The Old Country New Again: Revisiting Keith Jarrett

Back in the mid-70s I had a friend who attended the New England Conservatory, a school for future musicians of all ilks — jazz, classical, guitar, sax, orchestration, composition, etc.  My friend, Mark, was an Army brat whose father was a colonel stationed at Ft. Devens just 40 miles from Boston. He had shown great promise as a child of cultured parents who pushed him to excel in music.  He played piano; I thought he played well; and he found himself attending the Conservatory to improve his playing standards to a professional level.  I admired him more than all the friends who had come and gone in my life.

I was essentially homeless around that time, having dropped out of Groton School, and living in a tent in woods not far from the school, like some scholastic ghost locals might talk about later.  For money, I spent some time picking apples in nearby orchards, and sometimes hung out (along with another friend) with the H2A Jamaicans brought in to harvest the fruit. They would start off their seasonal journey in Maine and work their way down to lower New England, orchard by orchard, and some would go on to strip peaches in Georgia, and others would end up in South Florida cutting cane before returning back to Jamaica. We usually hung out with Heady, a father of three, who would go into Groton town once a week and send money home, buy some stouts or Red Strip at the local packie, and meet up with an acquaintance who would supply them with ganja.

At one point, I cannot recall the details, I found myself even without a tent. Mark found out about this one weekend home and invited me to crash in his dorm at the Conservatory. I slept on the floor and was snuck into the food line in the dining room.  I had the room to myself a lot of the day as Mark attended classes.  In the afternoons, he earned money tuning pianos and helping to restore old pianos. To save pocket cash, he would frequent The Top of the Hub, the spinning restaurant atop downtown Boston’s Prudential Building, which had a cheap but delicious buffet array. The ambience was languorous and the speakers emitted jazz.

The biggest thrill Mark had at that time was his gig tuning the Steinway at Symphony Hall, just up the road from the Conservatory.  He was especially excited one time getting to be the tuner who had worked on the piano at the Jazz Workshop  just prior to one of Keith Jarrett’s concerts there in 1974, with Dewey Redman, Paul Motian and Charlie Haden, with whom he would jam regularly. Mark was a huge Jarrett fan.  And I would learn to hear the nuances and technical prowess of Jarrett’s playing, with Mark signaling as we listened to his records on special moments of seeming genius. My first impression of Jarrett was his store of energy and life; this guy was not morose but transforming his blues into abstract dances that were pleasant to listen to, interesting patterns and rhythms, and affirmative.

The one time I saw Jarrett in concert live was in Istanbul in 1993.  I’d moved there to teach English to Turkish kids who often didn’t want to learn English.  Especially from Americans.  I got that.  I was teacher living in a building with other foreign teachers, Brits and Aussies almost exclusively, listening to them carp and carry on and backstab each other, but jolly up  with each other at dinner chowing down a curry cooked by Bill, a legend-in-his-own-mind from Yorkshire, all of whom, I leaned later, would turn on me together when I was out of the room. When Jarrett came to Istanbul in 1993 he played solo at the Cemal Resit Rey Concert Hall.  I attended the concert with Bill.  It was a lot of fun listening to the musical improvisation most jazz pianists could only fantasize about. But it was also fucking annoying having Keith stop at times and get up and walk away from the piano in ponderment or keening to hear how he would proceed or some secret genius business. Who the fuck knows? But since he was solo, when did that kind of thing, everything stopped.  And we all knew it was too early for the standing ovation, so we kind of looked at each other and kind of didn’t.

Back then I was listening to Belonging a lot. I loved Spiral Dance and Long As You Are Living Yours and The Windup. He was playing with top notchers: Jan Gabarek, Palle Danielsson, and Jin Christenson.  Lots of life.  I also loved listening to the legendary Köln Concert.  But I was also partial to the classical arrangements of the three-song Arbour Zena, especially Solara March (Dedicated to Pablo Casals and the Sun). But even then, those musical wonders were about two decades old.  Jarrett had gone on to new feats and heights.

Jarrett was part of a most exhilarating period of my life, homelessness mixed with high culture, living with different friends at different times in different homes in Groton, Back Bay, Dorchester, Concord, NH. Peterboro, NH, Hollywood, West Palm Beach, and the Northampton VA Hospital.  I fell into jazz, I knew by heart the blues, knew how to exchange food stamps for cash for smokes and booze. Slept out in a blizzard, Lived in a tent. Practiced composing my Stücke after Robert Schumann and Oscar Peterson, smiling like Casablanca Sam when the Smith College girls walked in. In LA, learning violin, Suzuki style. Playing an extra in Raid on Entebbe, an Israeli on a mission….

I might have forgotten all those years ago; they all eventually fall away, as new flaws in the human project absorb one’s remaining attention in a long life of many disappointments and a few crucial stand-out moments of love.  Jarrett, now almost 80 and debilitated by a couple of strokes that left him partially paralyzed and unable to play the piano, last month released a “new” album, The Old Country: More from Deer Head Inn.  It’s a trio album featuring musicians Paul Motian and Gary Peacock providing rhythm. But it is not new really. The album is a compilation of “more tracks” from the concert of 1992 at the titled venue. It features songs like “Solar” (Miles Davis), “You Don’t Know What Love Is” (Gene de Paul, Don Raye), and “It’s Easy to Remember” (Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers).  Mostly bright, sprightly finger dances you could listen to all-night as you make light conversation with the love of your life sitting across from, who you just met about an hour ago .

Jarrett played with everybody it seems — Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Dewey Redman, Chick Corea, and Art Blakey, and many others.  He brought new life to jazz but also put new spirit into Bach, Beethoven, Scarlatti, and Shostokovich.  He could play piano and saxophone. He also composed pieces for brass, string orchestra, and other non-jazz instrumentations. He was extraordinarily prolific, putting out dozens of albums.

He had amazing technique, especially in the left hand, where he seemed to own ostinatos, described as a continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm (see Pierre Piscitelli’s explanation of how Jarrett went about ostinatos below).  He could improvise all day long.

Also, he had an annoying habit of humming and buzzing along to his own tunes, which you can hear on The Old Country: More from Deer Head Inn. You think maybe he has a touch of autism and doesn’t even give a shit if you’re listening once he gets cooking. The Old Country’s not a great album, but it is not dated either after some 30 years.  Listening to Jarrett again brings back a lot of mixed memories and the beginning of my musical education in jazz. This is a good thing. And the album’s worth a listen. Want some inspiration in these bleak times to be human, give it a turn.

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