Keith Jarrett: A Biography - Hardcover

by Wolfgang Sandner (Author), Chris Jarrett (Translator)

Keith Jarrett is one of the great pianists of our times. Before achieving worldwide fame for his solo improvisations, he had already collaborated with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. His Köln Concert album (1975) has now sold around four million copies and become the most successful solo recording in jazz history. His interpretations of the music of Bach, Händel, Bartók or Shostakovich, have also received much attention in later years. Jarrett is considered difficult and inaccessible, and has often abandoned the stage during his concerts due to restless audiences or disturbing photographers.

Few writers have come as close to Keith Jarrett as Wolfgang Sandner, who has not only closely followed Jarrett's remarkable career from the 1960s, but has also had the opportunity to visit him in his home in the United States. For this biography, which is full of detailed musical analysis and cross-references to other artistic genres, Sandner has collected new information about Jarrett's family background, much of which is thanks to the translator, Keith Jarrett's youngest brother Chris. The book explores Jarrett's work with other musicians, in particular the members of his American and European Quartets and his Standards Trio, it charts the development of his solo concerts, and it also investigates his work in the classical sphere, as well as the highly original music he has created in his own home studio. It also covers his associations with his various record labels and producers, notably his unparalleled relationship with ECM and its founder Manfred Eicher. This English edition is a significantly extended and updated version of the German original.

Author Biography

Wolfgang Sandner, born in 1942, studied musicology, modern history and Italian. For almost three decades, he has been active as music editor for the German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He is professor at the University of Marburg, Germany and has penned portraits of such varied artists as Miles Davis, Heiner Goebbels and Arvo Part. Chris Jarrett was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1956 and, an internationally successful pianist, organist and composer himself, is Keith Jarrett's youngest brother. He teaches at the JohannesGutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany and tours with piano and organ recitals. He is married to the Croatian-American pianist Martina Cukrov Jarrett and has been residing in Germany since 1985.