Keith Jarrett’s Fine “Bordeaux”
One of the pianist’s last solo concert albums ranks among his best
It’s tragic that, in the past decade, physical catastrophes have struck two of our greatest jazz masters in their prime. Pulmonary thrombosis stopped Sonny Rollins from blowing the saxophone; two strokes prevented Keith Jarrett from ever again playing the piano. At least Rollins was in peak form for an 80th birthday concert (captured on "Road Trip, Vol. 3)"; Jarrett stayed active barely past his 70th. (Both are still alive, at 89 and 72, respectively.) Lucky for the rest of us, reels and reels of tapes have been preserved, and their record labels keep churning out previously unreleased highlights.
The latest from Jarrett, Bordeaux Concert, recorded at the French city’s Auditorium Opera National in July 2016, is particularly bittersweet—exhilarating, worth close and multiple listenings, yet sorrowful to hear him still evolving and experimenting. Like many of his solo concert albums, the 13 untitled tracks here were entirely improvised. As has long been the case, his sources of inspiration are many and, in some cases, clear—Bud Powell, Lennie Tristano, Paul Bley, Debussy, among others—but the paths he plows are original, and part of the thrill comes from tracing the paths, hearing him probe the possibilities, choose the direction, follow it as far as it goes, then set out on a new path after finding the proper pivot. He does this over and over and over, without guideposts or guarantees, but always hitting a resolution—and that’s within a track. The tracks themselves vary from avant rambles to lyrical ballads to earthy blues, and more.
In his early solo concerts, Jarrett tended to rhapsodize, sometimes at extravagant length. (His best-selling, career-making Koln Concert, from 1975, is the classic case.) Around a decade ago, he started breaking up his concerts into distinctly separate movements. On Bordeaux, the pieces are shorter than usual: most last around five minutes, one less than three minutes, just one a bit more than 10. Their brevity points to this concert’s (and album’s) achievement: each track—each theme, passageway, journey—is pared down to its essentials, and the music is more intense because of it. Or, to put it in a way that underlines what’s remarkable: Jarrett is not only exploring a path that he’s inventing on the spot, he’s mining and expressing what’s essential about it—and only that. It’s art as magic, or the other way around.
The sound quality isn’t quite as rich as some of his solo concert albums, notably the 3-CD Testament, recorded (superbly) in 2008 at the Royal Festival Hall in London and Salle Pleyel in Paris; it lacks some of their sparkle and air. Why, I don’t know. The label, ECM, and the engineer, Martin Pearson, are the same. Was the miking at Bordeaux different, the piano more clamped, the concert hall drier? Don’t get me wrong: This is still a fine-sounding album; you hear every note, the color tones are vibrant, the dynamics properly shaded. It’s very satisfying. It makes me all the more curious and impatient to hear what ECM still has in the vault.
(Also available as a double vinyl LP set, not auditioned for this review)
