Keith Jarrett

He bowed deeply, arms hung loosely in front of him, like one of those acrobatic toys, a clown with a tinman hat who flips around the high bars, when you squeeze the two sides of the ladder. Then he raised himself up, pressed his hands - knuckle to knuckle - at his heart, and humbly gave obeisance to his audience. Hands then moved into a Buddhist’s prayer, fingers pointing straight up toward the Heavens. Keith Jarrett had been acknowledging his audience like this all night. Now all of us were onto – truly- his eighth encore of the evening. I was embarrassed for him. I wondered if he were too. Was the adulation just too much?

I commented to my seatmate in the stratosphere of the balcony. He was a stunning French fellow, late twenties. Had I been in my late twenties, I might have attempted speaking a bit of French with him, but his near perfect English and beauty kept my early sixties self guarded. Monsieur Francais teaches philosophy en francais at a French high school in San Francisco, and said he had seen him at least four or five times, had sixty of Jarrett’s 200 recordings. Msr Fr.’s girlfriend had left him behind two years ago to get a masters from Eastman (!) but in classical piano. Her dream is to play for the opera. And that I suspect is even more rarified that vying for a seat in the string section of a minor orchestra.

Msr. thought that after twenty years of such accolades, Keith was probably accustomed to the praise, and that eight encores was more than the usual two or three. The audience in Berkeley was not about to let him go. I felt when Keith had left the stage the first time, he was wisely leaving us wanting more. This is the professional advice I was always given. And surely his synapses might tire at some point after two hours.

At one point in the performance, he stood by his piano, tapping those magic fingers and quipped, “What to play?? When you don’t have a repertoire, well . . .” So, many of the encores came from a recent ‘standards’ album. I could hear some of my old musician attitudes. “Well, when you can’t be original, pull out one from the fake book. See if they’ll recognize it with a lot of 32^nd notes.”

And Jarrett can pull out the 32^nd and 64^th notes. (Surely, they are the envy of Chick Corea.) I can recognize his genius with all the zephyr speed, arms extended as if he’s about to take off into flight. Cross hand playing, audibly moaning grunts, singing syllables, standing up, then dipping down to his instrument, in a quiet moment, as if his head might go to sleep on his keyboard.

And then he will disappear into the melancholy beauty of a ballad. A meditation slow, mournful, deep. And those of us who don’t appreciate 64^th notes are mesmerized by this soulful exposition and expose of Mr. Jarrett. This is the moment when those of us who don’t understand mixolydian from phyrigian scales are devotes for life.

During the first recognizable strains of his eighth and final encore, there was an audible sigh from his audience. Mr. Francais said Jarrett was notorious for stopping his show to chaste a cough, or shame the person who forgot to turn off his cell phone. Keith was in a good mood that night– he let us sigh as he transported us ‘Over the Rainbow.’

What a privilege for me to hear undoubtedly the jazz genius of my generation.