Hamburg ’72 (ECM)
Keith Jarrett / Charlie Haden / Paul Motian
Released November 21, 2014
DownBeat Five-Star Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=TllAxNGwszs
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/358vmFbz8u2bqlOhLpePD9?si=pYSHUqPRT2SYg__Z3ZawSg
About:
The Keith Jarrett Trio, playing live at NDR Funkhaus, Hamburg in July 1972. The trio with Haden and Motian was Jarrett’s first great band, his choice of players a masterstroke. Charlie and Paul hadn’t worked together until Jarrett brought them into each other’s orbit in 1966. With the bassist who had learned his craft in Ornette Coleman’s band, and the drummer from Bill Evans’s ground-breaking trio, Jarrett was able to explore the broadest scope of modern jazz, from poetic balladry to hard-swinging time-playing to ferocious and fiery free music. The improvisation heard in the Hamburg concert includes episodes with Keith on soprano sax and flute as well as piano, while Motian expands the role of percussion in the music, developing the supple, elastic, supremely unpredictable vocabulary that would subsequently become such a crucial part of both Jarrett’s groups and Paul’s own. The interaction between the three musicians is uncanny throughout, reaching a peak in an emotion-drenched performance of Charlie Haden’s “Song for Che” (this is Jarrett’s only recording of a piece that has become a new jazz classic). But from the first notes of “Rainbow”, with its radiant piano, it is clear that something special is happening here.
The German radio
concert from which this album is drawn was part of a tour – the first European
tour for this trio – organised by ECM. Manfred Eicher returned to the original
analog sources, remixing the music recorded by NDR engineer Hans-Henirich
Breitkreuz for this edition in Oslo in July 2014, together with Jan Erik
Kongshaug. (As it happened, the work took place the day after Charlie Haden’s
death.)
Haden’s importance in this music can hardly be overstated. He is such a strong,
centering presence. Jarrett plus Haden was always a special combination, of
course, as recordings from Arbour Zena to Last Dance have
eloquently shown, but for dynamic interplay between pianist and bassist the
Hamburg recording is hard to beat. Charlie highly valued this musical
association, and the way in which Jarrett would compose tunes for the strengths
of the trio members: “I think some of the greatest music made in that time
period came out of that group,” Charlie told Ethan Iverson a few years ago.
“Keith was always his own person, with original ideas as a leader. He wrote
specifically for us. I loved it. He showed up at every rehearsal and
sound-check with new music. It’s amazing when you go over a new tune at a
sound-check and can’t wait to play it that night, since it already felt like
‘you’.”
The Hamburg concert dates from the beginning of ECM’s association with Keith
Jarrett, whose solo album Facing You had been recorded the previous
November and released just three months before this show.
In the US, Keith Jarrett had begun to include saxophonist Dewey Redman in his
group music and the trio was in the process of morphing into the group
colloquially known as Jarrett’s American Quartet. Several of the Jarrett tunes
heard here, amongst them “Everything That Lives Laments” and “Piece for
Ornette”, would also find expression in the quartet repertoire. Much inspired
quartet music was ahead, including the landmark albums The Survivors’
Suite and Eyes of the Heart. But Hamburg ’72 captures the
core trio of Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian at the very apex of
its creativity.
The trio’s earlier albums were Life Between The Exit Signs (recorded
1967), Somewhere Before (1968) and The Mourning of a Star (1971).
Track Listing:
1. Rainbow (Margot Jarrett) 9:52
2. Everything That Lives Laments (Keith Jarrett) 9:44
3. Piece For Ornette (Keith Jarrett) 9:32
4. Take Me Back (Keith Jarrett) 8:07
5. Life, Dance (Keith Jarrett) 2:59
6. Song For Che (Charlie Haden) 15:08
Personnel:
Keith Jarrett: piano, flute, percussion, soprano saxophone
Charlie Haden: double bass
Paul Motian: drums, percussion
Recorded live June 14, 1972, at NDR-Workshop in Hamburg
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Radio producer: Michael Naura
Recording engineer: Hans-Heinrich Breitkreuz
Remixed July 12, 2014 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher
Design: Sascha Kleis
Photography by Johannes Anders
Review:
This landmark 1972 concert recording is a glimpse into a rare night when magic occurred, when gifted players performed brilliantly as individuals and as a collective improvising unit. Paul Motian, pre-Conception Vessel, is boldly creative and exploratory; Charlie Haden’s enveloping tone and oceanic pulse mesmerize; Keith Jarrett, on piano, percussion and soprano saxophone, is almost holy in the ingenuity and clarity of his ideas. In this one-night performance captured by German radio, the trio played material old and new, from “Everything That Lives Laments,” from The Mourning Of A Star, to “Rainbow,” which would appear four years later on Byablue, to Haden’s “Song For Che,” heard on his 1969 release, Liberation Music Orchestra. This trio goes where the spirit leads, and the spirit is generous, indeed. From Jarrett’s wizard-like perambulations and Motian’s spirited and riveting cymbal and drum work to Haden’s sonic and emotional depth, Hamburg ’72 is a luminous recording that reveals all the magic and majesty at play between these remarkable musicians. On “Piece For Ornette,” Jarrett blows soprano saxophone as Motian and Haden race below him, his incendiary squalls keened to a devilish pitch. After the pastoral funk pacing of “Take Me Back,” the trio performs Jarrett’s “Life, Dance,” a bassand-drums duet with piano accompaniment that resonates wonderfully via Motian’s shimmering ride cymbal and Haden’s conversational, woody bass enunciations. Finally, a 15-minute “Song For Che” is so full of lament, lyricism, Quixote-like drum figures, chattering hand percussion and an articulate, wide-ranging bass solo, that when it comes to a close the audience erupts in ecstatic applause. You will, too.
Ken Micallef (DownBeat)
