Music Monday: Part IIc

Who names a piece of music “Part IIc”? I’ll tell you who: Keith Jarrett, pianist extraordinaire. Keith is a piano prodigy who plays jazz, classical, and… let’s just say there’s not much he can’t play. One thing he is particularly known for is improvisation. He’ll perform concerts where he spends an hour playing whatever comes into his head at that moment. And when your head is full of musical awesomeness, the stuff that comes out on-the-fly tends to be the awesome-sauce of musical genius.

In 1975, Keith Jarrett performed a concert in the German city of Köln (AKA Cologne), that has passed into music history as “The Köln Concert” (I kid you not). This concert consisted of two parts, named Part 1 and Part 2, probably because the concert was completely improvised, so Keith had no idea what the pieces were going to sound like, let alone what they were going to be called, until he sat at the piano and started playing.

By all accounts, the concert should have been a disaster. Keith was supposed to perform on a Bösendorfer imperial grand piano, however there was a last-minute mix up and he ended up with a Bösendorfer baby grand that was usually only used for practice–not performance. They didn’t have time to fix the error, so they tuned and tweaked the lesser piano as best they could. But Keith wasn’t happy with it, and had to adjust his playing style to make up for the instrument’s deficiencies.

On top of all this Keith was tired, having driven from Zurich, Switzerland where he had been giving concerts. He hadn’t slept well the previous few nights, and was suffering with back pain. The only time available for the concert was at 11:30 pm following an opera that was playing in the same venue. He nearly didn’t play, but after much persuasion from the 17-year-old concert organizer, he conceded and gave what ended up being one of his most famous, and critically acclaimed performances.

Here are links to Spotify and Amazon for the final part of the concert, Part IIc. It’s actually his “encore” piece, and it lasts about six minutes. Unlike the rest of the concert, but consistent with Keith’s standard practice for encores, it’s based on a pre-existing tune. The arrangement, however, is totally Keith Jarrett’s, and completely made up on the spot.

And Keith was having a bad day.