Verve Solo Concerts: Bremen / Lausanne [VINYL]

Released in a facsimile edition in ECM's critically lauded Luminessence series, this audiophile vinyl triple album conveys the sound of history-in-the-making. Bremen-Lausanne documents two mesmerising Keith Jarrett solo piano concerts from March and July 1973. These are concerts from the very beginning of Jarrett's solo odyssey and they repay close listening today. In a shared booklet statement Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher write, "We feel that this album is true to itself and the audience from every angle and that our care will provide us with more than equal benefits in our knowledge that we have given you the closest thing to being there." Fifty years ago reception for the Solo-Concerts music - more than two hours of solo piano improvisations - was overwhelmingly positive around the world: the set was showered in awards and hailed as Album of the Year in Time magazine, the New York Times, Down Beat and Stereo Review in the US, Jazz Forum in Poland, and Swing Journal in Japan. In Germany, it won the Grober Deutsche Schallplattenpreis. The enthusiasm hasn't dimmed - in a recent survey of Jarrett's complete oeuvre in the UK's Mojo magazine, the Bremen-Lausanne box set was voted #1: "This is the ne plus ultra of the solo live Jarrett concert in all its improvisational glory." Keith Jarrett piano