Radiance

This is not to say that Jarrett's lyrical gifts are diminished. Part Three, for example, is a beautifully realised and expressive ballad, while Part Six is a lyrical outpouring as intense as anything in Jarrett's career. In Part Eight, we are even given a relaxed and charming country song. But those who have dismissed Jarrett in the past as "jazz lite" - beautifully phrased but devoid of anything to say - will be staggered by the depth and complexity of the longer improvisations here, which hold more in common with the dense "tropical nocturnes" of Sorabji than they do with the pastoral tranquillity that opens "The Koln Concert".

This is not the first time that Jarrett has been dissonant: you can find plenty of this in his early modern jazz work, and some of it in the piano concerts of the mid-seventies, such as Lausanne. Rarely, however, has his use of dissonance had greater emotional impact, or been as accessible to a classical music audience.

This is a major album by a great talent. While it is less accessible to new listeners than the concerts at Paris, Koln, Bremen and Vienna, it ultimately perhaps more rewarding than any of them.


Exquisite New Solo Work   May 29, 2005
 31 out of 33 found this review helpful

To sit and listen to Keith Karrett's piano, particularly when it entails his solo improvisations on the piano, puts me in a state of awe before the first note is touched on his keyboard. Yet, saying this stems less from the faithful love of a long-time fan but rather from the recognition of the quality and depth of a man's work over so many years.
"Radiance," his first solo offering in many years, can only reaffirm my appreciation and anticipation for the depth and range of moods he has me accustomed to, with his recordings.
Throughout the seventeen pieces selected for this double CD release, Jarrett, again, conjures up moments of sublime tenderness and vivid and soulful conflict.
Not knowing in much detail about his ordeal with chronic fatigue, the compositions included here seem to portrait the range of emotions of a man that has gone through a journey of initiation.
At times, through melodies that evoke a profound sense of personal peace or bound to stir some ancient pains, whether the notes seem to flow or be painfully forced out of a difficult confession, the album as a whole confirms Jarrett's artistic stature and the maturity and deep honesty of his current work.
Jarret's a virtuoso, yet this not only accounts for his exquisite technique but, even more, for the troubled vulnerability he can express so vividly on each of these pieces. It's hard not to be moved by the wondrous combination of blissful and disturbing truths coming out of his piano.
So, my awe has been more than justified, and my gratefulness for a work of such emotional and austere beauty cannot sufficiently do justice to what you are about to hear in these two CDs.
This is one of the most moving, intelligent and courageously vulnerable sets, in any genre, I have heard in a long time.