Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett began as a sideman, his prodigious talent landing him gigs with Art Blakey and Miles Davis while still in his twenties. He chafed at the electric directions of those bands, however, and his true breakthrough came in the 1970s with a series of utterly unscripted solo piano performances. The most famous, 1975's The Köln Concert, was played on a poorly prepared instrument, forcing Jarrett into a percussive, gospel-inflected style that became a surprise global phenomenon. Alongside this, his 'Standards Trio' with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette spent decades deconstructing the American songbook with telepathic interplay. Jarrett's career has been marked by a fierce, sometimes cantankerous dedication to acoustic purity and the moment of creation, battling chronic fatigue syndrome and even vocalizing audibly at the keyboard in a total physical immersion. His work argues that profound emotional communication can spring, fully formed, from a single, unrepeatable instant.