In the mid -1970s, Keith Jarrett was not only a popular jazz pianist. It was an authentic phenomenon so surprisingly productive that it put its “American quartet” defining the era with the saxophonist Dewey Redman, the bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian in hiatus to pursue a completely different sound and repertoire.
He launched his “European quartet” with “belonging” from 1974, an album which introduced at least three songs which became standards and another which served as a melodic plan for the song title of the album of Steely Dan in 1980 “Gaucho” (which led to a trial set with a Cocomposer credit for Blot).
With the Norwegians Jan Garbarek (Tenor Sax) and Jon Christensen (drums), and the Swedish bass player Pale Danielsson, the “belonging” tinged with Gospel was Catnip for the artists who grew in the 1970s as Branford Marsalis, which included a 12 -minute Rollicking version of “The Wintup” as the Ferming Track Ganglet and scbe and secret as “soul.”
Once the song was in the group’s repertoire, the bass player of the Quartet Eric Révis said: “We should record the (explanive) record,” recalls Marsalis. “But then the pandemic said:” No! “” And when the quartet was back on the road in the fall of 2021, it seemed rusty.
“It took eight months to recover our thing,” said Marsalis, 64. “We played Sfjazz and, the third night, the atmosphere between us came back. We were not going to record before starting to ring well.”
Mission accomplished. Finally in the studio, they interpreted the classic album of Jarrett track for the track, and the release of the Branford Marsalis Quartet, “Feloping”, marks the start of the Saxophonist Blue Note Records.
With Révis, the pianist Joey Calderazzo and the drummer Justin Faulkner, the quartet returns to the Bay region for a series of concerts, including two shows on March 10 at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz; March 11 at Freight & Salvage de Berkeley; and March 12 at the Bing Concert Hall in Stanford (presented by Stanford Live).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmi7kqhpjbo
The albums offer a fascinating contrast between two famous sets at very different moments of their trajectories. The most recent member of the Quartet de Marsalis is Faulkner, who maintained the drum chair since he had 18 years in 2009. Calderazzo joined in 1998, the year that signed Revis, and the group won the distinction as one of the most coherent muscular on the scene.
Although they interpret the album of another quartet, “this group will never try to look like another group,” said Calderazzo. “We just took this music and played it as we wrote. I did my best to even listen to the disc for a while, knowing that we were going to do it. »»
On the other hand, the Jarrett Quartet clearly gets to know itself about “belonging”, an obvious process on an YouTube video recorded in Hanover, West Germany, in 1974 “which shows that they did not know music so well,” said Marsalis.
But what caught his ear in adolescence is Jarrett’s strength as a leader, using the piano to “educate them what to do and how to do it,” he said.
“I think this is one of the reasons why Keith has moved away from the group with Dewey and Paul. They were already established and most of the time, they appreciated their ideas on hers. This is ultimately why he needed to find musicians who would really follow him. »»
In the end, Jarrett found his greatest success for himself. January marked the 50th anniversary of his solo representation of the opera Köln documented on the double album of the ECM “The Köln Concert”. With more than four million printed copies, it is the best -selling solo album in the history of jazz.
For the rest of the decade, Jarrett alternated solo visits and albums with his American and European quartets, although after 1983, he worked mainly with his “standard trio” with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack Dejohnette. A series of blows led to his 2018 performance retirement, and the “membership” of the Marsalis quartet is in a state of recall to jazz lovers of the lamented absence of jarrett at the dawn of his 80th anniversary on May 9.
Jazz musicians are increasingly interpreting his compositions, but his influence as a player has long been inevitable. For Calderazzo, 59, “Keith came later,” he said, after having gravity to players who preceded Jarrett in the Miles Davis trumpeter group, like Red Garland, Wynton Kelly and Herbie Hancock.
“It is difficult to be a modern jazz musician and not to listen to Keith,” he said. “Even when he is not solo, it is the guy who directs the quartet. This is the way he plays through the song. The group follows it more or less and improvised. »»
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
Branford Marsalis Quartet
When and where: 7 p.m. and 9:10 p.m. March at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz, $ 31.50 – $ 84, www.kuumbwajazz.org; 8 p.m. March 11 in Freight & Salvage, Berkeley, $ 84 – $ 89, www.thefreight.org; 7:30 p.m. March 12 at the Bing Concert Hall, University of Stanford, $ 25 – $ 135, Live.stanford.edu.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
