Creation

2015 | Music & Dance

'Creation' signals a departure from the 'traditions' of Keith Jarrett's many ECM recordings of solo improvised piano. Earlier concert recordings have reflected the flow of musical ideas and inspirations as developed in the course of an evening but this album - drawn from concert recordings made in Japan, Canada and Europe in 2014 - is different.





After reviewing all the music from his 2014 performances, Keith Jarrett honed in on the most revelatory episodes from six concerts in Toronto, Tokyo, Paris and Rome and sequenced them, effectively creating a new concert, a new suite of pieces with its own inner logic and momentum. The concept opens up fresh possibilities, extending the improviser's art to include an intuitive reassembling of material.





The resultant album is perhaps the most strongly lyrical of Jarrett's recent solo releases, the choice of music emphasizing pieces in which there is a sense of song being born, voices striving to be heard. 'Creation' also offers the most up-to-the minute account of Jarrett's uncanny capacity to construct compelling music in real-time: his melodic-harmonic imagination as an improviser and his ability to consistently find and shape new forms remain, after all these years of solo concerts, remarkable.





The album begins with music from Toronto. Paul Wells of Canadian national news magazine Maclean's, reviewed the concert at the Roy Thomson Hall, concluding that "Jarrett matters because he possesses the improviser's secret to greater degree than almost anyone. He can spin melody and logic, structure and surprise, richly and indefinitely."





Keith Jarrett, an ECM recording artist since 1971, has appeared on more than seventy albums for the label. Besides 'Creation', ECM issues a second disc to mark the pianist's 70th birthday (which falls on 8th May 2015), featuring him performing Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto and Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3.





Personnel: Keith Jarrett (piano)

Keith Jarrett (Author)