Overcoming Adversity — Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concerto in 1975
Emerson Curley serves as a registered nurse with the University of Maryland Medical Center. A music aficionado, Emerson Curley enjoys everything from opera to jazz and is a particular fan of the work of John Coltrane and Keith Jarrett.
A jazz luminary who emerged in the early 1970s, the pianist Keith Jarrett was at home in the classical world of Bach as in the realm of bebop and the modal jazz traditions pioneered by Bill Evans. Known as a perfectionist, Jarrett demanded a high level of audience participation and at times interrupted his performance and walked off the stage when audience members distracted him.
Given this perfectionist tendency, one particular episode in Jarrett’s career is particularly revealing. On January 24th, 1975, Keith Jarrett was set to play Cologne’s historic opera house before 1,300 attendees.
The organizer of the Koln concert, Vera Brandes, was only 17 and had arranged the use of a concert grand piano, the Bosendorfer 290 Imperial, as Jarrett had requested. Unfortunately, the opera house staff misunderstood and procured a Bosendorfer baby grand, a much smaller instrument that happened to be out of tune and was only used for opera rehearsals.
Suffering from insomnia and back pain, Jarrett was in poor shape and decided to cancel the concert. Somehow Brandes refused to allow this to happen and ultimately technicians brought the baby grand into something approaching correct tuning, though with weak bass and malfunctioning sustain pedals.
Wearing a back brace, Jarrett salvaged the night with an electrifying and exploratory performance that featured him compensating for the piano’s subpar sound with insistent left-hand ostinato rhythms. Featuring 26 and 48-minute improvisations, the performance was recorded and has gone down in jazz history as one of the most remarkable solo concerts of all time.
