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SFJAZZ Spring Season 2006 • March 17-June 17, 2006

"Solo Piano"

Keith Jarrett, solo

Sunday, March 19 • 8pm

  • $100
  • $75
  • $55
  • $40
  • $30
    • “one of American musics masterful artists”
    — Los Angeles Times (Disney Hall concert review, 3/15/06)
    “No living jazz pianist has wrung more drama from the solo recital than Keith Jarrett. His vaulting, improvised concerts [are] melodic marathons, gleaming with significance.”
    —The New York Times (Carnegie Hall review, September 2005)

    Keith Jarrett’s long-awaited return to solo performance comprises just three U.S. concerts: last September at Carnegie Hall, a March date at L.A.’s Disney Hall, and this SFJAZZ performance at San Francisco’s famed Opera House—his first Bay Area solo performance in more than a decade. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to experience this “awesomely prolific musical giant” (The Guardian, UK) in the form he has made his own.

     

    The McElwee Family

     

    Program Notes

    Keith Jarrett's long-awaited return to solo performance comprises just three U.S. concerts: Carnegie Hall (9/05), L.A.'s Disney Hall, and this SFJAZZ performanceÑhis first in the Bay Area in more than a decade. In the words of San Francisco Magazine, this is the "must-see" March event: "The last time jazz pianist Keith Jarrett played solo in San Francisco, he turned a wayward cough at the opening of the second set into an unexpected anthemÑand left the audience with goose pimples. Jarrett's musical brinkmanship is life-altering, miss-it-at-your-own-risk stuff."

     

    At 60, Keith Jarrett has led a remarkable jazz life, from his early days as keyboardist in Miles Davis' 1970 electric band to his sublime trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette. But Jarrett solo is absolutely otherworldly. After a debilitating bout with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, he returned to the stage triumphantly in 2002 with two concerts in Japan. They were recorded with the bulk of the set compiled for last year's brilliant album Radiance (ECM).

     

    While Jarrett is recognized for his expansive solo excursions (documented on 1975's The Kšln Concert and 1997's La Scala), for the Japanese performances he re-envisioned his time alone onstage, taking his extemporaneous art to a new level of beauty and energy. The album ranges from 14-minute journeys to one-minute vignettesÑall, as he calls them, "transformative moments."

     

    Shortly before the release of Radiance, Jarrett said, "This is my position paper on what I feel I can and cannot do at the keyboard. The whole language is intact. There's an electricity because it was live. This album has something to do with composition in a way that the others did not. When you finish listening to it, it's not like you've experienced a transient event. What's happening here is closer to the coalescing of personal philosophy and music than a shot-in-the-dark concert. I can support this release more than any other that I can remember."

     

    As reported in The New York Times, Jarrett's Carnegie Hall show was transcendent: "No living jazz pianist has wrung more drama from the solo recital than Keith Jarrett. His vaulting, improvised concerts [are] melodic marathons, gleaming with significance."


    — Dan Ouellette