Keith Jarrett – Bordeaux Concert 2LP

Description

Bordeaux Concert is a special document from Keith Jarrett’s last European tour. Each of Jarrett’s 2016 solo piano concerts had its own strikingly distinct character, and in Bordeaux the lyrical impulse is to the fore. In the course of this improvised suite, many quiet discoveries are made, and there is a touching freshness to the music as a whole, a feeling of intimate communication. Reviewing the July 2016 performance, the French press spoke of hints of the Köln Concert and Bremen-Lausanne in the flow of things, and extended sections of Bordeaux are beguilingly beautiful. Tender songs are pulled from the air, “rousing a community of listening at the edge of silence”, as Le Monde put it, “an awareness of time out from the noise and weariness of the world.
Concert review excerpts from French newspaper ‘Le Monde’:
“An artist (…) who plays what he has never played, what nobody has ever dared to play (…), what nobody will ever play again.
In Bordeaux, thirteen untitled improvised pieces, n° 1, n° 2, n° 3, etc. Gallopings, chases, frenzy of the unconscious, a lot of left hand, oriental modes, rumblings, a small march converted into R’n’B, and suddenly, a very unexpected final note. Then, games of silences, breaths of the Köln Concert (or rather the one in Bremen) for whoever wants, and suddenly at the fourth piece, ovation. He has touched something in us, but what?
Eighth piece, an old blues on three chords in the rules, rough, raging, joyful, with a relentless left hand, but like dragging a boogie rhythm without the last note. Ovation. (…) Symphonic allusions, sketches of songs, murmurs, delicacies… Miniatures.
(…) He pretends, by the music itself, to arouse a community of listening, on the edge of silence, the conscience of a time out of the noise and the fatigues of the world. (…) He offers the exception of an exercise of meditation in front of 1453 people.
Otherwise, alone in Oxford (New Jersey), at night in his studio, just past the small lake and the forest, at the end of a tiny path, Keith Jarrett improvises at leisure. But what counts for him is to indulge sometimes in the most personal of meditations, on the edge of not knowing, in public.
(…) He plays alone with this non-knowledge of which Nietzsche, Bataille or the oriental thoughts speak. However, his memories – classical, jazz, country, experiments – are unlimited. Sometimes, by the grace of a place, of a god, go figure, of an equation of the bizarre, of the moment come, an auditorium, here or there, takes off.”