Pianist Keith Jarrett’s quarter-century of trio recordings with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette sustains his reputation as one of music’s most inventive improvisers. But it’s his infrequent solo work, beginning with his 1971 release Facing You, that best displays his improvisational genius. Rio, recorded live in the Brazilian…

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I first saw Paul Motian in the early ’70s with the Keith Jarrett Quartet. The group came to our modest Midwestern university one cold Saturday night and set up on risers in the student union ballroom. Except for Motian, none of the group, which included bassist Charlie Haden and saxophonist…

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Pianist Anat Fort’s work is known for its mood, sense of touch, use of space and a feel for the exotic. Her latest recording And If assumes these qualities in less obvious ways, giving the music a natural and holistic feel. In a sense, she’s brought new subtleties to her subtlety.

That’s…

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The Rabbit has long complained that Keith Jarrett’s standards trio, fine as it is, limited the pianist. Maybe that ‘s because the Rabbit was one of those “hippies,” as one reviewer described his audience, who found salvation in Jarrett’s early solo work, beginning in 1971 with Facing You and continuing through…

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The value of the “working band”–the worth of keeping the same group of musicians together over the years –is a commonly accepted positive. The benefits of shared experience are obvious: empathy (sometimes described as “telepathy”), a foreknowledge of what a band mate will do (or how they’ll react) in a…

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Charles Lloyd’s latest release, recorded live in 2007 at the Theater Basel in Switzerland, recalls his early live recording, Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey. That LP introduced those of a certain generation to the saxophonist-flutist and jazz in general. The similarities between the two recordings, though separated by some…

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I once had a minor tiff with Brad Mehldau, an exchange of words in the pages of the L.A. Weekly that, I hope, ended up serving us both well. It started when I wrote up a plug for a rare Keith Jarrett appearance, saying that Jarrett had influenced a generation of young musicians. For proof one needed to look no further than Mehldau’s recorded rendition of “Blame It on My Youth”

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