'Creation' features music selected by Keith Jarrett from his improvised solo concerts recorded in 2014 in Japan, Canada, and Europe. Where in the past the solo documentation has shown the improvisational process unfolding over the course of a single evening, this time Jarrett zeroes in on the most revelatory moments from six concerts in Tokyo, Toronto, Paris and Rome and shapes a new dramaturgy from the intuitive sequencing of the material. With this rewarding departure, Keith Jarrett gives us here the most up-to-the minute account of his spontaneously created music. (Creation is one of two releases issued on May 8th, Keith Jarrett’s 70th birthday, the second album being an ECM New Series recording of the pianist playing concertos of Samuel Barber and Béla Bartok).
Tracklist:
1 Part I 8:17
2 Part II 7:40
3 Part III 6:59
4 Part IV 7:33
5 Part V 7:13
6 Part VI 9:25
7 Part VII 8:17
8 Part VIII 8:36
9 Part IX 8:30
Piano, Music By, Producer – Keith Jarrett
BACKGROUND
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 (as on The Köln Concert, Paris Concert, Vienna Concert, Rio etc.) or several evenings (Bremen-Lausanne, Sun Bear Concerts, Testament etc.) Creation – 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.”
Three of the improvised pieces sequenced here – Part IV, Part VII and Part VIII – are from a concert Jarrett gave at Rome’s Auditorium Parco della Musica on July 11, 2014.
