Customer Reviews

Carnegie Hall Concert

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

When my son and I walked out of Carnegie Hall on September 26, 2005, we both knew that we had seen something that would eventually be shared with the world on a CD (or 2). I'm thrilled to hear this concert again exactly one year later, and the applause brings me right back to our seats high up in the balcony of that magical room. Just as important as the clapping and screaming at the end of each section is the ABSOLUTE audience silence right before and during the music. Please note how the sense of perfect silent attention (and sometimes tension) in that sold-out hall comes through as well as the release between pieces. The piano was unamplified, so no one even dared to shift his or her weight while he was playing. So imagine the joy and freedom of being able to stand and shout and stomp your feet between the five encores.

People more knowledgable than me will be writing about this music for years, but I just want to comment on the recording as someone who was present at its creation. ECM could not have done a better job at capturing this night. I personally think that no one better captures the sound of a solo piano, and in this case they have lived up to their high standards. Breaking the two CDs right where Keith took his intermission again emphasizes this as a record of one night's performance. Each CD needs to be listened to in sequence, at a sitting. The first five parts before the intermission would stand as a record on their own (especially part five with its bass and depth), but when you hear the first two parts on disc two, you know you're in the presence of something totally new (yet somehow familiar). Maybe I'm prejudiced (after all, two of those clapping hands being immortalized are mine), but I think this is easily going to surpass Köln as Keith Jarrett's signature recording.

I don't know if it is possible to get too esoteric about Keith Jarrett, but here goes. This is the finest solo recording of his career, and in many ways, both technically and thematically, this is what he was pointing toward with The Koln Concert 31 years ago. In the thinking of Martin Heidegger, Heidegger writes about clearing the ground, not so that Truth and Being can stand there naked in front of you, but so that that very act of preparation might ready you for Truth and Being to lean over and take you into its confidence, appropriate you, if you will, for the Grounding of Being itself.
Haven't lost you, have I? Well, you might say that what Koln first suggested by not explicitly stating is articulated more silently now than at any point in Jarrett's career. As Miles pointed out, it's not the notes, but the silences they embrace. The emrace here is as warm and passionate as you hear from any musician in your life. You will recognize moments from Sun Bear, from Bremen Lausanne, The Melody of the Night, Deer's Head Inn, all the way thru to Radiance in the course of these 10 parts and 5 encores. The basic concert is two 30+ minute sets with another 30 minutes of extraordinary encores that will get you to stop the car and get out and applaud, or jump on the coffee table and cheer. It is as beautifully recorded as anything ECM has ever done. The silences are deep, his growling is at an all time minimum, and the applause is so heartily spontaneous that you will know that this is an exceptional CD, and maybe one of the greatest pieces in improvisational music ever.
Technically since Koln, Jarrett's left hand has found its own life and never so much as here. I am amazed at how fluid, how pointillist, how bastract and how impressionist his hands draw colours and lines, and the piano responds as a willing lover to Jarrett's intrepid touch. That must be some kinda piano, as a German friend of mine quipped.
And unlike some of his recordings, which have evidenced the ordeal as much as the message, this one flows from someplace very deep in this man's soul, without impediment. If you were to buy only 1 CD this year, it should be this one. Jarrett has been on his way to this epoch all of his life, and you should see how well he has arrived. Wonder where he's off to next.......

Like many of the first reviewers here, I was at the Carnegie Hall concert, and I agree that it was a special evening. It's a welcome opportunity to hear this performance on CD a year later, after memory has dropped the details of the experience into forgotten corners. Jarrett that night was playing the role of Beloved Master, entertaining and enthralling those who made the pilgrimage. After all the solo concerts played in Tokyo, Paris and Koln, he came home and played American standards in an American venue. The urgency of the applause and the anticipation of the silences show an appreciation that go beyond mere listening. "Carnegie Hall" was a moment when magic took flight -- when everyone acknowledged the return of the master, now secure in his reputation and handing out sonic miracles.

This CD took about three close listenings over two days to get the whole thing digested. It is by turns elaborate, generous, challenging, melodic and angular. It's like visiting a strange new/old city and finding the familiar and the exciting around every corner. The more abstract pieces lay aside conventional rules and compel the listener to examine the discrete fragments and then fit the pieces together (as challenging to hear as it was for Jarrett to play, I think). The sweeter pieces are sentimental with the brakes applied: melancholic, hopeful and inspired. And what would any Jarrett concert be without his gospel-inflected boogie, accompanied with insistent foot stomps?

The sound quality of this CD surpasses other Jarrett recordings (except perhaps "Radiance," made not too long before "Carnegie Hall."). It's difficult to award a full five stars merely because it was a greatly anticipated concert. I still prefer things like "Koln Concert" and "Bremen/Lausanne" because those were Jarrett at his pioneering best, with everything still ahead of him. Because the shorter, more abstract work inaugurated on "Radiance" and cemented at Carnegie Hall is still so fresh in the mind, there needs to be some time to reflect. In a way, this concert didn't reveal any new sounds to me so much as reinvent thirty years' worth of accumulated virtuosity. It was the sound of the American heartland drawn on a new canvas. It was Jarrett's talent ripened and his dreams realized.

"Keith Jarrett-First North American Solo Concert in 10 years" read the ad. He is easily one of my favorite musicians. So I dropped everything and bought the ticket. I knew he was battling chronic fatigue syndrome when he recorded Melody At Night With You. My expectations were tempered with the understanding he may not be up to playing a long set. He walked out to thunderous applause. He then began a concert I'll remember for the rest of my life.

I was almost afraid to listen to the CD because I was afraid I remembered that night better than it was. This CD proves it wasn't a mirage.
It really was that good.

The audience was about as loving as they could be. One person could barely walk from his own pain but he flew in from Kansas City to see this. There wasn't a person I could see that took this night for granted. We listened as attentively as you would your best friend. We stood and cheered him to 5 encores.

I think Keith has grown in leaps and bounds beyond Koln. Koln was a landmark record at the time because there was really nothing else like it.

If you don't have the Koln concert, it's a treasure for any collection. Bremen/Lausanne, Vienna Concert and La Scala are also stunning.
If you have Koln already, this will be a wild surprise.

Carnegie Hall Concert is a masterpiece.

When you hear the heartbreakingly beautiful Part III
or his goodnight piece-Time On My Hands,
you will fight back tears as we did,
smile and remember how beautiful music can really be.

A very magical night saved for you.

-EveningOcean CD "The Attraction" Evening Ocean com

I was in the audience the night of this recording and I remember waiting in the lobby with hundreds of others, and even then there was a great vibe of anticipation and excitement among the crowd. And once the music started, that feeling grew stronger and stronger as the night went on. This was one event where the performer and audience were perfectly in tune with each other, and to have this event documented on cd brings back those strong feelings. Beautifully recorded by ECM as always and extraordinary playing by Keith. I have seen him many,many times, going back to his quartet days, 1973, being the first time, and he is always on, but this night to me was the performance of a lifetime. I loved hearing the audience response between songs, lending credence to the performer/audience interplay; but of course I was there that night. I don't know how others who weren't present will respond. But on a purely musical level, this is timeless music,and most certainly the album of the year.

There are many ways I have thought of Keith Jarrett `s work in the years I have been listening to it. Sometimes my response has not been overly enthusiastic, but with the passage of time and life experience what I see is an artist who although he can, in turns, seem remote, cranky, difficult or egotistical has given a history of work that lays the whole human package out there. I find this to be key to the whole idea of risking things in life. You'll never know where something goes if you don't try it. The end result of years of listening and re-listening for me is that this man's body of work is on my list of those things that I would find essential were I to find myself on a desert island (that and a lifetime supply of CD player batteries).
Let's take this latest offering of spontaneous improvisation. Set in September of 2005, the ECM packaging is seriously dark . It features an almost forbidding image of Jarrett, dressed all in black, bent almost gnome like in one of his characteristic mid-phrase contortions at the keyboard. One might think from seeing this that this is going to be in the spirit perhaps of the earlier "Dark Intervals" recording. Not so. Even the surface of this concert as shown in its' packaged appearance tells us in the end to not be taken in by a first impression. What I found here in this 110 minutes of give and take between this artist and his audience is a performance which, by the time it arrives at its' tumultuous end, is suffused with light, grace and a most amazing graciousness. In short, it left tears in my eyes and my jaw on the floor.
Exposure to Mr. Jarrett's skill is a continuing lesson in the suspending the negativity of disbelief. I cannot say that I have loved every moment of every piece I have listened to of his, especially at times the solo concert pieces. However, I have come to believe that that is not the point. I have to wonder if he found immense satisfaction in every moment if he would have kept searching for as long as he has for the treasure that this sort of performance risks all to bring out. I mean, if it's all perfect, why bother?
The payoff has once again arrived. This is a sublimely produced recording. ECM recording values are among the best on the planet, but here the sound production is flawless. The interaction between Jarrett and the audience by the time the five encores are done is indicative of genuineness and generosity not often heard in our entertainment crazed culture. This indeed was the generosity I have heard spoken of in reference to the art form of jazz at its finest.
I will not comment on each and every section of this CD. I would just say, avail yourself of it, put the discs in the player, take the two hours required, sit down, and open your mind and ears. Allow yourself to, as he comments between encores "just keep feeling things."
I read somewhere years ago of Thomas Mann having written to Gustav Mahler that his talent and skill as a composer were truly of a sacred nature. This listener was again, as many times before left with this sense from this offering. One can only say "Bravo, Maestro, bravo!". Paint our hearts red-again and again and again...................................................

In this past Sunday's NY Times, Keith Jarrett said that he felt his creative energy during this concert was at the level he had not experienced since the classic Koln Concert. Having been disappointed by Radiance, his previous solo work, I was reserving judgement and now, Mr. Jarrett's comparison can be validated.

Carnegie Hall, in some ways, surpasses the Koln Concert in that the more evolved Jarrett has not only returned to tonality but is able to incorporate both technical and harmonic improvisation at a level that maybe no one else is capable of. The second disc in the set rolls out gospel, blues, straight-ahead jazz and ballads that will take you back to Koln without the retro/nostalgic elements. This is one of the two best recordings Keith Jarrett has ever made and there's no need to go into a detailed account of the music. I do have to agree with the previous reviewer about the applause-too, too much when you're not there.

One of the (exceptionally generous) five encores on this release is entitled "The Good America". It's a warm, deceptively simple, big-hearted, broadly smiling piece of music, confident, optimistic, singing a song of experience, happy to make wistful, soulful journeys to and from the home key: and if it's "about" anything, it's about coming home.

Keith Jarrett in his home country, in a city pretty near his home base, playing amongst one of the most friendly, welcoming audiences he may have ever encountered.

And, as I hear it, the audience is crucial to this concert - their role is properly acknowledged, and audible throughout - the applause contribution to this double-album has been estimated around 19 minutes.

But please, please, don't let this put you off (sadly some have already been rubbed up the wrong way by it).

I suspect that Jarrett, also the recording producer on this piece, made a deliberate decision not to edit out the audience contribution: to underline that the music erupting from his hands and fingers and the gentle giant of a piano in Carnegie Hall - this wonderful music (and if there was a plural for it I'd say "musics") - came in to being thanks to the unique chemistry between the performer and audience, in that place, on that night, in New York City, September 26th 2005.

(And let's not forget how raw a month September is for New Yorkers, and how simply great it must have been to be out at that concert that night celebrating the good things of life).

In a lovely moment of jest, as Jarrett returns for his fourth encore (and, yes, still one more to go after that!), he idly taps out a single note, to which a woman, quick as a flash, shouts out, "thank you!".

Everyone gets it, and more applause follows, this time for the lady who wisecracked: such is the generosity and great good humour of this crowd they are even applauding themselves by the end.

And to me this whole musical experience articulates so well what is and great about "The Good America".

No one knew what was going to happen that night.
A man appears out of the shadows and begins making primal music.
The response is enthusiastic, warm, no sense of this strange miraculous stuff being over analysed...The response is from the heart.
So he continues...He surges forwards and upwards.
The night goes on.
More music follows - sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, sometimes probing, sometimes quietly accepting, sometimes in red, the colour of the human heart (vide "Paint My Heart Red", with its echoes of a tune on "Facing You" from the early 70s) and sometimes raucous blue; sometimes then with tunes and sometimes with ecstatic, "no-tunes".

This is an evening about the individual doing his thing of an evening, being given the space and the time to do what is so much HIS thing, and yet suffused with tolerance, hope, encouragement from the people who choose to spend that evening with him: the Good America.

And finally, to love. Very near the end, one lady shouts out "Keith we love you"...This could easily be dismissed as sentimentalism in the heat of the moment, but it's a cry from the heart and actually in the spirit of the moment.

If anything this concert, which really needs to be heard by you, and is best appreciated a a live concert in all senses of that word "live", is what happened when Keith really did allow himself to be loved.

Breathless ecstasy hardly describes the supreme moments of exquisite perfection present in the Keith Jarrett Carnegie Hall Concert. Keith Jarrett reaches beyond excellence and touches the divine in a spark of unequaled creativity born of an intimacy with music that defies definition on the mortal plane of existence.

This concert will take you to the heights and depths of the ecstatic experience. What you are witnessing is an intense musical revelation that will stun you into a sublime sigh of awe. Spontaneous and exciting notes fill your consciousness and invite you on a soul-shivering journey of piano perfection.

The energy moving through Keith Jarrett's body is almost overwhelming even to him and you can hear him releasing the energy through his voice now and then (mostly in True Blues) as the energy infuses every cell of his body and then moves out into the audience like an invisible light warming and enlivening the audience who responds with a thunderous applause, as if they could not hold back their appreciation for even one second more.

Keith Jarrett's "The Melody at Night, With You CD" leaves me in absolute tears because it takes me to the depths of emotions, but this concert makes my soul soar to the point where I feel I will cry for the sheer happiness of being madly in love with Keith Jarrett's piano artistry.

The Carnegie Hall Concert is completely overwhelming in the most beautiful of ways! This is the Ultimate Keith Jarrett experience!

100 Stars!

~The Rebecca Review

It is clear that Keith Jarrett has just gotten better, and better all these years. This concert is a little different than earlier concerts in some ways -- more refined, a little tighter, and the first part is brilliantly complex. But then as things go on, you start hearing the fantastic parts when he is just completely absorbed and becomes part of the music he plays -- the guy anyone who loves his music came to hear. I love it all and just can't get enough -- I think I have listened to the album 20 times now and am still finding these connections and threads that run through various pieces.

I am still getting used to this different Keith Jarrett. I think I like it as well as my favorites (Koln, Paris), but it is a bit different.

I don't know if this is useful information, just a feeling that if you like his previous work, you really need to hear this concert. If you don't know his previous stuff, get that first, love it, then get this one.