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63 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
About that Applause, September 27, 2006
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.
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75 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What Koln was pointing toward 31 years ago, September 27, 2006
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.......
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Talent ripened, dreams realized, October 4, 2006
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.
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