KEITH JARRETT - CONCERTS: BREGENZ, MÜNCHEN / ECM 1227-29

“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. He takes fabulous risks, pushing everything to the limit.”

– Jarrett biographer Ian Carr

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. This three disc set could be said to be a culmination of the first wave of Jarrett’s solo music. Two improvised concerts from Austria and Germany are featured, recorded respectively at the Festspielhaus Bregenz (on May 28th, 1981) and the Herkulessaal der Residenz, Munich (on June 2nd, 1981).

While the Bregenz concert has previously been available as a single CD, and while Jarrett himself included an excerpt from the Munich show in a selection of personal favourites chosen for his :rarum anthology in 2002, this reissue marks the first appearance of the complete Munich performance on compact disc.

From contemporary reviews:

“Tapping his apparently inexhaustible mine, Jarrett continues to find deeper levels.”

International Herald Tribune

“Jarrett’s masterful improvisations touch on two centuries of music history, from Bach to Debussy, and also command all the possibilities of jazz... An exceptional musician whose imagination is almost without limits, moving with perfect assurance between periods and styles, and boldly defying the borderlines of ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ idioms.”

Neue Zürcher Zeitung

“This latest chapter of his prodigious output brings the Afro-American and European improvising traditions together, without effort and with complete conviction. It’s a remarkable tour-de-force which moves through the blues, Erik Satie, stride expressionism, bop and baroque.”

The Guardian