Anyone heard Keith Jarrett's new solo piano album Radiance?

Jack DeJohnette is the correct spelling of the name of the drummer of course, sorry.

There was a time I loved KJ — Sun Bear Concerts was always prohibitively expensive when I was younger, so I never got to know it. As for his other solo/improv stuff, I really enjoyed Vienna Concert, which I gather is his personal favorite. I was never a huge fan of either of his 70s groups, although the title track of (the unfortunately-titled) Personal Mountains has a pretty fantastic melody.

The thing about his standards trio was that they would rise to these ecstatic, perfect moments (not unlike his solo concerts in that sense), where Jarrett would just blow these unbelievably lyrical solos (such as The Cure's "Old Folks" or Still Live's "You, the Night and the Music") that had so much space and melody to them, it was hard not to be taken in. I haven't listened to the group in years, but they were pretty amazing.

of the 70s records with garbarek i think personal mountains and nude ants are my favourites. i haven't listened to that stuff for ages but garbarek's crystal-clear, impressionist saxophone and jarrett's at times dynamic and at times meditative piano play meld perfectly.

always loved the 70s trio with haden and motian. the quartet with redman was also ace, esp. the 3 sides live eyes of the heart. other excellent stuff: fort yawuh and treasure island.

i have maybe listened to vienna concert twice. i think after those mind-blowing solo concerts in the 70s (besides sun bear, esp. bremen, lausanne and münchen, bregenz) the newer solo stuff had to be disappointing. i mean, he wasn't as young anymore, he was groaning less, the intensity wasn't there anymore. i don't know. it's one of those cases where a musician has set a standard early on nobody not even himself could ever better. that's why i don't think that the new double cd won't be a comeback to form. though i'd like to be surprised. another thing is that i maybe have had my life dose of keith jarrett.

i have started listening to the audio bits on the german amazon and i must say that i am quite impressed. judging after those 30 second samples the closest jarrett has ever come to the spirit of the sun bear concerts. it's 17 parts but it doesn't seem too different from the long solo concerts as those could be divided in different parts as well. there often was a melodic rather short intro presenting the motif. then there came a longer part where jarrett was searching for something, often with lots of ostinatos, often going nowhere. in the course of the concert there then were very dynamic, disharmonic parts and finally a revisit of the motif, usually slowly building up and then erupting in a kind of metaphysic musical orgasm. pastoral passages could follow.

the samples i heard were rather similarly structured. melodic, meandering and disharmonic pieces following each other. like small tesserae building a large mosaic.

come on, somebody here on ilm must have listened to the whole thing!

C'mon, DeJohnette and Peacock are great.

And it's nice to hear Sun Bear get some respect, but Koln was really the high-point, right.

sorry but Köln was the sell-out. okay but very middle of the road. where is the physical effort in that streamlined concert? where is the genius?

where is the NINE OTHER LP'S????

in the box, my dear.

Würde mich sehr interessieren, alex.

Was würde Dich sehr interessieren, Matthew? Was ich über die neue CD zu sagen haben werde, wenn ich sie gehört habe oder die zehn LPs der Sun Bear Concerts?

I always liked Hymns / Spheres, the organ solos, especially the weird microtonal moments...

the only other solo thing I heard was Koln which didn't slay me, but I'm always a sucker for a 10 LP set

Nobody mentioned Rutya And Daitya, just him and DeJohnette screwing around, still my personal fave. He played a Fender Rhodes (with a wah-wah?) and acoustic piano, and flute, and they were very funky, like some of the amazing solos he played on Live Evil with Miles that previous year. It's a bit like a funky version of Facing You, each one a miniature with a quick epiphany then on to the next

Wow, that sounds awesome.

I love those early Jarrett/Peacock/DeJohnette albs - Standards 1 and 2 and particularly the matched, mostly freely improvised Changes + Changeless pair - incredibly hypnotic/intense/concentrated trio musik-making with yes, those sublime lift-off zone-moments of inspiration/telepathic communication. Since his illness, the sound+style of Jarrett's playing has changed considerably, esp. when he's w/ the trio doing standards, and nowadays I find it pretty hard to distinguish one of their later live albs from another. The recent return to free improv w/ both the trio and solo is, of course, to be admired in a artist who is sixty this year, but what I've heard so far hasn't been terribly attractive or engrossing (tho' Inside Out does contain a hilariously aggreived sleevenote by Jarrett attacking the Crouch/Burns/Marsalis account of jazz history)

I am also a big sucker for the recs w/ Haden/Motian/Redman - esp. Survivor's Suite - and miss the pop-country fun of Jarrett's best tunes (gd enough for Steely Dan to steal!), as heard on recs like the duo alb w/ Gary Burton or the sprawling Expectations, his sole alb for Columbia which again is surprisingly pop-rock groove, yknow for such a serious artiste

alex, i love yr phrase "he was groaning less" as a signifier of selling-outness and intend to use it all over, ta (there is also a gd interview w/ Jarrett abt this new alb in the current issue of the British jazz magazine Jazzwise:

http://www.jazzwise.com/magazine/060/

Listening to "Kyoto Parts I & II" from Sun Bear right now -- as I'm doing nothing on a Saturday night but pounding whiskey sours and listening to this, I can see how it could get addictive.

On the Sapporo encore now. Come to think of it, not a bad way to be spending my Saturday night, really.

alex, what's yer take on Solo Concerts: Bremen and Lausanne?

i haven't listened to those in ages, matthew. i only have them on tape i guess as my best friend at school bought the lps. those are the earliest solo concerts, i think. quite rough in places if i remember well, jarrett is really into making noise with his piano. the most experimental of his concerts. lots of groaning.

btw i got radiance last week. haven't listened to it a lot. jarrett is not breaking new ground (i have the feeling i have heard some parts of it before). often chaotic, dissonant pieces are followed by more harmonic, tuneful tracks. altogether a nice surprise after all these years.

Yeah. After having gone crazy for all his solo stuff these past few weeks (thanks to your enthusiasm, really), I bought Solo Concerts for $8 on half.com last week — I actually think it's pretty amazing, not rough at all, and experimental only in the sense that it was his first go at the solo thing. Whereas Sun Bear is extremely varied across the concerts, equal parts lyrical, textural and atonal, this one's gotta be his most consistently rhythmic, with a lot of his funky/gospel-oriented stuff, making it kind of unique in his solo catalogue. It's pretty fantastic.

Radiance I dl'd the first disc of — it sounds a lot more like etudes, and while I haven't heard much of his stuff since he had CFS, my first reaction was that it was lacking in energy compared to those early concerts. I mean, A/B-ing with Bremen or Lausanne or any of the Sun Bear concerts isn't really fair, given how consistently inspired those are and that he was thirty years younger. Still, I'll probably give it a few more spins...