Even as swashbuckling a sonic adventurer as Cultureberg will admit under minimal pressure and few drinks that the many facetedjewelthat is jazz music can remain A Challenge. This is part of its attraction. I'm not partial to Jazz that tastes of creme de menthe and buttermilk, or Jazz that smells of pipe tobacco and Werther Originals, the faint wiff of patchouli oil and the tinkle of cymbals and exotic percussion will find favour on the Cultureberg Plinth. Those Classic Albums of Stature which smell of the sweat of effort and fear, though, are the most welcome of all.
The listener loves The Challenge. Even a recent benchmark like Kamasi Washington's The Epic, approachable as it is, is clothed in the waxed jacket and walking boots of its triple album format. With all due respect, people listen Because it is there. It has weight.
Recently I was leafing through the Jazz shelves of The Wall of Sound in the Disc-o-vault. I took out Cecil Taylor's Live in Bologna, bought maybe a decade ago and never listened to (not a unique state of affairs, sadly), and took it through to The Jungle Room for a spin. I have yet to have been in the right frame of mind. Bulding up to it. Does this ring any cymbals?
So, the well balanced reader may ask, what is a good entry into this sphere of challenge and trepidation, of stature and hipness? Cultureberg', when as open as the early morn dew and as green as the grass on which it glistened, discovered Keith Jarrett, and this week read his biography, by former Nucleus fusioneer Ian Carr, published in 1989. It is a good read and recomended to those somewhat jaded by mid atlantic rockbiogery. Mr Carr is particularly readable describing the recorded legacy, avoiding both the technical disassemblies of many sleevenotes and the hyperbole of aforementioned hackery. It will, and did (cliche alert!) send you back to the music.
As a callow youth Little Ant lent me a copy of Jarrett's mid 70's album Arbour Zena, where Jan Gabarek's saxophone burst through the clouds like sun, like rain, and Charlie Haden's bass anchored the orchestra somewhere between the dive and the conservatoire. Above all this, Jarretts piano strode between the accessible and the sublime, neither elitist nor diluted. Bought and sold, mate. I listened to it again a few weeks ago for the first time in maybe three decades and every twist and turn was still locked in the synapses. It is such a marvelous and Proustian work I resist recomending it lest memory and sentiment are tainting my judgement, thoug really, who gives a flying ostinato as long as it hits the spot?
Mr Carr correctly identifies that Mr Jarrett appeals to both goatee strokers and sun-dried tomato and porcini mushroom spotify users. He seems to have been both denied a place in The Pantheon and achieved significant market penetration; the Koln Concert, the halfway point between the aforementioned Mr Taylor and Windham Hill, had sold a million and a half copies by the time of the books publication, which is quite some going for a double album of solo piano improvisations. What he has in common with The Downtown Canon (Thank you, Mr Becker) is a dgree of Challenge residing in the variety, breadth and garrolousness of his work. There are solo improvisations and solo classical recitals, trios, quartets, original compositions and investigations of the standards, pieces for orchestra, organ and drum duets, niaive flute pieces, some cymbals and some exotic percussion. He not only covers the waterfront, he pulls on his boots and is off up the mountain, because it is there.
This immense variety and productivity contributes to The Challenge, but is leavened by the aformentioned, somewhat unique, ability to straddle abrasive awkwardness and benign spirituality; particular favourites like Mysteries and Death and the Flower (both on Impulse with his american quarted featuring Paul Motian, Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden) are both challenging and inclusive in a way some Jazz just isn't. (Mr Carr's biography describes Mr Jarrett's parents' separation at aged eleven and his absorption in piano at that point, and one could get all psychodynamic here; rest assured, this won't happen).
I will leave the final word to Mr Jarrett who in the manner of 70's jazzers loves the gnomic non-sequiter. "I believe that a truly valuable artist must be an artist who realises the impossibility of his task - and then continues to do it." If you dig that quote, it seems to me you are prepared to take on The Challenge. If you think the quote is hokey, you are happy to settle for fuctionality. The Classics of The Downtown Canon have a confrontational edge. One may opine that Kind of Blue, for all its unimpeachable quality, can also function as vinyl vymura, but one cannot say that for Bitches Brew or A Love Supreme, or anything by Monk, Mingus or Dolphy. All these giants are taking on The Challenge - you can hear it - and Mr Jarrett is amongst their number. He says that nearly all his compositions could be called Hymn or Prayer, and cocking an ear to any of his records will make you recognise the accuracy of this comment, so cock an ear to this track, Prayer, from Death and the Flower...
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