A paean to Keith Jarrett
On January 24, 1975, 29-year-old pianist Keith Jarrett was having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. He arrived at the Köln Opera House in Cologne, Germany after driving directly from a gig in Lausanne, Switzerland the previous night, a seven-to-eight hour journey in a cramped Renault 4. He and ECM Records producer Manfred Eicher hadn’t slept in over 24 hours and Jarrett was dealing with back pain. The show was a last minute addition to an 11-date tour of Europe, promoted by an industrious 17-year-old concert producer named Vera Brandes.
What awaited him at the venue was the wrong instrument: a baby grand instead of the much larger Bösendorfer 290 Imperial concert grand piano he had requested. It was out of tune with broken black keys in the middle and pedals that didn’t work properly. Jarrett said it “sounded like a very poor imitation of a harpsichord.” Brandes tried to bring in a replacement from elsewhere but the potential danger of permanently damaging a concert piano by transporting it during a driving rainstorm was too risky.
After almost cancelling the sold-out 1,400 capacity show, Jarrett only decided to go through with it because the recording equipment was already set up. Might as well make a tape of it for themselves. They went to dinner and the struggle continued:
