The Köln Concert
Encyclopedia
The Köln Concert is a recording
by the pianist
Keith Jarrett
of solo piano improvisation
s performed at the Cologne Opera House
in Cologne
on January 24, 1975 before a live audience. It was released in the autumn of 1975 by the ECM Records label to critical acclaim and went on to become the best-selling solo album in jazz history, and the all-time best-selling piano album with sales of more than 3.5 million.
290 Imperial
concert grand piano for the performance. However, there was some confusion by the opera house staff and instead they found another Bösendorfer piano backstage - a much smaller baby grand - and assuming it was the one requested placed it on the stage. Unfortunately, the error was discovered too late for the correct Bösendorfer to be delivered to the venue in time for the evening's concert. The piano they had was intended for rehearsals only and was in poor condition and required several hours of tuning and adjusting to make it playable. The instrument was tinny and thin in the upper registers and weak in the bass register, and the pedals did not work properly. Consequently, Jarrett often used ostinatos
and rolling left-hand rhythmic figures during his Köln performance to give the effect of stronger bass notes, and concentrated his playing in the middle portion of the keyboard. ECM Records producer Manfred Eicher
later said: "Probably [Jarrett] played it the way he did because it was not a good piano. Because he could not fall in love with the sound of it, he found another way to get the most out of it."
Jarrett arrived at the opera house late in the afternoon and tired after an exhausting long drive from Zurich, Switzerland, where he had performed a few days earlier. He had not slept well in several nights and was in pain from back problems and had to wear a brace. After trying out the substandard piano and learning a replacement instrument was not available, Jarrett nearly refused to play and Brandes had to convince him to perform as the concert was scheduled to begin in just a few hours. The concert took place at the unusually late hour of 11:30 PM following an earlier opera performance. This late-night time slot was the only one the administration would make available to Brandes for a jazz concert - the first one ever at the Köln Opera House. The show was completely sold out and the venue was filled to capacity with over 1400 people at a ticket price of 4 Deutsche Marks (about $5.00). Despite the obstacles, Jarrett's performance was enthusiastically received by the audience and the subsequent recording was acclaimed by critics and became an enormous commercial success. It remains his most popular recording and continues to sell well more than 35 years after its initial release.
The performance was recorded by ECM Records engineer Martin Wieland, Studio Bauer, using a pair of Neumann
U-67 vacuum-tube powered condenser microphones and a Telefunken
M-5 portable tape machine. The recording is in three parts: lasting about 26 minutes, 34 minutes and 7 minutes respectively. As it was originally programmed for vinyl LP
, the second part was split into sections labelled "IIa" and "IIb." The third part labelled "IIc" was actually the final piece, a separate encore.
A notable aspect of the concert was Jarrett's ability to produce very extensive improvised material over a vamp of one or two chords for prolonged periods of time. For instance, in Part I, he spends almost 12 minutes vamping over the chords Am7 (A minor 7) to G major, sometimes in a slow, rubato feel, and other times in a bluesy, gospel rock
feel. For about the last 6 minutes of Part I, he vamps over an A major theme. Roughly the first 8 minutes of Part II A is a vamp over a D major groove with a repeated bass vamp in the left hand, and in Part IIb, Jarrett improvises over an F# minor vamp for about the first 6 minutes.
Since the release of The Köln Concert, Jarrett had been asked by pianists, musicologists and others, to publish the music. For years he resisted such requests since, as he said, the music played was improvised "on a certain night and should go as quickly as it comes." In 1990, Jarrett finally agreed on publishing an authorized transcription but with the recommendation that every pianist intending to play the piece should use the recording itself as the final word. A new interpretation of The Köln Concert has been published in 2006 by polish pianist Tomasz Trzcinski on his Album Blue Mountains. A transcription for classical guitar
has also been published by Manuel Barrueco
.
Recording
Recording is the process of capturing data or translating information to a recording format stored on some storage medium, which is often referred to as a record or, if an auditory medium, a recording....
by the pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett is an American pianist and composer who performs both jazz and classical music.Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music; as...
of solo piano improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
s performed at the Cologne Opera House
Cologne Opera
The Cologne Opera refers both to the main opera house in Cologne, Germany and to its resident opera company.-History of the company:...
in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
on January 24, 1975 before a live audience. It was released in the autumn of 1975 by the ECM Records label to critical acclaim and went on to become the best-selling solo album in jazz history, and the all-time best-selling piano album with sales of more than 3.5 million.
The Köln concert
Preliminaries to the concert were not auspicious. The concert was organized by 18 year-old Vera Brandes, Germany’s youngest concert promoter. At Jarrett's request, Brandes had selected a BösendorferBösendorfer
Bösendorfer is an Austrian piano manufacturer, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamaha. The brand is known for producing pianos with a uniquely rich, singing, and sustaining tone...
290 Imperial
Imperial Bosendorfer (piano)
The Imperial Bösendorfer is the largest model of pianos that Bösendorfer manufactures at 290 centimeters long, or 9½ feet. For 90 years, the only concert grand piano in the world with 97 keys, in 1990 it was joined in this tradition by the instruments of Stuart & Sons, Australia...
concert grand piano for the performance. However, there was some confusion by the opera house staff and instead they found another Bösendorfer piano backstage - a much smaller baby grand - and assuming it was the one requested placed it on the stage. Unfortunately, the error was discovered too late for the correct Bösendorfer to be delivered to the venue in time for the evening's concert. The piano they had was intended for rehearsals only and was in poor condition and required several hours of tuning and adjusting to make it playable. The instrument was tinny and thin in the upper registers and weak in the bass register, and the pedals did not work properly. Consequently, Jarrett often used ostinatos
Ostinato
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...
and rolling left-hand rhythmic figures during his Köln performance to give the effect of stronger bass notes, and concentrated his playing in the middle portion of the keyboard. ECM Records producer Manfred Eicher
Manfred Eicher
Manfred Eicher is a German record producer and the founder of ECM Records and its subsidiaries.Eicher studied music at the Academy of Music in Berlin. He is a record producer and a double-bass player. In 1969 he founded a record label in Munich called ECM - Edition of Contemporary Music...
later said: "Probably [Jarrett] played it the way he did because it was not a good piano. Because he could not fall in love with the sound of it, he found another way to get the most out of it."
Jarrett arrived at the opera house late in the afternoon and tired after an exhausting long drive from Zurich, Switzerland, where he had performed a few days earlier. He had not slept well in several nights and was in pain from back problems and had to wear a brace. After trying out the substandard piano and learning a replacement instrument was not available, Jarrett nearly refused to play and Brandes had to convince him to perform as the concert was scheduled to begin in just a few hours. The concert took place at the unusually late hour of 11:30 PM following an earlier opera performance. This late-night time slot was the only one the administration would make available to Brandes for a jazz concert - the first one ever at the Köln Opera House. The show was completely sold out and the venue was filled to capacity with over 1400 people at a ticket price of 4 Deutsche Marks (about $5.00). Despite the obstacles, Jarrett's performance was enthusiastically received by the audience and the subsequent recording was acclaimed by critics and became an enormous commercial success. It remains his most popular recording and continues to sell well more than 35 years after its initial release.
The performance was recorded by ECM Records engineer Martin Wieland, Studio Bauer, using a pair of Neumann
Georg Neumann
Georg Neumann GmbH , founded in 1928 and based in Berlin, Germany, is a prominent manufacturer of professional recording microphones. Their best-known products are condenser microphones for broadcast, live and music production purposes...
U-67 vacuum-tube powered condenser microphones and a Telefunken
Telefunken
Telefunken is a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft...
M-5 portable tape machine. The recording is in three parts: lasting about 26 minutes, 34 minutes and 7 minutes respectively. As it was originally programmed for vinyl LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
, the second part was split into sections labelled "IIa" and "IIb." The third part labelled "IIc" was actually the final piece, a separate encore.
A notable aspect of the concert was Jarrett's ability to produce very extensive improvised material over a vamp of one or two chords for prolonged periods of time. For instance, in Part I, he spends almost 12 minutes vamping over the chords Am7 (A minor 7) to G major, sometimes in a slow, rubato feel, and other times in a bluesy, gospel rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
feel. For about the last 6 minutes of Part I, he vamps over an A major theme. Roughly the first 8 minutes of Part II A is a vamp over a D major groove with a repeated bass vamp in the left hand, and in Part IIb, Jarrett improvises over an F# minor vamp for about the first 6 minutes.
Since the release of The Köln Concert, Jarrett had been asked by pianists, musicologists and others, to publish the music. For years he resisted such requests since, as he said, the music played was improvised "on a certain night and should go as quickly as it comes." In 1990, Jarrett finally agreed on publishing an authorized transcription but with the recommendation that every pianist intending to play the piece should use the recording itself as the final word. A new interpretation of The Köln Concert has been published in 2006 by polish pianist Tomasz Trzcinski on his Album Blue Mountains. A transcription for classical guitar
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
has also been published by Manuel Barrueco
Manuel Barrueco
Manuel Barrueco is a Cuban virtuoso classical guitarist. He was born in 1952 in Santiago de Cuba, on Cuba's southeastern shore. He has toured in the U.S., Europe and Japan, and serves on the faculty of Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland.-Biography:...
.
Track listing
- "Part I" – 26:01
- "Part IIa" – 14:54
- "Part IIb" – 18:13
- "Part IIc" – 6:56
- All compositions by Keith Jarrett
Soundtracks
- The Nicolas RoegNicolas RoegNicolas Jack Roeg, CBE, BSC is an English film director and cinematographer.-Life and career:Roeg was born in London, the son of Mabel Gertrude and Jack Nicolas Roeg...
movie Bad TimingBad TimingBad Timing is a 1980 British film directed by Nicolas Roeg, produced by Jeremy Thomas.-Plot:In Vienna, a young American woman in her twenties is rushed to the emergency room after apparently overdosing. With her is Alex Linden, an American psychiatrist teaching in Vienna...
has part of the concert in its soundtrack. - The Nanni MorettiNanni MorettiGiovanni "Nanni" Moretti is an Italian film director, producer, screenwriter and actor.-Life and work:Moretti was born in Bruneck, South Tyrol , in 1953 to parents who were teachers...
movie Caro diarioCaro diarioCaro diario is an Italian language, semi-autobiographical film in the style of a documentary directed by Nanni Moretti in 1993. Moretti also played the central character.-Plot:...
(Dear Diary) has part of the concert in its soundtrack.
External links
- [ Allmusic review]
- BBC Witness: Keith Jarrett in Cologne 2011-11-01