Keith Jarrett: Piano Improvisations at Chicago Symphony Hall

Chuck Holton

Thick, rhythmic chords, so me where between Maestoso and Pesante. Different triads in the right and left hands, sounding a dark and muted color: emergence, effort. Is this grief for the victims of the bombing?

The chords continue long after fashion or short attention spans would suggest prudent variation; the spell is cast. This is not melody and accompaniment, this is homophony. Swells of harmonic gestures peak and subside. Modulations veer and return. The present moment remains ever interesting, ever expectant: how can this simplicity of gesture be shaded so variously? How can so few notes contain such feeling?

His body writhes in ecstasy. He leans away from the audience. He moans. He leans his forehead to almost touch the keyboard, he rears back so that arms extend rigidly, barely reaching the keyboard, as though pushed back by psychic force. He kneels, knees almost touching the floor. He stands upright, leans into the open piano, rocks rhythmically, rotates his head as if exploring every nuance of the sound he is discovering. He purses his lips, smiles in surprise. A deaf man could see this is about more than making music. The music is the expression of a profound spiritual nakedness. At the intermission wo me n will me ntion this and laugh, embarrassed at the intimacy.

His left hand finally settles on an octave. It stays planted there, allowing the religious wailings of the right hand to resonate overtones, barely audible. Is that a fugue? The right hand is all filigree and scale, dancing sixteenth notes; there is an inner voice, and the left hand sings, like a jazzy baroque baritone, a descending motive from the the me . How can this counterpoint e me rge so perfectly for me d at this speed?

It is only evident that the final chord is going to be the final chord a moment before it sounds. In that moment the entire closing cadence that has been forming becomes clear as an inevitable progression toward this serene conclusion to an epic journey, a twentieth-century Hammerklavier. And so that concluding mo me nt is at once utterly inevitable and a complete surprise.

I glance at my watch and am stunned that he has been playing without a break for forty-five minutes.

After intermission he again begins with chords, but so me how this beginning is a wonderful variation, an inversion of the first improvisation. These chords are clear and full of light; their poignancy is not that of remorse or regret. This time the insistent howling of the right hand is around the tonic note, ringing the left hand’s depressed fifth as an overtone; the ornaments and rhythms flirt with the prayer-calling of Muslim mosques. In a moment the right hand dances up a figure, the left hand down, and poof! He is standing, smiling and bowing deeply, then cupping hands and nodding acknowledge me nt.

The audience demands an encore. They get four. The supposedly churlish perfor me r chats between encores, acknowledges “Happy Birthday!” wishes from the audience (“It’s not quite my birthday. Have you ever noticed how everything is not quite what it is?”) and generously offers a crowd-pleasing set. So me where Over the Rainbow; a straightforward twelve-bar blues; Oh Danny Boy; and Old Man River, all played lovingly and without irony, full of the abundant rhythmic variation of melody and richly colorful harmonic substitutions (and modulations, weaving Danny Boy through four different keys before returning ho me ) for which he is well known.