Keith Jarrett's piano goes silent

Keith Jarrett thanks the audience for the standing ovation at a solo piano concert in Venice in July 2006. MICHELE CROSERA / AFP

In 1996 Keith Jarrett (Pennsylvania, United States, 75 years old) thought that he might not be able to play the piano again.

The appearance of a strange disease, which would later be diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome, put before him the nightmare of any musician who lives his art with particular intensity, who lives for and to play music: not being able to do it anymore.

Jarrett withdrew for two years and had to learn to live with the disease, how it affected his relationship with the piano and improvisation: perhaps we should forget the herculean improvisations that led to such important albums as

or

.

But in 1998 Jarrett returned to the stage, and for twenty more years he played tirelessly and produced a good handful of high-quality albums.

Although he was not like before, he still behaved like an outstanding pianist.

• Keith Jarrett, at 70

In recent times, the reduction in his activity was inevitably linked to rumors about his health.

In 2014, his legendary trio with Jack DeJohnette and Gary Peacock said goodbye.

In February 2017, at the end of what would already be his last concert, at Carnegie Hall in New York, he emotionally said goodbye to the audience saying: "You are the first audience that has made me cry."

Soon after, his brief schedule was canceled with no explanation other than a generic "for health reasons."

Last Wednesday, in an exclusive interview for

Jarrett ended his silence, explaining the painful situation: the pianist suffered a stroke at the end of February 2018, and another in May of that same year.

And the most tragic consequence: almost certainly, he will never play in public again.

This is how he tells

: “I was paralyzed.

My left side is still partially so.

Now I can try to walk with a cane, but it took me a long time to get to this point, more than a year.

This situation collides head-on with his ability to play.

As he recovered part of his mobility, he made small approaches to the piano, without success: "I tried to imagine that it was Bach with one hand, but it was like playing around."

And he adds in the interview: "I can only play with my right hand, and not even that convinces me."

The deterioration is not just physical: when he recently tried to play some old

tunes

in his home studio, he discovered that he had forgotten many in the aftermath of the spills.

“When I listen to piano played with two hands it is very frustrating, in a physical way.

Even listening to Schubert, or something softly played, because I know I couldn't do that.

And it is not expected that I will recover from it.

The most I aspire to with my left hand is to regain the ability to hold a cup with it. "

The most important living improviser

It is about the loss for music of one of the greatest of the twentieth century, one of the few that one could point to as the most important living improviser in the world: even his detractors have a hard time arguing such a claim.

Without entering into competitions about who is better or worse, and knowing that jazz giants like Sonny Rollins or Wayne Shorter (the latter active and fit) are still alive, the importance of Jarrett lies, among other things, in that his music it has transcended the field of jazz, reaching a large heterogeneous audience.

Listening to it live, one could witness an authentic epiphany, an experience that went beyond a simple recital.

The idiosyncrasies and quirks of the pianist are well known, from his audible croonings as he plays (extending a tradition of brilliant performers from Glenn Gould to Bud Powell), to his almost liturgical concept of the live experience.

All of this was part of the total immersion in the creative process: what emerges from his fingers is a communion between Jarrett's inspiration and his relationship with the space and the audience.

This is attested by a discography so bulky that it would be difficult for any other musician to sustain: a score of albums published only in his piano format, some lasting several hours, most of them based on pure improvisation, with little or no previous preparation, and practically all of them of an excellent quality.

Creative will

Jarrett, a personal musician and locked in his own universes, always played in another league: that of those who, even in their low moments, have an unusual creative stature.

His last recorded concert, released last year as

showed that level, despite the constraints that time and illness had placed in his way.

This was the last concert of his last European tour, an album that automatically became the second part of the pianist's creative testament.

The first would be the recording of the first concert of that tour, which the ECM label publishes on October 30 under the title

The coincidence of the announcement of Jarrett's retirement with the release of this album is not accidental: the pianist affirms that it is the best he has ever recorded on solo piano, above all his classics, and that is saying a lot.

For now, it is the farewell that he has chosen.