On May 8, 1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Keith Jarrett was born. He would go on to become one of the most influential pianists in jazz - an National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, a singular improviser, and an artist whose work spans solo concerts, classical recordings, and collaborations with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd, and Miles Davis. His 1975 album, The Köln Concert, remains the best-selling solo piano record in jazz history. His longstanding trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette was renowned for their unparalleled, "telepathic" interplay.
Jarrett is known not just for what he plays, but for how he plays and for his precision, his intensity, and his refusal to tolerate distraction. A cough in the audience can stop a performance. To watch him at the piano is to witness something closer to a ritual than a concert.
He has described that experience as a kind of surrender. Even a kind of drowning. When he spoke with my father, Ben Sidran, in the 1980s, he tried to put words to the state he’s searching for when he plays.
“ Well put it this way: all through each day, every day, I am aware of that place,” he said. “It's like a place, a state. And I would say that it's the only state from which to make music of any value to you or anyone else.”
For Jarrett, what matters isn’t whether the music succeeds on its own terms. It’s whether he reached that state at all.
“ Even in a concert where if I listen to it later I don't like it - and maybe no one liked it - if I was in the state, if I remember that I was in the state at the time of playing, then it doesn't matter to me whether the music sounds the way it does or not,” he explained.
That idea extends to how he understands influence.
“Musicians will ask me what music influenced you… I'm influenced by the spirit behind some music, but I'm not influenced by the notes. The notes don't influence me,” he said.
And it shapes his view of what music is supposed to do.
“ But that's where the beauty is. I mean, beauty walks a razor's edge. Bob Dylan told us that. I guess I could say music means the presence of possibility… what it should do at its most potent is it should make a listener question himself,” he explained.
A presence. A state. A kind of edge between control and surrender. That’s where the music lives. And while the music may have us questioning ourselves, there is no doubt that today is Keith Jarrett’s birthday.
Happy birthday Keith Jarrett.
