett’s session,

Facing You , has often been described as a kind of blueprint for the solo concerts. If the

scale of Jarrett’s concerts—in which he would improvise an entire performance of solo

piano music—seemed to tend towards the epic, the German ECM label’s releases of

recordings of these performances signalled a correspondingly weighty undertaking. The

first release, Solo Concerts (1973), was spaced across three LPs, while the ten LPs of the

Sun Bear Concerts (1976) provoked charges of egotism in some quarters.12

In terms of his artistic aesthetics, Jarrett’s solo concerts were intimately linked to

many contemporary avant-garde performance ideals. The ‘‘new thing’’ associated

with musicians like John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and Ornette Coleman during the

1960s, was a philosophy as much as a musical style. The religious ideals which

Coltrane and many other musicians espoused drew their roots not only from a

rekindling of the sense of black identity which was an integral part of 1960s black

politics, but also from the ideals of the counterculture.13

This upsurge in religiousrhetoric had essential ties to music making. The result of the connection musicians

made between spiritual ideals and music resulted in a conceptualisation of

performance as a spiritual quest. One of the most famous models of this concept

is found articulated through John Coltrane’s seminal 1964 recording, A Love

Supreme.14 The way in which Jarrett articulated his aesthetic stance in the liner notes

to the first recorded solo concert releases from 1973 establishes a direct connection to

this ideology: ‘‘I don’t believe that I can create, but that I can be a channel for the

Creative. I do believe in the Creator, and so in reality this is His album through me to

you, with as little in between as possible on this media-conscious earth.’’15

While couched in terms typical of those used by many jazz musicians of the time,

this creative philosophy has in Jarrett’s case found a very particular dramatic

manifestation in the solo concerts. At these events, Jarrett often lectured audiences on

the risks involved in this creative endeavour, the result of which contributed much to

11Keith Jarrett, Facing You, ECM 1017, 1971, compact disc. Chick Corea, Piano Improvisations, vol. 1,

ECM 1014, 1971, compact disc; Piano Improvisations, vol. 2, ECM 1020, 1971, compact disc. Paul Bley,

Open, to Love, ECM 1023, 1972, compact disc.12Keith Jarrett, Solo Concerts, ECM 1035/37, 1973, compact disc. See also Bob Blumenthal, ‘‘Keith

Jarrett’s Ego Trip: Ten LPs,’’ Rolling Stone, March 8, 1979, 54–6. Of course, in modern multi-set CD re-

releases, such proportions may not seem so extraordinary, but at the time, a ten-LP record box set wasalmost unheard of.13The subject of free jazz and its relation to politics and wider cultural forces is considerable. See, for

instance, Charles Hersch, ‘‘‘Let Freedom Ring!’: Free Jazz and African-American Politics,’’ Cultural

Critique 32 (Winter 1995–96), 97–123, and Eric Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz? (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2002).14 John Coltrane, A Love Supreme, Impulse! IMP 11552, 1964, LP. The two writers to have best

expressed this sometimes obtuse philosophy are Ben Sidran and Ronald Radano. See Ben Sidran, Black

Talk (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), and Radano, New Musical Figurations. See also David G. Such,

Avant-Garde Jazz Musicians: Performing ‘‘Out There’’ (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993),

Porter, What Is This Thing , and David Borgo, Sync or Swarm: Improvising Music in a Complex Age

(New York: Continuum, 2005).15Keith Jarrett, from the liner notes to Keith Jarrett, Solo Concerts, ECM 1035/37, 1973, LP; reissued as

ECM 827747, 2000, compact disc.

Jazz Perspectives 53



the dramatic spectacle of these performances.16 The extended scale of the solo

performances is directly related to this creative aesthetic, especially through the

manner in which the process of improvisation is itself foregrounded in the

performances. In Jarrett’s case, the idea of extended form is a consequence of

predicating the entire musical ethos of such performances on the unhindered

obeyance of the improvisatory process. That is to say, the solo concerts extend the

kinds of ideals of self-actualisation and spiritual quest present in free jazz, while

making such extended performances a virtue through which the very process of

creation takes centre stage. It is from this particular perspective that I want to

consider Jarrett’s solo piano improvisations, a context in which the whole cultural

import of improvisation comes to take centre stage.

Styles in the Solo Concerts

Not so long ago pianists used to fit comfortably into bags. You either played funk or you played free, right-handed ‘‘trumpet’’ style or locked-hand block chords. Keith Jarrett does all these things.

Bob Palmer, Rolling Stone , 197217

As the above assessment of Keith Jarrett’s 1972 solo piano album, Facing You ,

suggests, when Jarrett emerged as a major voice on the jazz scene towards the end of

the 1960s, his individuality was perceived to stem from the manner in which his voice

incorporated many diverse facets of the jazz vocabulary. This notion of Jarrett as the

musician who speaks in different musical dialects has emerged as one of the most

important themes in writings on the pianist. A prime example can be seen in thework of the musicologist Gernot Blume, who describes Jarrett as a musician who

‘‘traverses a wide musical terrain in pursuit of a variety of styles, traditions and forms

of expression.’’18 Nowhere is this theme more prominent in both critical and

scholarly writings on Jarrett than in relation to the solo concerts. David Ake’s recent

discussion of Jarrett serves as a good illustration. In his 2002 book, Jazz Cultures , Ake

talks of the ‘‘distinct categories’’ which can be heard in the solo concerts, including ‘‘a

seamless blend of quasi-Romantic rhapsodies, diatonic folk-like passages, ‘free’

counterpoint, angular atonality, extended techniques (plucking or strumming the

piano strings, striking the frame, etc.), and protracted ostinatos.’’

19

This kind of description of Jarrett’s performances extends throughout reviews of the solo concerts.

For example, in 1982, the critic John Fordham noted that Jarrett’s ‘‘favourite devices

16On this aspect of Jarrett’s performances, see David Ake’s chapter on Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett in his

book, Jazz Cultures (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), and Jairo Moreno on Jarrett’s

‘‘pianism’’ in his article ‘‘‘Body ‘n’ Soul’: Keith Jarrett’s Pianism,’’ Musical Quarterly 83 (Spring 1999),

75–92. See also Peter Elsdon, Keith Jarrett’s Solo Concerts, and ‘‘Listening in the Gaze: The Body in

Keith Jarrett’s Solo Piano Improvisations,’’ in Music and Gesture, eds. Anthony Gritten and Elaine King

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 192–207.17Bob Palmer, ‘‘Keith Jarrett, ‘Facing You,’’’ Rolling Stone, December 21, 1972, 48.18Blume, Musical Practices, 8.19Ake, Jazz Cultures, 102.




are rolling gospelly figures over which the right hand swerves and wreathes, harp-like

slow pieces, baroque semi-classical interludes and—on this occasion—such a trance-

like flight into soul music that you felt he was about to ascend into the tastefully

stripped pine roof of the hall.’’20 Similarly, in 1977, the critic Richard Williams

claimed that Jarrett was ‘‘the most consonant of players and his unbroken episodic

ramblings consist in the main of extemporised ballad melodies which flirt with

preciousness, hard-hammered sequences derived from black church music

(rhythmically vivacious but harmonically tedious).’’

While the sheer diversity of the reference points cited here is inevitably of interest,

what is of particular note is the way in which the language used imbues the styles

mentioned with a structural significance. There are ‘‘pieces’’ and ‘‘interludes,’’ terms

that have a structural significance. These writers clearly hear styles as instantiated in

identifiable passages of music, which form constituent parts of the improvisations.

Jarrett’s improvisations appear to inhabit a musical world which can be mapped out

in terms of specific stylistic reference points. Gernot Blume’s view of this aspect of Jarrett’s music is worth quoting here, since it identifies the sense in which Jarrett’s

improvisations seem to listeners to invoke convention:

Jarrett recreates a set of repeatable procedures and formulaic practices that reinstatethe effects of idiomatic delineations. He has to create a style out of his melange of styles to communicate to his audiences within an identifiable conceptualframework. Such a framework of conventions instils in the listener a feeling of familiarity with Jarrett’s music, an element of recognition and understanding of hisstructural devices and artistic prerogatives. 21

Understanding Jarrett’s improvisations seems to necessitate understanding theconventions and styles which Blume refers to, essentially identifying a series of

reference points from which to map out the territory within which Jarrett operates.22

In many ways, this is a surprisingly traditional approach. In fact, it is little

different from Leonard Ratner’s theory of musical topics in the Viennese Classical

tradition.23 Harold Powers has described this concept of musical topics in the

following manner:

Each topic either implies or characterizes a recognizable feature of music from aparticular social context. The topics are terminological tags naming kinds and

20 John Fordham, ‘‘Keith Jarrett,’’ The Guardian, November 4, 1982, 12.21Blume, Musical Practices, 114–15. It is perhaps in this sense that Jarrett differs most significantly from

other free improvisers, particularly those whose work is concerned with constructing an entirely new and

original language specifically for their instrument. As the critic John Corbett points out, such an

approach is concerned with bringing forth a new language, ‘‘more vibrant than the last.’’ Corbett,

‘‘Ephemera Underscored,’’ 224.22Leonard Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form and Style (New York: Schirmer, 1980). In a 1988

article, Andy Laverne identifies specific Jarrett styles in reference to the track ‘‘In Front’’ from the 1972

album Facing You. Laverne mentions a Jarrett ‘‘gospel style,’’ for instance. Andy Laverne, ‘‘Inside Keith

Jarrett’s ‘In Front,’’’ Keyboard Magazine, March 1988, 112–3.23Ratner argued in Classic Music that his theory was based on ideas found in the writings of theorists

during the Classical period. Raymond Monelle has recently surveyed this claim in a critical light.

Raymond Monelle, The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000).




manners of music familiar to a particular society of musical consumers. They arethe verbal equivalents for items in a musical vocabulary.24

From this perspective, those descriptions of Jarrett’s playing make absolute sense;

they identify commonly understood elements in Jarrett’s musical language and label

them in stylistic terms much as the topics which Ratner found in the music of Mozartand Haydn. Just as the ‘‘manners’’ of music that Ratner identified formed constituent

parts of a compositional language, so Jarrett’s styles are constituent parts of the

language which he brings to these improvisations. Topical theory also points out that

these topics, or styles, can prove to be the very things through which music means—

or, rather, the nuts and bolts of an expressive language.25 Jarrett’s improvisations

have meaning because so much of his music is heard as a reference to other musics.

Two qualifications are necessary at this point before proceeding any further. First,

the styles I want to consider reflect my work on a specific period of Jarrett’s

recordings, namely those made in 1973 and released on the LP Solo Concerts . It is

unrealistic to imagine that Jarrett’s playing would not have developed over a numberof years, but I do not examine these developments in this limited article. Second, it is

not my intention to attempt an exhaustive classification of Jarrett’s improvisations

into a series of different styles. Part of the reason I adopt the term ‘‘style’’ rather than

‘‘topic’’ has to do with how such classes can be identified in a piece of music. Much of

the application of topical theory to music of the eighteenth century has been able to

specify very clear-cut divisions between the presentation of different topics. However,

in Jarrett’s music this is simply not the case, as will become clear in the following

discussion where I identify and explore three particular styles.

Ballad Style

The term ‘‘ballad’’ has a very distinct meaning in jazz aside from its connotations in

terms of other musical traditions. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz describes a ballad

as ‘‘a slow sentimental lovesong . . . [T]hey are performed at a relaxed tempo, in a soft

intimate style, and lack the rhythmic drive and intensity of four-beat jazz. The word

is often used, loosely, of any slow piece, regardless of its form, style, or subject

matter.’’26 As this definition suggests, jazz musicians generally take a rather different

approach to a ballad than to an up-tempo piece. By definition, ballads lack the

propulsive swing feel of a faster tune. At the same time, melodicism also plays aparticularly important role. Many jazz musicians additionally place an emphasis on

empathising with the sentiment of the lyrics of the original song when playing a

ballad.

24Harold Powers, ‘‘Reading Mozart’s Music: Text and Topic, Syntax and Sense,’’ Current Musicology 57

(Spring 1995), 5–44.25For an example of a recent extension of topical theory into broader areas of expression in music, see

Robert Hatten’s book on Beethoven. Robert Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness,

Correlation, and Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).26Robert Witmer, ‘‘Ballad,’’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, ed. Barry Kernfeld (London:

Macmillan Press, 1988; reprint, New York: St. Martin, 1995), 55–56.




Example 1 Ballad from Keith Jarrett, ‘‘Bremen, Part 1,’’ Solo Concerts (1973)




The musical extract in Example 1 comes from the opening of the 1973 Bremen

concert, as released on Jarrett’s Solo Concerts album.27 One of the most immediately

distinctive features of a Jarrett ballad is seen in the piano figuration, in which the

melodic line in the right-hand part is supported by broken-chord and arpeggiated

figures in the left. The left-hand figures never settle into one particular figurative

pattern, but instead shift between a number of different types of formations.

A Jarrett ballad also has a distinct rhythmic approach, drawing in part on the kind

of rhythmic licence granted to musicians playing a ballad in a group context, or

perhaps the sort of approach a pianist would take in improvising a solo introduction.

Ballad passages are full of rubato playing, whereby the length of the beat expands and

contracts to create a subtle sense of ebb and flow.28 Rubato is not employed to give

particular poignancy to phrase endings or cadential points, but rather permeates the

entire passage. This sense of flexible time also applies to the harmonic motion in this

case. In performances of a jazz standard with a rhythm section, the chord changes

generally move at a regular rate, usually in measures or half-measures. In a Jarrettsolo ballad though, the rate of change varies subtly; there is a continual expansion

and contraction of the period between each change in Example 1, resulting in a fluid

harmonic rhythm.29

A ballad also inhabits a very particular kind of world, one that is distinguished by

largely familiar and conventional types of short-term harmonic progressions. There

are many ii-V or ii-V-I patterns, harmonic building blocks which are a formative part

of the jazz language. On a larger scale, Jarrett’s ballad passages avoid establishing a

tonal centre, always breaking off to move in a new direction as soon as any cadential

inference might be drawn. In Example 1, for instance, the opening A minor chord(with a phrygian inflection—a distinctive Jarrett trait) functions as the starting point

for a series of harmonic excursions, which foray ever further away from the point of

departure. Thus, the first segment moves through a ii-V-I progression to B-flat at

bar 6, and then back onto A minor at bars 8-9. The following passage moves further

afield, through C major, and then a sequence of descending progressions lead

through flat keys (E-flat and D-flat) onto C, and then quite suddenly onto A-flat.

While this opening A minor chord serves an important function as a launching point

for these harmonic excursions, it never acts as a tonic key in a functional sense.

27All the transcriptions presented herein are the author’s own. The bar numbers presented in the

examples are for ease of reference.28Gernot Blume labels a number of passages from the first part of the 1975 Koln Concert recording as

‘‘Rubato 1’’ and ‘‘Rubato 2,’’ thus using one particular musical characteristic as an indexical label. For

my purposes, the label ‘‘ballad’’ is more useful since it indicates more about the passage in question than

simply the rhythmic approach.29A recent study by Richard Ashley provides some fascinating insights into rubato as practised

particularly within the playing of ballads in the jazz traditions. See Richard Ashley, ‘‘Do[n’t] Change a

Hair for Me: The Art of Jazz Rubato,’’ Music Perception 19 (Spring 2002): 311–332. The ‘‘delay-

accelerate’’ strategy that Ashley identifies is one I hear as characteristic of Jarrett’s playing in the ballads

of a solo concert. However, without the backing of a rhythm section (all of Ashley’s examples come from

performances utilising a rhythm section), it is rather difficult to quantify the degree and practise of rubato

in this case.




It is evident from Jarrett’s solo concert recordings that ballad passages seem to play

a particular role at the opening of improvisations, and this also has expressive

implications. Given what I have called the foregrounding of improvisation at the

heart of the spectacle of the solo concerts, ballad passages seem to represent the

opening of an improvisation in a very specific way. These harmonic excursions I have

referred to, and the particular way in which a ballad circles around certain diatonic

areas while abstaining from establishing a tonic, are all musical features which

performatively enact the process of improvisation. As listeners, we are drawn to hear

such musical features as indicative of the creative process; the gradual unfolding of a

ballad represents, for example, an improviser gradually constructing a musical world

in which to work. The key term here is ‘‘representation.’’ I am not trying to suggest in

any literal phenomenological sense that we can gain access to the process of

improvisation through the music, but rather that we hear a certain representation of

that process in the music.

Folk Ballad Style

While I located the Jarrett ballad style in terms of certain precedents in the jazz

tradition, the style that I term a ‘‘folk ballad’’ indicates the extent to which the

musical language of the solo concerts extends its generic reference points rather

wider. With a folk ballad passage there is a certain convergence between Jarrett’s

language and the genre of folk-rock prevalent during the 1960s, as exemplified

particularly by the music of Bob Dylan. As Gernot Blume has discussed, the nature of

this influence is nowhere clearer than on Jarrett’s 1968 album Restoration Ruin , which

was an attempt (although a rather unsuccessful one) to present his multi-

instrumental talents in a context much closer to that of singer/songwriter than jazz

musician.30 As Blume points out, in this process, Jarrett has notably absorbed

influences from specific music styles into his own voice.

Folk ballad episodes are characterised by a particular kind of piano figuration,

consisting generally of arpeggio-like, broken-chord patterns in the left hand, usually

employing roots, fifths, and sometimes tenths as well. This kind of left-hand pattern

is very much redolent of piano figuration from the classical repertoire, but equally it

can be heard as analogous to a guitarist’s arpeggiated chordal strumming. Unlike a

ballad, this type of figuration is coupled to a steady pulse, resulting in a feel of straighteighth notes. Folk ballad passages take a very different harmonic approach from

Jarrett’s ballad passages, employing diatonic triads free from the extensions and

alterations typical of ballad style. Example 2 shows the opening of a folk ballad

episode from the Lausanne concert, with the establishment of left-hand figuration

coupled to a sequential harmonic motion: B-flat major – C major – D minor – C

major. This particular harmonic pattern is one which occurs again and again in the

solo concerts, with the distinctive trait being a sequential move from a major chord

to the minor chord a third above, or vice versa. Also typical for a folk ballad passage

30Keith Jarrett, Restoration Ruin, Vortex 2008, 1968, LP. See Blume, Musical Practices, 26.




is that while B-flat is established as the ‘‘home’’ chord, the modality is actually F

major, something which becomes clearer later in the passage.Much like a ballad passage there is always a strong emphasis on melody in a folk

ballad episode, but the sense of phrasing is quite different. The regularity of the

underlying harmonic motion (in contrast to that in a ballad passage) is matched by a

melodic approach which stresses working out a simple melodic idea. In this instance,

bars 2 and 3 of the excerpt are played as two separate but neatly matched phrases,

with the following two bars comprising an answering phrase doubled in length.

While later on in the passage Jarrett spins the music off into harmonic and figurative

patterns more expansive than this opening, the strong impression of order given by

the establishment of this passage contrasts sharply to the ballad style.In the context of the solo concert from which it comes, this particular folk ballad

passage follows on from a ballad passage which has lasted some four minutes. By

placing the folk ballad after this exploratory opening ballad passage, an expressive

significance becomes clear. I have suggested that the ballad episodes that so typically

open a Jarrett improvisation express a gradual unfolding, which in many ways

mirrors our sense as listeners of the improvisatory process; the growth in confidence

and increasing assurance with which musical risks are taken. In his study of the late

music of Beethoven, Robert Hatten suggests that topics in the classical tradition can

articulate dramatic oppositions, and he focuses in particular on the idea of

‘‘expressive genre.’’ As he describes them, these genres are ‘‘based on . . . [and] move

Example 2 Folk ballad from Keith Jarrett, ‘‘Lausanne,’’ Solo Concerts (1973)




through, broad expressive states oppositionally defined as topics in the classical

style.’’31 In other words, expressive effect arises from the juxtaposition of topics, and

the progression from one to another. The progression from ballad to folk ballad style

is what might be called an expressive genre in Hatten’s terminology. It marks out a

change in musical state, from what might loosely be described as unstable to stable.

This progression is one which is particularly characteristic of Jarrett’s solo concerts

and seems to constitute a long-term strategy, whether borne of habit or careful

planning.

Blues Vamp Style

Jarrett is well known for employing one particular type of stylistic passage in his solo

concert performances: long vamp-driven sequences. Vamp passages have none of the

more conventional harmonic or rhythmic progressions typically found in a Jarrett

ballad. This vamp-based aspect of Jarrett’s conception is one which surfaces in awhole variety of musical contexts beyond the solo concerts, and his use of this texture

extends from his time with Charles Lloyd towards the end of the 1960s, through

groups now known as the ‘‘American’’ and ‘‘European’’ bands, to his longstanding

trio with Jack DeJohnette and Gary Peacock.32 Blues vamps are one particular subset

of the wider category of ostinato passages as they occur in the solo concerts. These

passages are vamp-driven, while containing strong blues stylisations through

dominant-seventh harmonies and other typical blues inflections (flattened third

and fifth degrees, for instance). The other sub-types of ostinato passage tend towards

either diatonic or other kinds of modal configurations, both types of which are alsoevidenced on these 1973 recordings.33

I use the term ‘‘vamp’’ instead of ostinato for a particular reason. While there is

generally some form of repeated figure used in these passages, Jarrett varies such

figures extensively, and they can take a number of different forms while still retaining

a recognisable identity. The vamps that Jarrett employs in these passages exemplify a

particular aspect of his playing, namely the ability to generate a strong rhythmic

momentum by creating a texture of sometimes three or more distinct voices. In the

instance shown in Example 3, the vamp consists of an F-C7 progression, moving

every half bar, and this progression is retained throughout this passage.34 The lower

right-hand part generally works within the pentatonic grouping C-D-E-G-A, while

31Hatten, Musical Meaning , 67.32The ‘‘American’’ band consisted of bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Paul Motian, and saxophonist

Dewey Redman, with occasional percussionists. The ‘‘European’’ band consisted of bassist Palle

Danielsson, drummer Jon Christenson, and saxophonist Jan Garbarek.33The type of ostinato passage built entirely on diatonic harmony (and one single scale), occurs at the

end of the second part of the Bremen concert and both parts of the Lausanne performance. These

particular passages seem like a massive reinforcement of one single tonality.34There are instances of blues vamps or ostinato passages in the solo concerts where Jarrett will effect a

break passage in the middle of a vamp, occasionally modulating quickly through a cycle of fifths, but

almost always returning to the original vamp and key.




the left hand quickly develops a distinct rhythm which counterpoints the motion in

the right hand. In passages such as this one, the rhythmic feel Jarrett employs is much

closer to a straight feel than a triplet-based swing approach.

The criticism most commonly levelled at the vamp-based aspects of Jarrett’s

playing hinges on a kind of stasis texture in which little seems to change. In a 1977

review, for example, Richard Williams remarked that Jarrett’s improvisationsincluded ‘‘lengthy spells during which inspiration deserts him and he merely toys

with a simple vamp until a new idea arrives.’’35 These kinds of criticisms centre on

absence, and primarily on an absence of harmonic development and rhythmic

variety. As much as anything, Williams’s comments betray a rather antiquated and

narrow aesthetic notion of music. What is explicit in Williams’s case is the idea that

35Williams, ‘‘Keith Jarrett.’’ Williams is only one of a number of critics who make such comments.

There is another section of critical opinion that would hear such passages as joyous affirmations of

groove, rather than in the negative terms that Williams expresses. I use Williams’s remarks not as

indicative of all critical opinion, but as a demonstration of one reading of Jarrett’s music which I counter.

Example 3 Blues vamp from Keith Jarrett, ‘‘Lausanne,’’ Solo Concerts (1973)




musical stasis equates in some way to a stasis in the creative process. The logical

conclusion of such an argument might seem to be that the rate of development of

new ideas in an improvisation can be taken as a sure indicator of the level of

inspiration at which the performer is operating. This view is hardly an acceptable way

of evaluating improvisation. As I will suggest, blues vamp passages in the solo

concerts can be understood as expressive in a much richer sense than Williams’s

comments might suggest.

The essential quality to these passages in the solo concerts is ‘‘groove.’’ I use the

term groove here as indicative not only of a certain kind of musical phenomenon

(repeated patterns rhythmically articulated in such a way as to create a strong forward

momentum) but of a physical, bodily experience.36 This physical attachment is easily

seen by watching musicians playing almost any groove-based music, and by

observing the wide variety of ways in which groove is expressed physically in the

experience of music, whether through dancing or tapping of feet. Steven Feld talks of

how ‘‘getting into the groove also describes a feelingful participation, a positivephysical and emotional attachment. . . . A groove is a comfortable place to be.’’37 In

her 1996 book, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction , Ingrid Monson

talks of the emotional and interpersonal aspects of the way jazz musicians talk about

groove. She draws specific attention to the idea that playing in the groove is almost

like letting the music ‘‘play itself.’’38 In his performances, Jarrett’s body tends to

reinforce this idea of groove as physically-grounded, through motions which may

articulate pulse (the tapping of feet, sometimes against the sustain pedal of the

instrument) or may instead seem to represent the experience of the performer

(standing up from the piano stool). In the latter case, these physical gestures can beviewed as outward maninfestations of interior states. I have discussed these aspects of

Jarrett’s playing at length elsewhere, suggesting that they are crucial to the expressive

effect of his music.39 Understood in this sense, a vamp passage in Jarrett’s music may

be static harmonically, and apparently show little of the onward momentum and

exploration of a ballad, but the groove enacts a physical engagement between

improviser and music. Indeed, it specifically expresses a quality of exhilaration.

Conformity and Transgression: Hearing the Improvised

So far I have explored some patterns in Jarrett’s solo improvisations which may be

akin to the architectures mentioned in the epigraph quotation at the outset of this

article. One particular architecture is of concern here—that is, the progression of

36On the notion of what a groove is in theoretical terms and what it means to evaluate groove, see

Lawrence M. Zbikowski, ‘‘Modelling the Groove: Conceptual Structure and Popular Music,’’ Journal of

the Royal Musical Association 129 (December 2004), 272–297.37Steven Feld, ‘‘Aesthetics as Iconicity, or ‘Lift-Up-Over Sounding,’‘‘ in Music Grooves, eds. Charles

Keil and Steven Feld (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 111.38 Ingrid Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1996), 68.39Elsdon, ‘‘Listening.’’




styles which forms an expressive genre in the sense I indicated earlier. This particular

progression occurs in many of the solo concert recordings, although not always in

quite the same form as in the Lausanne concert which I will discuss here. In the first

part of the Lausanne concert, this progression moves from a ballad passage at the

outset, through a folk ballad episode (which I discussed briefly above in Example 2),

and then into a blues vamp passage (my Example 3 above). This is naturally a

reductive kind of description, and certainly the musical trajectory is not quite as

linear as this might imply. When expressive considerations are taken into account,

this progression through styles represents a move from harmonic/rhythmic

uncertainty towards the stability and affirmation of the groove.

The moment in this improvisation which particularly interests me lies just after the

end of that progression; the move from the blues vamp into a more open rhapsodic-

type section. While a groove may be expressive of a kind of physically-grounded

exhilaration, it also has clear musical boundaries. Harmonic and rhythmic stability

creates expectations; it creates a very clear sense of what the normative is. Any musical element which does not fall within these normative boundaries will be highly

marked, and heard as somehow ‘‘outside.’’ For the improviser, this can mean that a

groove such as this blues vamp may be hard to break out of, specifically because of

the expectations that it creates. Does the improviser simply stop and abandon the

groove, or does he attempt to gradually subvert or transform a part of the texture in

order to effect a transition of sorts? For the listener, the presence of these boundaries

may actually heighten the expectation of change after a time; they may come to

speculate on the potential difficulty of effecting a move away from this area.

As shown in Example 4, at 99 390 (some two-plus minutes into the vamp passage),

the left hand starts playing ascending scales in octaves, with the use of a little sustain

pedal blurring the texture. While the vamp is based on F and C chords, this ascending

line employs an F Lydian mode. The result is that the sharpened fourth degree (B-

natural) in this line clashes with the B-flats which sometimes appear in the vamp.

This ascending line also disrupts the vamp in rhythmic terms. The bass line has a

kind of stuttering effect, created by the distance between each step changing between

a dotted eighth note and a quarter note. The dotted eighth division is the more used

of the two, while the right hand retains a quarter-note division of the 4/4 bar. This

device creates a kind of temporal dissonance, as if the two hands are playing at

different speeds. The disruption of the groove seems to cause the whole vamp passageto disintegrate. This effect becomes particularly obvious as the right-hand patterns

begin to fragment into isolated chords and single notes. After some time, these

patterns settle into a dotted eighth-note division (towards the end of Example 4),

which aligns to the tempo being articulated in the left hand. It is as if this rhythmic

conflict is settled in favour of the dotted eighth-note pulse. Even from this point

onwards, the direction seems unsure. A little later, the right-hand lines become

blurred with the use of the sustain pedal as the notes meld into a wash of sound.

There is an obvious musical tension in this passage between the rhythmic and

harmonic function of the left-hand lines and the vamp figures in the right hand. In

terms of the normative musical strategies of Jarrett’s vamp style, this left-hand line




stands out as decidedly other. It challenges the harmonic and rhythmic primacy of

the vamp by confrontation, rupturing the figuration of the ostinato. The musical

implications of this intrusion seem considerable; the left-hand lines derail the whole

Example 4 Disruption of blues vamp from Keith Jarrett, ‘‘Lausanne,’’ Solo Concerts (1973)




momentum of the groove, resulting in the disintegration of the musical fabric. The

drama of this particular passage stems from more than just the musical effect of this

clash between the two parts. Those left-hand lines represent a physical intrusion into

the music. In contrast to the rest of the blues vamp where the left hand remains in

essentially the same position over the keyboard, it now moves in a completely

different way, ascending and descending in irregular cycles. Those continuing octave

ascents threaten to encroach on the very territory still guarded by the right hand. The

key point is this: at this moment, the improviser is heard to intrude into the musical

discourse, forcing the improvisation in a new direction by disrupting the rhythmic

momentum of the vamp.

This example represents what I am going to call a moment of ‘‘transgression.’’ The

transgression is a breaking of the normative expectations of the vamp. This device is

heard as a clear and intentional disruption to the flow of the music. It is a kind of

dramatic rhetorical gesture in which the scaffolding that holds the music together is

dismantled, or rather swept deliberately aside. This gesture might be understood torepresent what the critic John Corbett calls a quest for ‘‘reterritory,’’ or, rather, a

deliberate courting of the unknown by rejecting the familiar.40 The result is that at

this moment the presence of the improviser comes to the foreground. In other words,

the musical intrusion of the left hand into the vamp functions as a sign of the

intrusion of the improviser into the music. This is significant in a number of respects.

First, in the solo concerts, Jarrett encourages the audience to make a considerable

investment in the performance, emphasising their role as participants and not just

observers. Jarrett has often emphasized that this investment relates to the risks he

takes when performing in this context.

41

Second, there is the ideology out of whichthe solo concerts come. As I explained earlier, this ideology leans towards a

romanticised conception of performance as motivated by an external higher source of

inspiration. Taken in this way, the presence of the improviser in the music at this

point accentuates the aesthetic of risk, and it points attention away from a

romanticised conception of improvisation, towards a more physically-grounded

performer-centred one. Indeed, this might even be considered as a kind of ‘‘breaking

of the spell’’; the presence of the improviser at this moment shatters any illusions that

this music exists beyond the physical body that produces it.

I have suggested that the analysis of Jarrett’s solo improvisations and their

underlying architecture might involve the identification of the fundamental stylistictemplates which he appears to draw on. These templates seem to function as

something akin to what Jeff Pressing calls ‘‘referents,’’ as they serve to provide

parameters which guide the generation of music.42 By using styles in recognisable

figurations and progressions, Jarrett sets up patterns which not only create expressive

effects, but which can then be transgressed in order to convey the taking of risk.

Because of a performance context in which the spectacle of improvisation takes

40See Corbett, ‘‘Ephemera Underscored,’’ 225.41For more on this matter, see Ake, Jazz Cultures, and Elsdon ‘‘Listening.’’42Pressing, ‘‘Cognitive Processes.’’




centre stage, this music is heard to be improvised, and is heard as a reflection of the

creative process itself. For this reason, moments of transgression may have particular

dramatic impact and are likely to be perceived as representing Jarrett leaving behind

the familiar in favour of the unknown. In order to study forms of improvised music

such as this, it is perhaps necessary to construct an analytical strategy which is capable

of dealing both with conformance and digression, and to recognise the expressive

effects that music like this can have.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to the two anonymous readers whose comments proved invaluable in

preparing this article for publication. All musical examples are used by permission of

Cavelight Music.

Abstract

This article outlines an approach to analysing Keith Jarrett’s solo improvisations. I

explore an approach based on topical theory, suggesting that Jarrett seems to employ

a range of recognisable styles as a means of creating formal architecture. Using the

1973 Solo Concerts recording as an example, I examine three styles: ballad style, folk

ballad style, and blues vamp style. I consider how Jarrett employs styles in certain

configurations, resulting in specific kinds of expressive effects. I also explore how in

transgressing these patterns Jarrett is able to convey the notion of risk, in a context in

which the spectacle of improvisation comes very much to the fore.

Keywords: Keith Jarrett, improvisation, solo concerts


jarrett style of improv

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