Rio (ECM)
Keith Jarrett
Released November 4, 2011
Jazzwise Top 10 Releases of 2011
DownBeat Five-Star Review
JazzTimes Top 10 Albums of 2011
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2011
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4gjkWoNSO7OJY3XzYjiGfT?si=WYnK9qpSRim05ayQ0dV-OA
About:
Almost exactly
forty years ago, Keith Jarrett’s association with ECM began with the recording
of a solo piano album. “Facing You” (1971) was soon followed by the initiation
of the solo concerts, evenings of piano improvisations, documented now on a
range of influential live recordings which include “Solo Concerts (Bremen-Lausanne)”,
“The Köln Concert”, “Sun Bear Concerts”, “Concerts (Bregenz-München”), “Dark
Intervals”, “Paris Concert”, “Vienna Concert”, “La Scala”, “Radiance”, “The
Carnegie Hall Concert” and “Testament, Paris-London”. The span of music
addressed on these albums is vast, but they share a common genesis in
improvisation, as well as a most remarkable artistic consistency. If it is no
longer uncommon for improvisers to fill an evening’s music-making alone,
Jarrett remains unrivalled in his capacity to uncover new forms in the moment:
the concept of ‘spontaneous composition’ is more than an ideal here.
Latest in the series of ongoing solo concert recordings is “Rio”. Jarrett had
played in Brazil only once before, more than two decades ago, and said, before
his South American concerts, that he felt he had “unfinished business” there:
“I really had no idea what I meant, but this concert is it. Everything I played
in Rio was improvised, and there is no way that I could have gotten to this
particular musical place a second time, or in a different country: not even in
a different hall or with a different audience, or on a different night.”
“Rio” documents the entire spontaneous concert at the Theatro Municipal, Rio de
Janeiro on April 9, 2011. The music that emerges, on this instance, has an
intensely lyrical core, reflected in the fifteen short pieces that make up the
concert. There is an intimate quality, too, which draws the listener
toward it, from the first moments. Jarrett feels the concert was one of his
best: “jazzy, serious, sweet, playful, warm, economical, energetic, passionate,
and connected with the Brazilian culture in a unique way. The sound in the hall
was excellent and so was the enthusiastic audience.”
The Rio concert was the second show in a short South American tour which also
included performances in Sao Paolo and Buenos Aires. Jarrett has always
rationed his solo appearances; there have been just seven so far in 2011.
Track Listing:
Disc 1
1. Rio, Pt. 1 (Keith Jarrett) 8:40
2. Rio, Pt. 2 (Keith Jarrett) 6:52
3. Rio, Pt. 3 (Keith Jarrett) 6:00
4. Rio, Pt. 4 (Keith Jarrett) 4:13
5. Rio, Pt. 5 (Keith Jarrett) 6:25
6. Rio, Pt. 6 (Keith Jarrett) 7:00
Disc 2
1. Rio, Pt. 7 (Keith Jarrett) 7:28
2. Rio, Pt. 8 (Keith Jarrett) 4:58
3. Rio, Pt. 9 (Keith Jarrett) 5:02
4. Rio, Pt. 10 (Keith Jarrett) 5:01
5. Rio, Pt. 11 (Keith Jarrett) 3:20
6. Rio, Pt. 12 (Keith Jarrett) 6:09
7. Rio, Pt. 13 (Keith Jarrett) 7:03
8. Rio, Pt. 14 (Keith Jarrett) 5:40
9. Rio, Pt. 15 (Keith Jarrett) 6:34
Personnel:
Keith Jarrett: piano
Recorded live April 9, 2011, at Theatro Municipal, Rio de Janeiro
Producer: Keith Jarrett
Executive-Producer: Manfred Eicher
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Rio Concert Produced by Augusto Tapia, Guillermo Malbrán, Myriam Dauelsberg, Steffen Dauelsberg
Cover: Mayo Bucher
Layout: Sascha Kleis
Photography by Daniela Yohannes
Review:
Is this Keith Jarrett’s finest solo recording to date? It could well be. Recorded in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year, it has been rush released by ECM simply because Jarrett and ECM (Manfred Eicher) believe it to be, and having lived with this music for a few weeks now, it gets harder to disagree with every listening. This is Jarrett spinning spontaneously conceived melodies effortlessly and actually weaving them into forms that sound like a well known standard whose title you can’t quite remember. This remarkable feat is achieved a few times on the recording, although it doesn’t start off like that. Beginning with a stark, bi-tonal improvisation that’s rather like a cold plunge after a sauna, this bracing opening gives way to some of Jarrett’s most magic music making on record. On it, he assumes the storyteller’s mantle. There is an arc to each of this two-CD set, representing the first and second half of the concert, and on it something of the Brazilian culture seems to creep into the second CD as it progresses, the crowd love it, it is compulsive listening, and you just have to keep returning to it, not one track in isolation but a whole CD at a time. Marvellous stuff.
Stuart Nicholson (Jazzwise)
