Keith Jarrett: New Vienna

What accolade has not been heaped upon the eighty-year-old Keith Jarrett and the music he has bestowed upon the world? So, without embarrassing and overbearing hyperbole, New Vienna is another of those very special recordings Jarrett sculpts from silence with an integral artistry and frequency that, some fifty-odd years after he began this solo journey, still stuns greater minds.

Recorded live in July of 2016 at Austria's storied Musikverein (home of the Vienna Philharmonic and the main stage of the Vienna Mozart Orchestra), Jarrett bares his soul and stirs his audience with a majesty befitting his grand European hosts. 

It is all here. All Jarrett. The cadence. The sway. The melody. Always the melody, pulling you like a soft ocean tide to the next turn in the road. Jarrett's road. No one else's. That is why New Vienna stands out from the crowd but is also a big part of the crowd, a crowd that offers humbly Bremen/Lausanne; the first Vienna Concert; the spectral Radiance, and Rio (all on ECM Records, 1973, 1992, 2005, 2011) 

The invisible yet impeccable subtleties of producer Manfred Eicher have a strong hand (as always) on the scale and the depth of the sound Jarrett is unleashing. Be it the impetuous "Part 1," a joyride of an opening improvisation that the pianist was ever a master at, spins off with a rapturous wit. "Part II" pays graceful homage to a trio of guys who preceded him to the Musikverein stage—Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton VonWebern.

"Part IV" is more of that gospel tinged, sagebrush-dusted, bluesy Americana no one has done better. "Part VIII" is that blues voodoo that Jarrett does to our constant amazement. "Part V," "Part VI," and "Part VII" are the recent incantations from the man who gave Facing You (ECM, 1972) to a world that needed it and truly needs it still.